Amnesty in the Age of Human Rights Accountability

This edited volume brings together well-established and emerging scholars of transitional justice to discuss the persistence of amnesty in the age of human rights accountability. The volume attempts to reframe debates, moving beyond the limited approaches of 'truth versus justice' or 'stability versus accountability' in which many of these issues have been cast in the existing scholarship. The theoretical and empirical contributions in this book offer new ways of understanding and tackling the enduring persistence of amnesty in the age of accountability. In addition to cross-national studies, the volume encompasses eleven country cases of amnesty for past human rights violations: Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Rwanda, South Africa, Spain, Uganda and Uruguay. The volume goes beyond merely describing these case studies, but also considers what we learn from them in terms of overcoming impunity and promoting accountability to contribute to improvements in human rights and democracy.

Has a global reach with case studies from the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia
Tackles both theoretically and empirically the question of amnesty, which has so far been left of the margins of the transitional justice literature
All contributors to the volume are specialists in transitional justice and country experts

Reviews & endorsements

"[This] book is a welcome contribution to the rapidly expanding field of transnational justice and to the menu of policy choice after gross violations of human rights."

-- D.P. Forsythe, emeritus, University of Nebraska, Reviewing for Choice Magazine

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Product details

Published: May 2012
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 9781107025004
Length: 456 pages
Dimensions: 235 × 156 × 22 mm
Weight: 0.73kg
Contains: 14 b/w illus. 4 tables
Availability: Available

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Contents

Part I. Theoretical Framework:
1. The age of accountability: the rise of individual criminal accountability Kathryn Sikkink
2. The amnesty controversy in international law Mark Freeman and Max Pensky
Part II. Comparative Case Studies:
3. Amnesties' challenge to the global accountability norm? Interpreting regional and international trends in amnesty enactment Louise Mallinder
4. From amnesty to accountability: the ebbs and flows in the search for justice in Argentina Gabriel Pereira and Par Engstrom
5. Barriers to justice: the Lley de Caducidad and impunity in Uruguay Francesca Lessa
6. Resistance to change: Brazil's persistent amnesty and its alternatives for truth and justice Marcelo Torelly and Paulo Abrão
7. De facto and de jure amnesty laws: the Central American case Naomi Roht-Arriaza and Emily Braid
8. Creeks of justice: debating post-atrocity accountability in Rwanda and Uganda Phil Clark
9. Accountability through conditional amnesty: the case of South Africa Antje du Bois-Pedain
10. De facto amnesty? The example of post-Soeharto Indonesia Patrick Burgess
11. A limited amnesty? Insights from Cambodia Ronald Slye
12. The Spanish amnesty law of 1977 in comparative perspective: from a law for democracy to a law for impunity Paloma Aguilar
13. Amnesty in the age of accountability Tricia D. Olsen, Leigh A. Payne and Andrew G. Reiter.

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Contributors

Kathryn Sikkink, Mark Freeman, Max Pensky, Louise Mallinder, Gabriel Pereira, Par Engstrom, Francesca Lessa, Marcelo Torelly, Paulo Abrão, Naomi Roht-Arriaza, Emily Braid, Phil Clark, Antje du Bois-Pedain, Patrick Burgess, Ronald Slye, Paloma Aguilar, Tricia D. Olsen, Leigh A. Payne, Andrew G. Reiter

Editors

Francesca Lessa , Oxford University
Francesca Lessa is Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the Latin American Centre and Research Fellow at St Anne's College, University of Oxford, where she works on 'The Impact of Transitional Justice on Human Rights and Democracy', a project funded by the US National Science Foundation and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. Before joining the University of Oxford, she was Research Associate for the Latin America International Affairs Programme, IDEAS Centre, at the London School of Economics, and visiting Lecturer on Transitional Justice and Human Rights at the Faculty of Psychology, University of the Republic, Montevideo, Uruguay. Lessa is co-editor (with Vincent Druliolle) of The Memory of State Terrorism in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay (2011) and (with Gabriela Fried) of Luchas contra la impunidad: Uruguay, 1985–2011 (2011).
Leigh A. Payne , University of Oxford
Leigh A. Payne is Professor of Sociology and Latin America at the University of Oxford and Governing Body Fellow of St Antony's College. She is currently a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota. She is the recipient of numerous research awards including one, most recently, from the US National Science Foundation and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council for a collaborative research project entitled 'The Impact of Transitional Justice on Human Rights and Democracy'. She co-edited (with Ksenija Bilbija) Accounting for Memory: Marketing Memory in Latin America (2011) and co-authored (with Tricia D. Olsen and Andrew Reiter) Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy (2010). Her most recent solo authored book is Unsettling Accounts: Neither Truth nor Reconciliation in Confessions of State Violence (2008).

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