ABSTRACT
The growth of transitional justice has been dramatic. Over the last two decades in particular, there has been an escalation of domestic and international efforts to address past state crimes, conflict and repression, sometimes years after violations have occurred (Teitel 2000). Since the 1970s, practices — including international trials, domestic trials, truth commissions, reparations and lustration schemes (in which perpetrators are excluded from public employment) — have evolved to establish the accountability of individuals for previous harms. This global ‘justice cascade’ has been such that over the last three decades there have been almost 40 international courts and tribunals and over 35 truth commissions established to deal with the past (Sikkink and Walling 2006). Doing nothing, it seems, is not an option and this upward trajectory of truth and justice measures does not look set to reverse (Sikkink and Walling 2007).
