In recent years, there has been a noticeable turn towards the “local” in both the practice and academic study of transitional justice, exemplified by a belief that local transitional justice processes (LTJPs) are superior because they are rooted in cultural practices and closer to the communities and people seeking justice. However, this assumption, and the existing literature on these local initiatives, pays insufficient attention to asymmetric power relations between national and local actors and to the unseen domestic political interests that shape local transitional justice processes on the ground. By taking these factors into account, this dissertation contends that LTJPs can be used paradoxically to deflect justice in ways that allow ruling parties to avoid human rights accountability and that obscure the truth about wartime events. The dissertation further argues that the principal means by which justice is deflected is not through overt manipulation by ruling parties, but rather, through more indirect processes of “distortional framing” that ruling parties use to establish discursive limits around discussions of the past and to conceal their own human rights abuses. The cases of Cambodia and Mozambique are examined in detail to reveal and to trace the processes by which distortional framing has been employed as a tactic to deflect justice. This dissertation contributes to the study of transitional justice, not only by challenging the prevailing assumption that LTJPs are inherently preferable because they are more “authentic” or closer to the people, but by providing a novel explanation of how these processes can be manipulated to subvert their own stated goal of advancing the cause of justice, and by providing a detailed account of these distortionary processes at work in two post-conflict countries located on two different continents.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/37046 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Kochanski, Adam |
| Contributors | Paris, Roland |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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