Imagining Gender-Just Futures: Learning from Transitional Justice?

Criminal justice efforts are struggling to tackle the crisis of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in consolidated democracies. I argue that we need new tools to address this violence and look to the field of transitional justice for possible insights. Transitional justice emerged as a response to the practical challenges of seeking accountability for systematic human rights abuses in post-authoritarian states. I outline three overlapping yet discordant imaginaries of justice within the transitional justice field: criminal; restorative; and transformative. Using Foucauldian-inspired critical discourse analysis, I examine how each imaginary is produced by, and produces, specific ideas of violence and justice in transitional settings. In particular, I look at the discourse surrounding conflict-related gender-based violence within transitional justice mechanisms and institutions. Building on feminist scholarship that situates conflict-related and ‘peacetime’ SGBV on a continuum of violence, I go on to ask whether these imaginaries offer any insights into tackling gender violence in a ‘peacetime’ setting.