Sanne Weber, thank you to the Centre for the
Study of Global Ethics. Perhaps we could start
by you telling us a bit about your role at
the University of Birmingham.
Yeah, I’m a Research Fellow at the International
Development Department of the University of
Birmingham and so I am supporting a research
programme which is funded by the British Academy
and deals with Sustainable Development Agenda,
the UN’s Sustainable Development Agenda,
and I also develop my own research which is
mainly linked to transitional justice and
gender.
What aspect of global justice does your work
touch on?
So I work in an area called ‘transitional
justice’ which refers to the set of measures
aimed to deal with the past end states that
move on from conflict to democracy and I’m
especially interested in looking at how transitional
justice can help transform the underlying
structural inequalities that underlying conflicts,
and also gender inequalities and within that
field I was specifically interested in looking
at survivors’ experience of transitional
justice in order to understand how transitional
justice can better help transform the situation
and respond to their needs.
What do you think are the most pressing problems
in this area?
Well I think one of the key problems is that
transitional justice has become internationally
accepted as the standard approach to dealing
with the past, whereas its effectiveness has
not efficiently, or sufficiently, been proven.
So you could say it’s basically based on
largely untested assumptions of how it contributes
to reconciliation and I believe that this
has to do mainly with the way in which transitional
justice deals with a specific type of violence
– mainly direct violence – leaving structural
violence and structural inequalities unexplored
and therefore it feels to suggest the root
causes of conflict. And this focus on a specific
type of violence also has to do with a specific
victim that transitional justice deals with,
which basically considers – or privileges
– certain victims over others. I’m also
interested in looked at this in gender terms
and looking at how transitional justice privileges
a specific gendered victim which mainly deals
with women who have suffered sexual violence
and this risks to present women as a vulnerable
group in need of protection by others, misrepresenting
their agency, their resilience and also the
different terms of resistance they showed,
and at the same time also failing to understand
how gender based violence affected men and
how masculinities are related to violence.
So I believe that these are different obstacles
that prevent transitional justice from transforming
inequalities and therefore it proves to be
little effective in promoting reconciliation.
And what is the next big issue or project
that you would like to work on?
My next research project will deal with the
integration of ex-, or former, armed combatants
into civilian lives. So I’m interested in
exploring both the gender dynamics and the
social economic aspects of this process, mainly
looking at Colombia. So I’m interested in
understanding whether the changes in gender
roles within armed groups, how these relate
to gender rules within receiving communities
of ex-combatants and how gains made in gender
roles can be built upon in the post-conflict
situation. But also I’m interested in looking
at the socio-economic needs of both ex-combatants
and host communities and what socio-economic
and political dynamics are involved in restoring
social trust within a State. And finally within
this area I’m also interested in looking
at the identities of ex-combatants in terms
of many of them being both victims and perpetrators
and how societal perceptions towards these
roles are, in order to improve the understanding
of motivations and roles of ex-combatants
and in terms of the promotion of reconciliation
in society.
And finally, if you could make only one key
recommendation for policy or practice based
on your research, what would you like it to
be?
So I believe that for transitional justice
to actually contribute to reconciliation it
should really put in place preconditions for
survivors to exercise an active citizenship
and therefore it should go beyond the provision
of symbolic measures or compensation check,
or maybe a truth and reconciliation commission,
to actually deal with the underlying socio-economic
inequalities that characterise conflicts.
And so I believe that transitional justice
should really engage with development and
social justice issues rather than the more
symbolic aspects. And also given a strongly
patriarchal situation in many conflicts and
post-conflict countries like Colombia where
my research took place, it’s also crucial
that States really help women to overcome
the obstacles that prevent them to become
active citizens and therefore women should
not just be seen as victims but also be really
supporters in a process towards citizenship
building through efforts like education organisation
and support programmes for women. So really
transitional justice should engage more with
these wider social justice measures.
