ABSTRACT
Restorative justice has rapidly developed over the past decades as an alternative to existing criminal justice systems around the world and their way of dealing with common crimes. In a maximalist view, particular importance is attached to ‘restorative accountability’, which implies the accountability of offenders aiming at restoration of the harm inflicted to all concerned on the one hand and the eventual reintegration of offenders on the other hand. In this chapter, we take the emerging field of international crimes and serious human rights violations as objects of analysis, and wish to understand what a restorative justice ‘lens’ to such crimes and violations might look like and to what extent a ‘restorative transitional justice’ approach can be developed. We illustrate these aspects through the situation of ongoing violent conflict in Colombia, and look at the restoration of the harm to all concerned and the reintegration of offenders. We argue that the Colombian reality definitely holds potential to deal with international crimes and serious human rights violations in a restorative way, but that the existing mechanisms need to be further developed to achieve this.
