The Role of Victims in Transitional Justice: Agency, Cooption and Exclusion (Review Essay)

Over the last seven years I have been working as a human rights researcher and practitioner in Sri Lanka, a context where debates about transitional justice (TJ) have been contentious and sustained. In this light I enthusiastically accepted to review the three books that are the subject of this essay. Their focus on the role and responses of victims was of particular interest as I watched the unfolding protests across Sri Lanka, in which families of the disappeared and villagers whose land remained under military occupation took to the streets. In what follows I will briefly summarize some of what I consider to be the key contributions each book makes to the field of TJ, through the lens of disappearance, memorialization and exhumation. I will then turn to reflecting on some of the overarching questions these books and my own current research raise for TJ scholarship and practice. In particular I will focus on the temporality of TJ, the concept of ‘truth’ and the relationship between ethical humanitarianism, human rights and the politics of subaltern populations.