The dynamics of transitional justice: international models and local realities in East Timor

[extract] As Ruti Teitel has outlined, transitional justice can be seen as evolving in three

phases. The first involved criminal trials, such as Nuremberg and Tokyo, which

sought to hold individuals accountable for abuses of human rights during World War

II, and this was buttressed by the development of various international legal

instruments to protect rights which today constitute a central aspect of approaches to transitional justice. In the 1980s and 1990s a second phase of transitional justice

occurred with post-dictatorship tribunals and bodies such as truth commissions, both

of which ‘thickened’ transitional justice by introducing a restorative element. The

third phase has involved the normalisation of transitional justice mechanisms through

international tribunals and the International Criminal Court, and national and hybrid

tribunals and courts increasingly link transitional justice with modern state-building in

post-conflict societies. As Lia Kent outlines in this important study, in the case of East

Timor (Timor Leste) the ‘toolkit’ for dealing with post-conflict situations involved

both retributive and restorative mechanisms, but international and local agendas can

differ widely when it comes to the idea of a society ‘moving on’.