Transitional Justice as Repression and Resistance

Abstract

Transitional justice practices in the Arab World have unfolded in ways that both reinforce the value of the critical turn in transitional justice while also underscoring its limitations. Used as both a tool of repression and of resistance, transitional justice practices in the Arab World mark a significant development in the field by expanding its dynamic processes across time and space. Ongoing violence and the resurgence of authoritarian rule have necessitated a transitional justice process that aims to help deliver on the revolutionary objectives of the Arab uprisings themselves: to uproot decades of structural oppression and authoritarian rule. This article begins with a brief review of the critical turn in transitional justice and how it presents questions, limitations, and opportunities with regard to key transitional justice practices in the Arab World. Next, it will examine how such practices have made the state and its institutions as object of transitional justice as opposed to its enforcer. The article will then address the potentials of universal jurisdiction as a transitional justice strategy that has just as much to do with a broader political project, such as weakening an authoritarian regime, as it does with the narrower goal of putting regime officials on trial. Finally, I argue that transitional justice in the Arab World is a tool of resistance to colonial and neo-colonial powers, making it an important engine of Third World Approaches to International Law praxis.