Human Rights Defenders Series: Professor Juan Mendez

By Soumya Venkatesh, November 11, 2009

American University hosted a Human Rights Defenders series talk on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 co-sponsored by Amnesty International and featuring Professor Juan Mendez. Professor Mendez spoke about transitional justice and its role in the international community, focusing on its success and its problems.

Professor Mendez is a visiting professor at the American University Washington College of Law. He is an Argentinean lawyer who has previously served as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide. He was most recently the President of the International Center for Transitional Justice. Professor Mendez said that the three major themes of transitional justice are the dilemmas between peace and justice, post-conflict reconciliation, and the prevention of human rights abuses.

One of the greatest difficulties for transitional justice is the conflict that can arise between peace and justice. Professor Mendez discussed whether states can guarantee peace through amnesties and other offers without preventing justice. For example, if a state offers amnesty to a rebel group in order to entice them to surrender, then the state prevents the proper administration of justice, which is debilitating for victims. On the other hand, a state may find it difficult to secure peace without offering some sort of agreement to rebel groups. Professor Mendez discussed the shift away from guaranteeing amnesties as this peace-justice conflict has become more pronounced. The establishment of the International Criminal Court was the first real step toward preventing impunity, forcing perpetrators of international crimes to be brought to justice.

Another difficulty Professor Mendez noted was in effectuating post-conflict reconciliation. Professor Mendez discussed how essential reconciliation is to prevent conflicts from reoccurring. Unfortunately, the international community and the United Nations are not devoting enough attention to conflicts that are at risk of breaking out again. States feel as if they cannot fund projects in an attempt to create peace if they believe that the resurgence of the conflict is inevitable. Without concerted international effort, post-conflict states may not be able to achieve reconciliation.

Professor Mendez also discussed the role of transitional justice in the prevention of human rights abuses. Effectuation of transitional justice requires a state that has suffered from human rights abuses to act in good faith to prevent them from happening again. These prevention efforts can include cooperative efforts. For instance, in the case of President Al-Bashir’s arrest warrant, states can work together to ensure the protection of peoples, to provide humanitarian assistance, to guarantee an effective peace process and to ensure justice. Professor Mendez referred back to the peace-justice dilemma, adding that the existence of a human rights regime which demands justice can conflict with a state’s need for peace.

In the question and answer session, Professor Mendez discussed the trend toward using traditional justice mechanisms and his distrust of these efforts. States use traditional justice to implement community-based judicial systems used by the local population. He argued that traditional justice may be effective in some contexts, but may not provide the same due process rights as state-sponsored judicial systems. Despite these areas of difficulty, he argued, transitional justice is still often the most effective form of justice in post-conflict states.