What is it about?
Amnesty laws are often viewed as the opposite of justice. However, this is only the case where justice is narrowly understood as trials. This chapter shows how amnesty laws can be designed to comply with restorative justice principles. It draws on examples of amnesty processes in Uganda, Timor Leste and South Africa to identify the components of a 'restorative' amnesty. The chapter argues that amnesties designed along these principles can facilitate inclusive restorative processes, promote truth recovery, enforce restorative outcomes, and provide reparations.
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Why is it important?
This chapter shows how amnesties can coexist with or even be integrated into restorative justice mechanisms in order to can cast light on how victims, offenders, communities, and wider societies can engage with amnesty laws in ways that seek to deliver truth, accountability, reparations, and the articulation of non-violent social norms. In a world where amnesties continued to be enacted even for the most serious offences, restorative amnesties offer a means to reconcile the need for some form of leniency in the wake of conflict or repression with the need to deliver justice for victims.
Perspectives
This chapter was published in a collected edited by Jennifer Llewellyn and Dan Philpott on Restorative Justice, Reconciliation and Peacebuilding (OUP 2014). Dan and Jen had seen some of my earlier work in which I touched on the relationship between amnesties and restorative justice briefly and they encouraged me to give it more detailed consideration. I am really glad they did. I found restorative justice theory to be a useful framework for thinking about how to make amnesties more compliant with victims' rights. I am also grateful to Jen and Dan for the comments on the earlier versions of this chapter.
Prof Louise Mallinder
University of Ulster
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Amnesties in the Pursuit of Reconciliation, Peacebuilding, and Restorative Justice, April 2014, Oxford University Press (OUP),
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199364862.003.0006.
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