What is Meant by ‘Repair’ when Claiming Reparations for Colonial Wrongs? Transformative Justice for the Dutch Slavery Past

While Transitional Justice instruments have been implemented in plenty of post-conflict cases, what little knowledge we have about the effects of these measures shows contradictory findings, indicating that they are often ambiguous and disappointing. Consequently the last decade has seen a specific call for a ‘new agenda for practice’ proposing a transition from Transitional Justice to Transformative Justice. It is a request by scholars such as Paul Gready and Simon Robins (2014) to develop from the bottom-up a concept of justice that is more ‘transformative,’ specifically challenging ‘unequal... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Immler, Nicole L.
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
Verlag/Hrsg.: CIRESC
Schlagwörter: esclavage / réparations / histoire postcoloniale / justice transitionnelle / transformation / justice / participation / esclavitud / reparaciones / historia postcolonial / justicia transicional / transformación / justicia / participación / escravidão / reparações / história pós-colonial / justiça transicional / transformação / justiça / participação / Slavery / Reparations / Repair / Postcolonial History / Transitional Justice / Caribbean-CARICOM
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27419158
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://journals.openedition.org/slaveries/5089

While Transitional Justice instruments have been implemented in plenty of post-conflict cases, what little knowledge we have about the effects of these measures shows contradictory findings, indicating that they are often ambiguous and disappointing. Consequently the last decade has seen a specific call for a ‘new agenda for practice’ proposing a transition from Transitional Justice to Transformative Justice. It is a request by scholars such as Paul Gready and Simon Robins (2014) to develop from the bottom-up a concept of justice that is more ‘transformative,’ specifically challenging ‘unequal and intersecting power relationships and structures of exclusion at both the local and the global level’. This article contributes to this consideration by exploring the Dutch debate on its slavery past with the following question: how could reparations—fundamental in the debate around the acknowledgment of the slavery past—facilitate transformative justice? In the Netherlands over the last decade, memory and reparation activists seeking recognition for slavery and the transatlantic slave trade have been influenced by two major events; the 10-point reparation claim put forward by the Caribbean CARICOM countries against the formerly colonizing powers in Europe (2013), and the UN-International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). This article describes the reparation claims articulated by various groups in and outside the Netherlands addressing the slavery past of the Dutch and some of the institutional responses. Reparations have gained little conceptual attention in transitional justice scholarship, and in investigating the concept of reparation we refer to Lisa Laplante’s (2013) dictum, which is that ‘Reparations can and should be viewed through a lens of justice’. Laplante made an important intervention in the field by asking which reparations contribute to what kind of justice. Reading the Dutch question through the lens of Laplante’s continuum justice model (2013) makes it possible to identify different ...