Confronting Past Human Rights Violations (Cass Series on Peacekeeping) - Hardcover

Sriram, Chandra Lekha

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0714655996 ISBN 13: 9780714655994

Publisher: Routledge, 2004

Synopsis

This book examines what makes accountability for previous violations more or less possible for transitional regimes to achieve. It closely examines the other vital goals of such regimes against which accountability is often balanced. The options available are not simply prosecution or pardon, as the most heated polemics of the debate over transitional justice suggest, but a range of options from complete amnesty through truth commissions and lustration or purification to prosecutions. The question, then, is not whether or not accountability can be achieved, but what degree of accountability can be achieved by a given country.
The focus of the book is on the politics of transition: what makes accountability more or less feasible and what strategies are deployed by regimes to achieve greater accountability (or alternatively, greater reform). The result is a more nuanced understanding of the different conditions and possibilities that countries face, and the lesson that there is no one-size-fits-all prescription that can be handed to transitional regimes.

About this title

About the Author:

Chandra Lekha Sriram is a lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, where she teaches international relations and international law, and human rights. She obtained her doctorate from Princeton University in 2000.

Review:

'The book is well written and the author does not go farther in her conclusion than her material warrants. It is a well-documented study that should be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about what happens after the fall of a dictatorial regime.' - Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0714655996
• ISBN 13: 9780714655994
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 242