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Transitional Justice and the National Reconciliation Process in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Publication at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Faculty of Social Sciences |
2012

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between transitional justice and reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The author aims to answer the question how, to what extent and on the basis of what mechanisms transitional justice contributes to reconciliation.

In the first, descriptive part of the article she introduces the term and the mechanisms of transitional justice, and in the second, analytical part she examines their concrete form in Bosnia and Herzegovina and their contribution to the process of reconciliation, which is understood here as a renewal of relationships between individuals and a recognition of one's own responsibility for past wrongs. The author concludes that transitional justice contributes to the reconciliation process only in a limited way because of its low trustworthiness, its low visibility and the overly small invesments in its measures.

To bring about a societal change transitional justice needs to be implemented better, in a more thorough and sensitive way and especially visibly, above all in terms of restorative justice and truth telling.