AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program

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Report on Science and Human Rights

Summer 2006 Vol XXVI, No. 1

The African Transitional Justice Research Network

Victoria Baxter
Former Senior Program Associate

Jana Asher
Senior Program Associate

Transitional justice refers to societal responses to severe repression, societal violence, and systematic human rights violations that seek to establish the truth about the past, determine accountability, and offer some form of redress. In the past ten years, truth commissions and other transitional justice mechanisms, such as national and international trials and tribunals, memorials, and museums, have become popular policy choices for nations as they face the dilemma of consolidating democracy and strengthening the rule of law, while dealing with a past period of human rights abuses.

Transitional justice research is a priority area of the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program. The focus of the Program's work in this area has been providing scientific and technical assistance to a series of truth commissions, supporting efforts to build research capacity around the world, particularly for empirical studies of the impacts of transitional justice mechanisms, and conducting independent research.

The most recent of AAAS's initiatives in the area oftransitional justice has been undertaken in partnership with the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation and the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development. Called the African Transitional Justice Research Network (ATJRN), this project will provide local-level researchers with capacity building opportunities via workshops, a listserv, a newsletter, and other forums for communication. AAAS's specific role includes managing the listserv, providing one member of the ATJRN steering committee, contributing to the production of the newsletter, organizing a conference, and working to expand the Network outside of Africa.

Although the two-year ATJRN project has only been funded for two months, it has taken off with a bang. A well-developed website (http://www.transitional justice.org.za) tracks transitional justice-related news and activities, as well as providing a database of the names, activities, and contact information of organizations involved in transitional justice research. A listserv, TJnetwork@listserv. aaas.org, has attracted over 200 members who engage in transitional justice-related activities in Africa. The listserv members represent every inhabited continent. Additionally, the first ATJRN civil society capacity building workshop was held in Monrovia, Liberia from June 26 - 28, 2006. This workshop was sponsored by the Centre for Democratic Empowerment and timed to take place just after the creation of Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Attendees from Liberia and the international transitional justice community (including SHRAAAS staff member Victoria Baxter) spent three days sharing experiences of other truth commission processes as well as learning specific research skills.