Amnesty in the Age of Human Rights Accountability

by Lessa, Francesca; Payne, Leigh A.

• ISBN13: 9781107025004
• ISBN10: 1107025001
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-05-28
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

This edited volume brings together well-established and emerging scholars of transitional justice to discuss the persistence of amnesty in the age of human rights accountability. The volume attempts to reframe debates, moving beyond the limited approaches of "truth versus justice" or "stability versus accountability" in which many of these issues have been cast in the existing scholarship. The theoretical and empirical contributions in this edited book offer new ways of understanding and tackling the enduring persistence of amnesty in the age of accountability. Authors use social movement, ideational, legal, path dependent, qualitative case study, statistical, and cross-national approaches in their chapters. In addition to cross-national studies, the volume encompasses eleven country cases of amnesty for past human rights violations, some well-known and others with little scholarly or advocacy exposure: Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Rwanda, South Africa, Spain, Uganda, and Uruguay. The volume goes beyond merely describing these case studies, but also considers what we learn from them in terms of overcoming impunity and promoting accountability to contribute to improvements in human rights and democracy.

Table of Contents

Theoretical Framework

The age of accountability: the rise of individual criminal accountability

The amnesty controversy in international law

Comparative Case Studies

Amnesties' challenge to the global accountability norm? Interpreting regional and international trends in amnesty enactment

From amnesty to accountability: the ebbs and flows in the search for justice in Argentina

Barriers to justice: the Lley de Caducidad and impunity in Uruguay

Resistance to change: Brazil's persistent amnesty and its alternatives for truth and justice

De facto and de jure amnesty laws: the Central American case

Creeks of justice: debating post-atrocity accountability in Rwanda and Uganda

Accountability through conditional amnesty: the case of South Africa

De facto amnesty? The example of post-Soeharto Indonesia

A limited amnesty? Insights from Cambodia

The Spanish amnesty law of 1977 in comparative perspective: from a law for democracy to a law for impunity

Amnesty in the age of accountability

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