Housing, Land and Property Rights in Transitional Justice

I N T R O D U C T I O N Housing, land and property (HLP) raise some of the most provocative and contentious issues in transitional justice scholarship and practice. HLP-related forced displacement, damage and destruction and restitution for historical injustices are at the heart of many transitional justice policy debates, with repercussions for responses by the international community, governments and civil society. Transitional justice scholarship has made great strides in trying to answer fundamental questions concerning injustices related to HLP and economic, social and cultural rights – and the questions are many. Does transitional justice provide a sufficient foundation for understanding how best to respond to HLP grievances? Are the human rights-based legal frameworks used in transitional justice prejudiced in how they shape our understanding of HLP problems, and do they provide appropriate redress across a variety of cultural and historical trajectories? What is the place of traditional, indigenous and customary laws and norms in transitional justice efforts relating to HLP? Transitional justice has always given prominence to the symbolic value of measures of justice and redress. Does this lens attend to the various forms of injustice in the context of HLP grievances and the material and spatial needs of the aggrieved? Can it help make sense of both the individual and the group identities embedded in HLP questions? Since HLP issues are highly politicized and ritualized in political discourse, how can local actors reclaim HLP problem definitions and proposed solutions from political entrepreneurs? Does transitional justice provide effective avenues for marginalized groups to engage in current debates, voice their experiences and participate in processes of restitution? This Special Issue of IJTJ seeks to deepen the debate on these issues and contribute to answering some of the questions facing scholars and practitioners working on HLP in transitional contexts.