Gendered Subjects of Transitional Justice

  • Katherine M. Franke

Abstract

“Transitional societies must contend with a range of complex challenges as they seek to come to terms with and move beyond an immediate past saturated with mass murder, rape, torture, exploitation, disappearance, displacement, starvation, and all other manner of human suffering. Questions of justice figure prominently in these transitional moments, and they do so in a dual fashion that is at once backward and forward looking. Successor governments must think creatively about building institutions that bring justice to the past, while at the same time demonstrate a commitment that justice will form a bedrock of governance in the present and future. This is no easy task, and shortcuts, both in dealing with the past and in building a just future, often appear irresistible. In Martha Minow’s words, justice at this juncture amounts to replacing “violence with words and terror with fairness,”1 and steering a “path between too much memory and too much forgetting.”2”

Citation

Franke, Katherine M. “Gendered Subjects of Transitional Justice.” Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 15 (2006): 813-828

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