- Convenors:
-
Charlotte Al-Khalili
(University of Sussex)
Anna Balazs (Södertörn University)
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- Formats:
- Panel
Short Abstract
This panel examines legal claims and processes that take place while wars are still ongoing and in their direct aftermaths, asking: what ideas and practices of justice appear in such contexts? What jurisdictions can prosecute these crimes? How is justice redefined through these claims?
Long Abstract
As armed conflict and genocide are devastating multiple parts of the world, seeking justice for war crimes has come to the forefront of academic debates (Geneuss and Jeßberger 2022; Billaud and De Lauri 2024). However, anthropological research on the subject has remained circumscribed to the study of transitional justice (Castillejo-Cuellar 2013; Hinton 2010). To address this gap, our panel examines legal claims in the making that address and redefine from a local perspective what can be broadly describe through the four core international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crime of aggression.
Through its ethnographic and comparative approach, the panel asks how justice is understood by the victims of war crimes and the stakeholders involved in seeking and serving justice. What ideas and practices of justice appear in these contexts? What do justice proceedings mean for the citizens who lived through traumatic experiences of war and political violence? How do they work together with the state, international organizations and local advocacy groups to achieve their goals, and what type of obstacles they face? What are the new technologies and forms of expertise deployed to facilitate the collection of evidence when the sites of atrocities are destroyed or not physically available?
These questions push the ethnographer to rethink the concept of justice from a variety of legal, social and religious perspectives, and to reflect on their different scopes and temporalities. Using ethnographic tools in areas where political violence are still unfolding also questions anthropology’s very methodology and invites the papers to explore the role of archives, witnesses and of their absence.