All humans deserve human rights; but yet, some humans are still mistreated by their governments, military, and/or political leaders. It is often a neglect of duty when countries take away a person’s rights to live freely and peacefully. Unfortunately, not everyone sees the importance of human rights, and sometimes power gets in the way of making this change global.
Transitional justice has many strengths and limitations. Its strengths are the effort people put behind it, the acknowledgment of past wrong doings, the restitution paid for harms, and the apologies made. When behavior is truly changed, and transitional justice is able to play a role in allowing trust to be rebuilt, then there is success. Unfortunately, success does not always exist. Sometimes reparations are promised and never made. Other times there is no true apology or acceptance of harms. And sometimes criminals are not ever prosecuted. Another difficulty when dealing with transitional justice is the lack of measurement techniques to determine the effects of programs. In the article, “Key Debates & Implementation Challenges” it stated that “The study also concludes that at present the existing empirical evidence does not enable policy-makers to make empirically informed decisions about ‘when, where and how to promote transitional justice.’" Therefore, this causes many questions about the techniques that should be utilized and whether or not they will help the community. In addition, there is no way to know if the victims were helped.
Post-conflict countries can have more accessibility to transitional justice techniques through education. If these countries are able to be educated on the statistics of what transitional justice techniques help for what type of atrocities, I believe that it would be easier to implement them. The first step is to do more research on what the causes and effects are. Surveys would be very helpful in finding out if the victim feels like the technique was successful or not. In _Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy_ by Tricia Olsen (2010) she determined that using a plethora of techniques is more helpful than choosing only one (146). I believe with this knowledge, education, and research more countries can be helped and transitional justice techniques can be spread to the places that need them the most.
My perspective on justice and human rights changed the most over the semester through the online Human Rights game “Against all odds”. I knew that people were often mistreated, and I had learned about things like slavery and the holocaust. Yet, sometimes it is difficult to put yourself in a human rights victim’s shoes. I was actually able to see how: being abused by the police, questioned constantly, and trying to escape felt. I left behind family and friends, only to reach America to be mistreated. Over the semester this had the largest impact on me because I never forgot the experience.
Overall, transitional justice can be spread. It can also be improved through better understanding. Everyone deserves human rights and the protection under the law. When places fail to give people the human rights they deserve, there has to be an attempt to restore the peace that was so unjustly taken away.
REFERENCES
Grzyb, A. (Producer). (2010). What is transitional justice. [Web]. Retrieved from http://atwestern.typepad.com/transitionaljustice/
Olsen, T, Payne, L, & Reiter, A. (2010). Transitional justice in balance: comparing processes, weighing efficacy. Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press.
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