Online Course: Prevention and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence: The Role of Transitional Justice

Brief Overview

Prevention is a top priority in current international policy agendas on sustainable peace and development and global governance. The Sustainable Development Goals, for example, include in Goal 16 on peaceful, just, and inclusive societies the target of reducing all forms of violence. The UN Common Agenda, in addition, envisions a new agenda for peace based on an overarching approach to prevention.

By confronting the causes and consequences of massive human rights violations, transitional justice can be an important element of these agendas. Aimed at breaking cycles of abuse and laying the foundations for peace, justice, and inclusion, transitional justice has always sought to prevent the violations of the past from happening again, particularly through the principle of guarantees of non-recurrence. Exactly how efforts to address the past can help societies to avoid future violations, however, is an under-explored part of the field. Furthermore, it is even less clear, and more contested, whether and how transitional justice can help to prevent violence and violent conflict more broadly.

As the idea of prevention has been prioritized by the international community, understanding the role of transitional justice has become more imperative. This course therefore provides a timely overview of the conceptual and practical links between justice and prevention, drawing on specific country experiences. It will ask a series of questions aimed at exploring the preventive capacity of transitional justice:

1. How can transitional justice help to guarantee the nonrecurrence of all types of human rights violations, but also to prevent different forms of crime, violence, and violent conflict more broadly?
2. How does addressing common drivers and root causes of violence and abuses, such as exclusion, fragility, and gender inequality, contribute to a more peaceful future?
3. What are the main constraints on the preventive impact of measures designed to address the legacies of past injustices? What steps can be taken to ensure that these measures in practice facilitate long-term structural change?
4. What roles do different actors such as the state, civil society, donors, and international organizations play in promoting prevention-oriented approaches to transitional justice that can be more integrated into broader peacebuilding and development interventions?
5. How do contexts of ongoing violence or the absence of political transition affect the relationship between confronting past injustice and preventing its persistence or recurrence?

The course will look at practical examples of current, past, and paradigmatic transitional justice processes and their contribution to prevention. Country experiences to be discussed may include Colombia, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Peru, South Africa, Syria, Central African Republic, Morocco, and the Philippines. The aim is to provide course participants with a firm grounding in transitional justice efforts and insight into the challenges and opportunities of helping to avoid the recurrence of violations, violence, and violent conflict.

For over a decade, the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) has offered a one-week in-person course in Barcelona in partnership with the Barcelona International Peace Center. In recent years, the course has focused on “Prevention and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence: The Role of Transitional Justice,” which engages participants in an in-depth examination of the relationship between transitional justice and the notion of prevention. In 2021 and 2022, due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the course has been reformulated as an interactive virtual platform.

The course runs from Monday, February 7 through Friday, February 11, 2022 and involves 15 hours of online participation during 5 consecutive weekdays from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 pm Eastern time plus 3 hours for a group assignment outside the course hours. The course format includes a combination of online lectures, breakout room discussions, case studies, and peer exchange of experiences. We have reformulated the course’s sessions, shortening our schedule to allow participants more flexibility with their personal and professional schedules. It will be taught in English and a high proficiency level is required to fully benefit from attendance. Space will be limited.

Instructors of include top level experts and practitioners, such as Ruben Carranza, Cristian Correa, Roger Duthie, Virginie Ladisch, Kelli Muddell, Anna Myriam Roccatello, Howard Varney, and Fernando Travesi, among other guest speakers. The program is targeted at staff at multilateral agencies, governments, NGOs, foundations, universities, and others involved in peacebuilding, development, conflict, and post-conflict contexts around the world.

Due to the pandemic, ICTJ is subsidizing part of the course costs reducing its fee to US$ 800.00 (eight hundred dollars).

To apply, please complete this online form.

Deadline for applications is Friday, January 14, 2022.

For more information about the application, or any other inquiries, please email Kelen Meregali at kmeregali@ictj.org.