Reimagining Transitional Justice for an Enduring Peace: Accounting for Natural Resources in Conflict
The field of transitional justice is being reshaped. Intended to bring not only accountability and truth after a war, it is now called upon to help articulate the profound societal changes needed for a more peaceful future. If anchored to some critical to
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Introduction The field of transitional justice is being reshaped. Intended to bring not only accountability and truth after a war, it is now conceived as one of a number of ways to make some of the profound societal changes needed for a more peaceful future. And for this reason, the types of topics investigated, the legal aspects considered, and the recommendations proposed are expanding. The new scope of transitional justice could be interpreted to be quite broad, and some argue that it should not lose sight of its original, more limited objectives.1 But if it is anchored to some particular critical topics, with this broader vision, transitional justice can be deployed to a much greater effect. With careful calibration, transitional justice can reach beyond individual criminal acts to address the underlying causes of conflict and thus play a role in the kinds of change that may actually result in a longterm peace. Natural resources are one such critical area of focus. While rarely the single, driving cause of conflict and even more rarely a focus in post-conflict policy making, linkages between conflict and natural resources are present in every conflict in varying ways. The environment and natural resources often serve to motivate support and prolong conflict, but they may also present opportunities for reconciliation and stability.
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Dustin Sharp, “Economic Violence in the Practice of African Truth Commissions and Beyond,” in this volume; Dustin Sharp, “Conclusion: From Periphery to Foreground,” in this volume; Roger Duthie, “Transitional Justice, Development, and Economic Violence,” in this volume.
S. S. Nichols (*) The Environmental Law Institute, 2000 L Street, NW 620, Washington, DC 20036, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
D. N. Sharp (ed.), Justice and Economic Violence in Transition, Springer Series in Transitional Justice 5, DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-8172-0_8, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
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Natural resources are also tied to human rights in many ways—particularly in ways that often become threatened during conflict. The rights to food, water, shelter, or to a healthy environment are violated with sad frequency. But beyond this first level of connection whereby protection of human rights depends directly on natural resources, there is also a secondary connection. In natural resourcedependent economies, much of the performance of the state is related to how it manages natural resources and their revenues. If natural resources revenues are being misdirected to meet the needs of one small group rather than the whole population, the government is failing to equitably distribute the resources and may also be failing to provide education, health care, livelihoods, or even to meet basic needs. Thus, failures in natural resources governance can result in institutionalized inequity and violations of human rights. The chains of causation between natural resource use, rights violations, and conflict can be very hard to identify among the swirl of g
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