Coordinating Transitional Justice

Human rights professionals want civil wars to end just as surely as conflict resolution professionals want to stop human rights violations. Despite their shared concerns, disputes among members of these two professional groups about how to best end armed hostilities while also addressing war crimes and human rights abuses are often intense. In particular, conflict resolution and human rights professionals sometimes disagree about the most effective approaches to transitional justice (i.e., the norms and processes for addressing crimes committed during a period of conflict or political instability). This is particularly true with respect to whether and how grants of amnesty from prosecution should be made (i.e., scope, conditions, and timing) to perpetrators of war crimes and human rights abuses (Langer 2015).

Needless to say, ending a civil war is extraordinarily difficult. Post‐conflict reconstruction efforts often require the active support of people who are potential targets of prosecution. Some human rights advocates favor broad and swift prosecutions in the aftermath of war, while some conflict resolution practitioners believe the possibility of immediate prosecutions makes it even more difficult to end wars, which are one principal context in which abuses and crimes occur. Conflict resolution and human rights professionals nonetheless have every reason to avoid working at cross‐purposes. Civil wars breed human rights violations and human rights violations breed civil wars (Poe and Tate 1994; Sobek, Abouharb, and Ingram 2006; Thoms and Ron 2007; Rost 2011). When human rights and conflict resolution professionals work at cross‐purposes, it can limit their effectiveness at promoting a stable peace.

The war in Colombia provides one recent example of how tensions between human rights and conflict resolution concerns and activities can contribute to suboptimal outcomes of one kind or another. For decades, both liberal and conservative governments in that country, buttressed by international supporters like the United Nations and the United States, viewed the violence of rebel groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the drug trafficking and other illegal activities that supported those groups, principally through a criminal justice lens, rather than also seriously considering the possibility that these groups regarded violence as their only viable alternative to political inclusion achieved through negotiation (Babbitt 2011). The commitment of the government of former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos to a democratically approved amnesty program for FARC members – which represented a significant step beyond an exclusive emphasis on criminal justice/human rights concerns – was one key element of the deal that ended the conflict with that group (British Broadcasting Company 2017).¹

Conversely, Northern Ireland is, in my view, a recent conflict in which over‐reliance on conflict resolution goals has obscured human rights concerns. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended thirty years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland led to enactment of a Human Rights Act that incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into Northern Ireland law. The parties, however, also had planned to adopt a Northern Ireland bill of rights and an all‐Ireland charter of human rights that together would have addressed the regional human rights concerns that were not adequately addressed by the ECHR. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission has worked to facilitate creation of both documents, but the process remains stalled, and some, like human rights law scholar Colin Harvey, fear the impending Brexit that will end the United Kingdom’s membership in the European Union may further retard human rights progress in Northern Ireland (C. Harvey 2017).

The human rights and conflict resolution communities include national governments, international institutions, domestic and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and universities. These organizations have diverse missions, resources, and constraints, and the professionals affiliated with them have varied educational, professional, and personal backgrounds. This diversity can complicate efforts to define how these organizations and individuals typically view transitional justice – either in general or with respect to relative priorities at any given phase of a particular conflict.

Some members of the human rights and conflict resolution communities may indeed take “maximalist” positions. I do not believe, however, that a majority of the most influential human rights authorities (e.g., judges and scholars) consider all amnesty programs that pertain to serious international crimes and gross human rights violations to be illegitimate. Nor do I believe most conflict resolution professionals consider broad amnesty programs that pardon all serious crimes to be a requirement of peace. The Belfast Guidelines, which are discussed below, make it evident that, with a few clear exceptions, no strong judicial or scholarly consensus has yet emerged regarding which crimes must be excluded from an amnesty program that has been established in a democratically legitimate manner and that satisfies other conditions, such as requiring a full confession and making reparations.² The United Nations, as well as some of the highest profile human rights organizations, however, have at times advocated for a more stringent approach.³

In general, however, even organizations that sometimes argue for the primacy of prosecutions over other transitional justice mechanisms and strongly discourage amnesty programs also recognize that prosecutions should not be the only available mechanism – not only because of the practical limitations of prosecuting hundreds or thousands of crimes committed over many years, but because other approaches better serve some legitimate objectives. For example, Reconciliation after Violent Conflict: a Handbook (2003: 103), a publication of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), which is among the sources featured on the “Peacebuilding Resources” page of the U.N. Peacebuilding Support Office’s website, stated that

The IDEA handbook (2003: 107) also plainly acknowledged that

Retributive and restorative approaches obviously are not mutually exclusive. But the IDEA handbook (2003: 103) noted that “[e]ven where the establishment and operation of prosecutions is appropriate to the context, a number of reasons may still be found not to prioritize retributive justice in a reconciliation policy.” These include various potential shortcomings of retributive approaches, such as political, institutional, and resource impediments to fair trails; a primary focus on perpetrators and the potential for re‐victimization; and the inadequacy of judicial systems to respond to large‐scale atrocities as well as to identify and address the underlying drivers of such crimes. Other reasons include such potential benefits of restorative approaches as enhancing public accessibility and participation, emphasizing “reconciliation, compensation … and rehabilitation,” educating the public about human rights norms and the transformation of conflict, and limiting strain on the penal system (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance 2003: 112).

At the same time, the IDEA handbook also identified the potential limitations of restorative approaches, which, in response to the most serious and/or broad‐scale forms of social and political violence, have thus far been used rarely. The book also strongly cautioned against resort to blanket or overly broad amnesties, noting that norms about the permissible scope of, and processes for establishing and implementing, conditional amnesty programs are still emerging (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance 2003). The handbook (2003: 114) emphasized the highly contextual nature of decision making about transitional justice and reconciliation policies and efforts to achieve a balance between retributive and restorative approaches:

The International Center for Transitional Justice, an organization that has tended to emphasize prosecutions, recently published an edited volume that also encourages development of context‐specific transitional policies and programs, including programs that blend and balance retributive and restorative approaches (Duthie and Seils 2017).

Current international law appears to have achieved a rough balance between the primary priorities of human rights practitioners and those of conflict resolution practitioners. A growing consensus seems to be emerging as to what legal norms should govern amnesties, which is the substantive issue over which human rights and conflict resolution practitioners have differed the most. Against this emerging legal backdrop, which I describe in this article, human rights advocates, diplomats, and conflict resolution practitioners should, I argue, work together to develop procedures for coordinating their activities related to, or having implications for, the development of transitional justice programs. These procedures should span the entire conflict, from escalation through conflict resolution efforts and post‐conflict reconstruction activities.

In this article, I describe a tentative, preliminary, and general framework to stimulate thinking and discussion on this topic among human rights and conflict resolution professionals. Any standards ultimately embraced by both communities must effectively balance their overlapping, but often differently prioritized, concerns, which my tentative framework seeks to do.

Although scholars will continue to examine the role of human rights violations within lethal conflicts, it is obvious that systemic human rights violations catalyze wars and that rights abuses and crimes tend to multiply during wars. Promoting human rights is an important strategy for preventing war, and, conversely, ending war is an important strategy for promoting human rights. As human rights scholar‐practitioner Julie Mertus and conflict resolution scholar‐practitioner Jeffrey Helsing stated succinctly, “Where there is peace, human rights are more likely to be enforced. Where human rights are upheld, peace is more likely to be achieved” (Mertus and Helsing 2006: 513–514). Both human rights and conflict resolution professionals have important expertise and perspectives to contribute to efforts to promote transitional justice in societies recovering from lethal conflict. They should coordinate their work with each other and with national stakeholders to achieve their shared goals of ending violence and promoting sustainable peace with justice.

Simplistic, polarized debates about whether justice should be “sold” in the name of peace seem to have subsided, at least for the time being. Many conflict resolution scholars and practitioners today see their goal as sustainable peace or “justpeace” (Lederach 1999), which requires real political and social change to address the drivers of the particular conflict, as well as to respond effectively to war crimes and human rights abuses committed during it (Lambourne 2009). Conversely, many human rights scholars and practitioners are now open to holistic approaches in times of transition that incorporate elements of both retributive justice (e.g., prosecutions) and restorative justice, and which offer the possibility of conditional amnesties for some crimes (Nesiah 2006). This kind of openness, many peacebuilders believe, helps bring combatants to the negotiating table and keep them there before and after a peace accord is signed.

Many leading human rights scholars and practitioners openly acknowledge that limited, conditional amnesty programs are “necessary evils,” to borrow Mark Freeman’s (2009) term. A significant development on this front was the publication, in 2013, of the Belfast Guidelines on Amnesty and Accountability.⁴ The Belfast Guidelines are the product of a multi‐year research, analysis, and dialogue effort undertaken by leading human rights and conflict resolution scholars and practitioners from around the world, who surveyed the widest imaginable array of judicial decisions, state practices, scholarly opinions, United Nations policy positions, and other sources of legal and non‐legal authority. The Belfast Guidelines represent these experts’ considered consensus about the currently permissible scope of amnesty programs, as well as their conditions, methods of adoption, implementation, review processes, and relationship to other accountability mechanisms, such as truth commissions.

The guidelines recognize that the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) adopted on July 1, 2002 and other recent sources of international law “have provided greater clarity on the nature of [crimes against humanity and war crimes, terms that have lacked precise legal definitions] and contributed to a body of opinion to support the existence of a customary prohibition on amnesty for international crimes.” They also acknowledge, however, that “other sources of opinio juris from domestic and hybrid courts together with state practice on amnesties do not reflect an established, explicit and categorical customary prohibition of amnesties for international crimes” (Belfast Guidelines2013: 12). In addition, the Belfast Guidelines (2013: 12) acknowledge that “[w]ithin international human rights law, there are differences in the approach of the regional human rights courts on whether there is an obligation to prosecute gross violations of human rights or whether it is sufficient that states investigate such violations and provide remedies for those affected.” As a result, amnesties may be subject to different standards in different places.

Because of the range of authority and opinion regarding amnesties, the Belfast Guidelines largely avoid prescribing a single approach, although they frequently indicate that one approach may be viewed as more legitimate and legally defensible than others. The guidelines (2013: 20) nonetheless are prescriptive with regard to issues that are widely acknowledged to be settled, such as the illegality of “self‐amnesties” that are “adopted unilaterally by regimes that are responsible for international crimes or gross violations of human rights.” For example, the guidelines suggest that amnesty programs may be more legitimate if they are adopted after public consultation processes that ideally would include the participation of victims and representatives of other marginalized groups, or even after confirmation by national referendum. They also suggest (2013: 17–18) making amnesty conditional upon such actions as “fully disclosing personal involvement in offences, with penalties for false testimony; … providing information on third party involvement with respect to offenses; … testifying at the trial of those not granted or eligible for amnesty; … [and] surrendering assets illegitimately acquired.” The guidelines (2013: 17) further suggest that “contributing materially and/or symbolically to reparations” may “increase an amnesty’s legitimacy and legality and further compliance with a state’s international obligations to investigate and provide remedies.”

With respect to which offenses are eligible for amnesty, the Belfast Guidelines (2013: 12) encourage a state to make these “clearly specified and limited in scope to minimize the potential for conflict with any applicable obligation to prosecute under international criminal law or international human rights law,” which the guidelines acknowledge can be difficult to do while also fulfilling the amnesty’s objectives (Belfast Guidelines 2013: 12). These objectives may include: encouraging combatants to stop fighting and surrender, motivating witnesses and accomplices to cooperate in prosecutions of the most culpable individuals, channeling energy into restorative justice processes, and promoting national reconciliation.

Notably, the Belfast Guidelines (2013: 13) refrain from proscribing acts that are ineligible for amnesty. Rather, they state that, “[s]ubject to a state’s multiple obligations,” making the following acts ineligible for amnesty may increase the legitimacy and legality of an amnesty program: “serious international crimes, …other serious acts of violence against persons that may not rise to the level of an international crime, [and] acts or offenses motivated by personal gain or malice.” The guidelines acknowledge that genocide, torture, enforced disappearances, and other grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions generally are prohibited by treaties, implying that these offenses are so serious that they should be excluded from an amnesty program. The guidelines (2013: 13), however, do not identify which offenses qualify as “‘serious international crimes,’ … serious acts of violence against persons, … [or] acts motivated by personal gain or malice,” leaving that task instead to national stakeholders.⁵

The Belfast Guidelines recognize that, when specified crimes are ineligible for amnesty, when the suspected perpetrator does not seek or obtain amnesty for an eligible offense, or when a suspect fails to comply with the amnesty conditions, states, just like international and hybrid courts, may legitimately employ selective prosecution strategies. They also recognize that states’ may lack sufficient prosecutorial and judicial resources to fully prosecute multiple offenders whose degree of criminal culpability may vary widely.

Whatever the ultimate scope of an amnesty program and of prosecutions, the guidelines (2013: 10) note that amnesties “can be designed to complement or operate sequentially with judicial and non‐judicial accountability processes in a way that furthers a state’s multiple obligations and objectives,” including by providing “some form of truth and accountability for cases which are not selected for prosecution” and contributing to “a broader range of conflict transformation goals than an exclusive focus on prosecutions.” In addition, the guidelines acknowledge – and do not discourage the exercise of – the right of foreign, international, and hybrid courts to prosecute perpetrators of international crimes committed within or outside their home state in some cases, whether under the principle of universal jurisdiction or under another source of authority.

International law regarding a state’s duty to prosecute human rights violations and war crimes in the transitional justice context may remain somewhat in flux. But the Belfast Guidelines indicate that it is becoming more stable. They suggest that a significant consensus has emerged that blanket amnesties granted with the stroke of a pen are illegal, but they also nonetheless show a reluctance to declare that states are forbidden from making amnesty conditionally available to former combatants, even for some serious crimes.

The Belfast Guidelines are evidently influencing current human rights discourse. For example, the newly published volume The United Nations Principles to Combat Impunity: A Commentary cites the Belfast Guidelines to support the observation that, while “the 2005 Impunity Principles may have adopted a restrictive approach to amnesties, … in the continually evolving debate, voices advocating for a more flexible approach to amnesties are increasing” (Unger and Haldemann 2018: 260). Nongovernmental organizations such as Dawlaty, an organization promoting peaceful civil society in Syria (El‐Talab and Saleh 2011), and Swisspeace, a peace research institute in Switzerland, have also referenced the guidelines in their reports (Pring 2017).

Evidence suggests that the Belfast Guidelines are influencing human rights practice, as well. For example, the director of the Transitional Justice Unit of the Colombian Ministry of Justice, Catalina Diaz (2016), has said publicly that they were useful to her team during her country’s peace negotiations. In addition, the draft of the African Union’s Transitional Justice Framework (2014) cited them, as did the 2015 report of the Sri Lankan Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Complaints of Abductions and Disappearances (Paranangama Commission 2015).

The relationship between human rights and conflict resolution professionals with regard to transitional justice concerns is complicated by the manner in which international law evolves. Coordination nonetheless is both possible and desirable, as I argue below.

International law on transitional justice (and most other matters) is derived from multiple sources, one of which is custom. State practice is an important determinant of customary international law (i.e., law that develops, in part, as a result of widespread and consistent decisions and actions taken by states). This means that, as states transition from war or periods of unrest and assess their own obligations under international law, they will look to the approach to transitional justice adopted previously by other states in similar circumstance as an important source of guidance. These moments represent incremental opportunities either to curtail the use of amnesties or to afford states more flexibility in crafting amnesties.

Julie Mertus and Jeffrey Helsing (2006: 517) have argued that practitioners are not faced with an either‐or choice between human rights and peace at these moments, but should be thoughtful and coordinated about how both are pursued simultaneously:

Conflict resolution scholar‐practitioner Lisa Schirch (2006: 87–88) has advocated for the creation of “institutionalized coordination networks among human rights and conflict resolution professionals for joint funding, planning, and implementation of a variety of approaches to peacebuilding, including conflict transformation and human rights.” Their work together, Schirch wrote (2006: 90), might sometimes involve coordination of “their actions in a sort of ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine to maximize the chances for creating sustainable solutions in which groups feel compelled to negotiate rather than fight.”

Many possible building blocks for transitional justice programs already exist, but adaptation and innovation from context to context is often warranted because transitional justice programs must be context‐sensitive. Approaches that have been previously developed and tested in multiple contexts include the following:

• truth commissions;

• restitution programs (individual and group, material and symbolic);

• programs that offer psychosocial support for addressing individual and collective trauma (Somasundaram 2014);

• vetting programs, which remove perpetrators from public office; and

• prosecutions.

How should human rights and conflict resolution practitioners work together to develop mechanisms for satisfying victims’ rights to truth, justice, and reparations, and for simultaneously securing the peace, once armed hostilities have ended? They should engage in dialogue and cooperation as a conflict escalates, during conflict resolution efforts, and while post‐conflict reconstruction work is ongoing.⁶ In this article, I seek to offer concise, tentative prescriptions for how conflict resolution and human rights professionals can coordinate the development and implementation of transitional justice programs. In the subsections that follow, I discuss some of the transitional justice–related challenges and opportunities that arise during each of the three conflict phases, and I conclude each subsection with proposed prescriptions for coordination in each phase.

Whether or not human rights abuses contributed to the commencement of communal conflict, violations of human rights and war crimes typically multiply once the conflict begins to escalate and armed violence becomes a constant. For example, in Nepal, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNOHCHR) has estimated that up to nine thousand “serious violations of [international human rights law] or [international humanitarian law] may have been committed during the decade‐long conflict” there, including killings, torture, and enforced disappearances (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights 2012: 24). Before this conflict, recorded instances of killings, physical brutality, and disappearances were fewer compared to those that occurred during the conflict, although human trafficking was a large and persistent problem and arbitrary (typically relatively short‐term) police detentions were increasing (Human Rights Watch 1995).

Human rights practitioners must, of course, investigate, document, publicize, protest, and take visible, direct action against abuses and crimes as conflict escalates. As Schirch has noted (2006: 75), human rights professionals “have pioneered creative ways of coercing human rights offenders to change their behavior or to come to the negotiation table,” including through “the mobilization of shame,” a phrase coined by Amnesty International. These efforts may not always prevent or reduce conflict escalation, but they may increase the pressure upon combatants to resolve the conflict, in part by making it increasingly uncomfortable for other nations and international governmental and nongovernmental organizations to be complacent about the situation. Schirch has also noted, however, that human rights professionals may best achieve some of their goals by utilizing the sort of consensus‐building approaches used by conflict resolution professionals, which may enable them “to build effective relationships and communicate their causes in diplomatic ways” (Schirch 2006: 76).

In addition to using nonviolent coercive tactics to deter crimes and abuses, human rights professionals should call for a consensual resolution of the conflict and work with conflict resolution practitioners toward that end. Indeed, in the early stages of a conflict, human rights practice sometimes includes conflict resolution elements that lay the foundation for subsequent peacemaking efforts and vice versa. As legal scholar Christine Bell explained in a 2006 report she wrote for the International Council on Human Rights Policy (International Council on Human Rights Policy 2006: 23–24), this is precisely what happened in El Salvador in the 1990s:

Of course human rights and conflict resolution professionals should remain mindful and appreciative of each other’s roles and objectives, always endeavoring to see the situation from the other group’s perspective. In this spirit, I offer two general, baseline principles for how conflict resolution and human rights professionals can coordinate their activities as conflict escalates:

• Conflict resolution professionals should not impede human rights professionals’ efforts to investigate, document, publicize, protest, and take visible, direct action against human rights abuses and war crimes as conflict commences.

• Human rights professionals should encourage and support conflict resolution professionals’ efforts to initiate and sustain conflict resolution processes designed to reduce human rights abuses and war crimes, and to de‐escalate and transform the conflict as soon as possible after the inception of hostilities.

Conflict resolution efforts may proceed on several tracks: track one negotiations are official, and government‐sanctioned; track two dialogues are unofficial, informal, and typically involve third‐party facilitators and participants who can influence current office holders, but who do not hold office presently; and track three activities are unofficial, people‐to‐people interactions that typically occur at the grassroots level. Track two and track three efforts may precede official negotiations, but they also frequently continue in parallel with them. Despite their shared and complementary objectives, human rights and conflict resolution professionals risk working at cross‐purposes as any of these conflict resolution activities commence if they conduct their activities in ways that can undermine the other group’s work, rather than reciprocally supporting each other’s efforts.

Conflict resolution and international relations scholar I. William Zartman (2005) has identified a tension between “forward‐looking” and “backward‐looking” peace negotiations. In forward‐looking negotiations, parties focus on ending violence, repairing relationships, and creating structures to eliminate the sources of conflict (including human rights abuses) and on helping ensure management of future conflict through political channels. In backward‐looking negotiations, parties focus upon “past grievances, their past legalities, and their demands for reparations and punishment” (Zartman 2005: 291).

With fellow conflict resolution scholar Victor Kremenyuk (2005), Zartman undertook a study of twelve carefully selected historical and contemporary efforts to end international and internal wars in order to assess the extent to which those efforts were forward‐looking versus backward‐looking and what were the implications of having either of these orientations. These case studies led the researchers to conclude (Zartman 2005: 290–291):

In other words, the backward‐looking negotiations examined in this study uniformly failed to end the violence or even to secure redress for the abuses on which the parties were so intensely focused.

Although forward‐looking negotiations did not automatically succeed in ending violence, armed hostilities were ended in the majority of studied cases in which the parties negotiated with a forward‐looking orientation (Zartman 2005). In approximately half of the cases with negotiated resolutions, backward‐looking justice concerns were disregarded. I would argue that, in these cases, an impoverished notion of “peace” was served at the expense of justice.

In the other half of these cases, however, resolutions took a forward‐looking approach to addressing past grievances, including human rights violations and war crimes, which “was the doorway to acceptance” of agreement to end the war (Zartman 2005: 292). As Zartman explained, “in notable cases where a forward‐looking outcome was finally achieved, the forward‐looking establishment of a new relationship rested on the settlement of some very basic backward‐looking elements of both peace and justice” (Zartman 2005: 293). These results strongly suggest that it is possible both to end the violence and to address past harms and injustices, but such efforts are more likely to succeed when they include restorative approaches to justice.

Zartman ultimately identified two critical features of processes that both end violence and promote justice. First, parties decided at the outset “to shed a zero‐sum mentality and to look ahead rather than backward,” realizing that “peace could not be achieved through the exclusive pursuit of past grievances and that such pursuit was counterproductive, bringing neither retributive justice nor peace” (2005: 295). Second (2005: 297), the fighting had to end before formal justice‐seeking activities could commence:

With this last point, Zartman highlights a challenge that human rights and conflict resolution professionals confront: peace accords often commit the parties to develop transitional justice programs, but finalizing and implementing them can be lengthy processes. Some peace processes, such as the one resulting in the 2000 Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi, are notable for their attention to human rights concerns (International Council on Human Rights Policy 2006), but this does not guarantee positive, post‐conflict human rights performance. Burundi’s peace accord prohibits amnesty for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, contains detailed provisions related to establishment of a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and articulates a long list of human rights to be protected in the post‐conflict environment. Despite these measures, however, prosecutions of serious crimes have not occurred, the truth commission has not been formed, and respect for human rights has been minimal, at best, during the eighteen years since the peace accord was signed (Peace Accords Matrix 2018). Momentum can be difficult to maintain once the violence is over, so human rights and conflict resolution professionals must work together to maintain it (which I discuss in greater detail in the next section).

Generally, conflict resolution practitioners should consult regularly with human rights professionals (e.g., UNOHCHR), to assure that human rights principles are integrated effectively into negotiation and dialogue processes. Conflict resolution practitioners should emphasize respect for human rights as one important feature of the sort of sustainable peace that stakeholders should be striving to achieve through their process. If and when combatants are willing to define the broad contours of future transitional justice programs as they negotiate a ceasefire agreement or peace accord, human rights professionals with expertise in the full range of transitional justice and restorative justice mechanisms should be key partners in that effort.⁷ Their help also should be enlisted when pressure must be applied (e.g., through public statements) to help convince combatants not to include legally suspect amnesty provisions in peace accords or other key documents.

Conflict resolution and human rights practitioners confront specific risks as they work to coordinate peace with justice. Perhaps most notably, how agreements treat the potential prosecution of perpetrators can be critical. Of particular concern are agreements that purport to foreclose prosecutions or other retribution‐oriented modes of justice altogether, creating the risk of impunity even for the most serious crimes. Human Rights Watch has shown how explicit and implicit self‐amnesties may have significantly contributed to renewed violence and crime after peace agreements were signed in Sierra Leone, Angola, and Sudan (Human Rights Watch 2009). Conflict resolution professionals should refuse to condone or enable such agreements.

Another concern is that human rights advocacy during a conflict could undermine conflict resolution efforts. For example, efforts to publicize human rights abuses and promote retributive forms of justice can wittingly or unwittingly inflame tensions among conflict parties. Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj, senior coordinator of the Syria Initiative, a peacebuilding effort aimed at helping end the war in Syria, has described how well‐intentioned programs that engaged everyday Syrians in the documentation and reporting of human rights abuses and trained them about (mainly more retributive) approaches to transitional justice, have made conflict resolution much more difficult by “consolidat[ing] hate discourses” and creating an “expectation for vengeance” (Hallaj 2015: 20; see also Lutz 2006). To avoid or diminish such risks, some conflict resolution and human rights professionals argue that, while quiet efforts to investigate and document human rights abuses must continue, the timing of publication of human rights reports, as well as the content and the timing of human rights–oriented training programs, should be coordinated carefully to support, rather than disrupt, conflict resolution efforts (Schirch 2006).

In summation, I propose that conflict resolution and human rights professionals observe these three overall principles for coordinating their activities as conflict resolution efforts commence and continue:

• As stakeholders negotiate to end violence, conflict resolution professionals should not condone or enable agreements that foreclose altogether the possibility of prosecutions or other retribution‐oriented modes of seeking redress for serious international crimes.

• Conflict resolution professionals should emphasize respect for human rights as an integral element of sustainable peace agreements and should encourage stakeholders to incorporate human rights principles into those agreements.

• As human rights professionals investigate, document, and report human rights abuses and war crimes and engage in training and other activities, they should strive not to undermine or disrupt conflict resolution efforts and should coordinate their activities with the efforts of conflict resolution professionals in mutually supportive ways.

Transitional justice issues are rarely completely resolved by a peace agreement. Rather, they are often addressed incrementally in transitional contexts, sometimes for decades after armed hostilities have ended. In Northern Ireland, for example, the 2015 “Fresh Start” (a plan for implementing the 2014 Stormont Agreement) conceived new transitional justice mechanisms seventeen years after the Good Friday Agreement was reached (Northern Ireland Executive, Northern Ireland Office of the United Kingdom, and Republic of Ireland Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 2015). Long after the primary period of violent conflict and political oppression has ended in South Africa, activists there continue to advocate for additional transitional justice measures to investigate and address pre‐ and post‐apartheid era issues ranging from state capture to political corruption to economic injustice (K. Harvey 2018).

Generally, in this phase, conflict resolution professionals must remain engaged and committed to supporting the development of transitional justice initiatives that, from the perspective of human rights professionals, have integrity. Conflict resolution professionals should not only resist agreements that entirely foreclose retribution‐oriented modes of seeking justice for the most serious offenses while stakeholders actively negotiate to end violence; they should also continue to do so to the extent they remain involved in peacebuilding efforts after a peace accord is reached. For example, conflict resolution professionals sometimes may be well positioned to facilitate resolution of contentious, open issues related to transitional justice programs and policies, with some human rights experts supporting the discussions as subject matter specialists, even as other human rights professionals continue to operate independently as advocates, monitors, fact finders, and potential funders of credible transitional justice programs.

Particularly early on in the post‐conflict reconstruction phase, conflict resolution professionals can work to promote the involvement of internal and external human rights experts in continued human rights monitoring, human rights–related institution and capacity building, and the development and implementation of transitional justice frameworks and programs that are consistent with applicable legal and non‐legal norms (including, as may be desired and appropriate, a conditional amnesty program and/or mechanisms that align more with restorative, rather than retributive, notions of justice). They also may be able to help align transitional justice and reconciliation efforts with other post‐conflict peacebuilding efforts, such as development of demilitarization, demobilization, and reintegration programs (Patel, de Greiff, and Waldorf 2010). For example, they could help conflict stakeholders develop mechanisms for linking guarantees of employment for former insurgents to restitution programs for victims of insurgent violence.

The integrated missions of the United Nations provide some examples of effective collaboration among human rights and conflict resolution professionals during post‐conflict reconstruction, in which human rights and political units work together closely to implement peace agreements. For example, the Human Rights, Transitional Justice and Rule of Law Division within the United Nations Support Mission in Libya undertakes a range of activities at the intersection of human rights and conflict resolution, working in close consultation with UNOHCHR (see www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/MENARegion/Pages/LYProgramme.aspx.) Important elements of this integration are the “mainstreaming” of human rights into all U.N. programs, on the one hand, and “conflict sensitive” program planning, on the other hand. These broad efforts seek to link human rights and conflict resolution concerns closely together within the U.N. system generally, and particularly with respect to conflict analysis (United Nations 2016) and peacebuilding practice (United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office 2010).

Finally, I propose that conflict resolution and human rights professionals observe the following two principles for coordination of their activities during post‐conflict reconstruction:

• Conflict resolution and human rights professionals, working separately and together, should promote and help design and implement transitional justice programs after a peace accord has been reached (e.g., by helping catalyze and support processes to resolve contentious, open issues that could impede transitional justice efforts).

• Conflict resolution and human rights professionals should seek opportunities to serve transitional justice and reconciliation objectives through other post‐conflict reconstruction programs (e.g., demilitarization, demobilization, and reintegration initiatives) and to help develop and implement mechanisms and programs intended to prevent a return to violence.

Conflict resolution and human rights professionals share an overarching common goal – even if they sometimes pursue different strategies and employ different methods to achieve it: both groups seek to avoid or end the wars that breed human rights violations and the human rights violations that breed wars. Each phase of a conflict – and the efforts to resolve it within that phase – present challenges and opportunities for the conflict resolution and human rights communities as they seek to work together to coordinate the development and implementation of transitional justice programs.

As I have attempted to show, it often is possible – and, I believe, it is essential – for conflict resolution professionals to serve human rights objectives as they work, and for human rights professionals to serve conflict resolution objectives. For example, just as conflict resolution professionals should not enable agreements that purport to foreclose the possibility of prosecutions for serious crimes altogether, human rights professionals should strive not to undermine or disrupt conflict resolution efforts as they investigate, document, and report crimes and abuses.

In this article, I have offered seven general, baseline principles for coordination among conflict resolution and human rights professionals on transitional justice efforts. Consensus about which substantive principles should guide the effort to achieve transitional justice has begun to emerge (e.g., the Belfast Guidelines on Amnesty and Accountability). But successful development and implementation of transitional justice mechanisms requires that the conflict resolution and human rights communities work together in a coordinated fashion and avoid working at cross‐purposes as they pursue their shared objective of achieving just, sustainable peace. My process‐oriented guidelines are designed to facilitate this coordination. The principles I have proposed are preliminary – they no doubt can be substantially improved and expanded. I hope they will stimulate further analysis and discussion, leading eventually to a useful set of consensus guidelines on the coordination of transitional justice activities.