![]() ![]() Transitional justice is defined as the “full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempts to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses in order to ensure accountability, serve justice, achieve reconciliation, and possibly deter recurrence”. Justice often stands as an inherently contested idea in itself with this being especially poignant in cases as complex as those derived or determined by violent conflict. In order to understand the fundamental precepts that have set both concepts as opposing forces, despite being deeply interlinked, it becomes necessary conduct a critical analysis of the concepts of peace and justice in themselves as both terms are far from monolithic values. ![]() Nevertheless, there is a portrayal of both concepts as often opposing forces within scholarship on peacebuilding. Transitional justice and peacebuilding both attempt to engage within conflict or post conflict societies seeking to reshape political, social and economic institutions within a conflict situation through an alteration of the previous order. For this, we must first examine our implicit understandings of both justice and peace, and how paradoxes may arise from different interpretations of these concepts. When evaluating the relationship between peace and justice, and whether one can truly affirm that peace is ultimately about the attainment of justice, we must question how both concepts relate to each other, and weather the attainment of either peace or justice is even effectively linear or conditional to each other. Having established this, conclusions will be drawn regarding the convergence and divergence points between peace and transitional justice stating that while scenarios of peace can be achieved without justice, restorative and retributive justice processes must be implemented at a certain point so as to enable the consolidation of even the most minimalist interpretations of peace in the long term. This paper will then explore the problematic subjacent in these dynamics, and introduce new approaches to breach the issues mentioned above. Consequently, we will explore scenarios of how peace and justice may interact in peace processes, and the mayor debates around these interactions including the prioritization of peace as the main objective and a precondition for the adequate exercise of justice, and the notion that justice is necessary for the establishment and maintenance of any notion of peace. By enquiring about the nature of peace and justice, and how these concepts relate and are prioritized in peace processes we will argue that while justice remains key in peacebuilding efforts, it is not necessarily implicit as the ultimate or necessary goal of peace.įor this purpose, this investigation will introduce a reflection of the affirmation that peace is ultimately about the attainment of justice, questioning our considerations of peace and justice in themselves, and evaluating the paradoxes they may imply. This paper aims to provide a critical analysis of the relationship between peace and justice in the context of conflict and post-conflict situations. ![]()
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