EDITORIAL: CRITICAL ISSUES
IN TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE –
A SISYPHEAN EXERCISE
Jeremy Sarkin,* Estelle Zinsstag**
and Stephan Parmentier*** , ****
Over the last twenty-five years or so, in the wake of numerous political transitions
around the world and many processes for dealing with the past, transitional justice
(TJ) has become recognised as having come of age as a field of study and having many
practical applications in transitional settings. However, historically TJ has its roots
much further back. Some even argue that it stretches back several centuries, and
possibly even further than that but that does not mean it is not controversial or
without criticism – quite the contrary and it will remain so. Just like Sisyphus’s never-
ending effort to push his rock to the top of the mountain, we must strive to address the
controversies and criticism and seek to improve TJ, always, for it to remain relevant,
useful and just.
Transitional justice is criticised on many fronts. In fact the field of study, despite
being cross-cutting, has at times faced a barrage of criticism, from within as well as
from those outside. Those criticisms are of two major types, first that theoretically it
is problematic and secondly that it is misapplied or of little or no relevance to the
circumstances it is applied to. To start with the latter, some see TJ as a soft option in
societies in transition, that it is used by those states that do not seek accountability
and do not want to have (m)any prosecutions. Amnesty is a thorn in the side of
transitional justice, as many see it as a critical feature of transitions that promote
impunity for serious human rights violations and allows perpetrators to escape
justice.
* Professor of Law, University of South Africa (UNISA) and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law
and member of CEDIS, Nova University Faculty of Law, Lisbon, Portugal.
** Senior Researcher, Leuven Institute of Criminology, University of Leuven, Belgium.
*** Professor of Criminology and Human Rights, Leuven Institute of Criminology, University of
Leuven, Belgium.
**** The guest editors of this special issue are particularly grateful to the Editorial Board of the journal
Human Rights and International Legal Discourse for its invitation to edit this special issue and for
the perfect collaboration resulting therefrom.
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