ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an empirical examination of how Transitional justice (TJ) initiatives have engaged or failed to engage with the natural resources sector. It discusses how a carefully expanded focus of some TJ programs to include natural resources can achieve a more nuanced understanding of violent conflicts and the need for post-conflict justice. The chapter highlights some of the challenges facing such an expansion that in many cases the challenges can be overcome and suggests how an expansion might work. The four major interventions associated with TJ (legal accountability, truth seeking, reparations, and security sector reform) have so far only rarely engaged with issues relevant to natural resources, focusing instead on gross violations of civil and political rights. The chapter concludes with an example of fruitful collaboration between TJ and a variety of development actors in Liberia's forest sector reform, and offers a few strategies for improving effectiveness of interventions, given the scale of problems needing attention in post-conflict situations.
