Transitional Justice in the Asia-Pacific

How to address the human rights violations of previous regimes and past periods of conflict is one of the most pressing questions facing governments and policy makers today. New democracies and states in the fragile post-conflict peace-settlement phase are confronted by the need to make crucial decisions about whether to hold perpetrators of human rights violations accountable for their actions and, if so, how to best achieve that end. This is the first book to examine the ways in which states and societies in the Asia-Pacific region have navigated these difficult waters. Drawing together several of the world's leading experts on transitional justice with Asia-Pacific regional and country specialists it provides an overview of the processes and practices of transitional justice in the region as well as detailed analysis of the cases of Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Aceh, Indonesia, South Korea, the Solomon Islands and East Timor.

Introduction: new horizons: transitional justice in the Asia-Pacific Renee Jeffery and Hun Joon Kim; 1. Transitional justice in the Asia-Pacific: comparative and theoretical perspectives Leigh A. Payne and Kathryn Sikkink; 2. Sri Lanka: atrocities, accountability, and the decline of rule of law Chandra Lekha Sriram; 3. Transitional justice delayed in Aceh, Indonesia Edward Aspinall and Fajran Zain; 4. Transitional justice in Cambodia: the coincidence of power and principle Kirsten Ainley; 5. Beyond 'pragmatism' versus 'principle': ongoing justice debates in East Timor Lia Kent; 6. Reconciliation and the rule of law in the Solomon Islands Renee Jeffery; 7. Transitional justice in South Korea Hun Joon Kim.

Renee Jeffery is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the Australian National University. She is the author of The Persistence of Amnesties in World Politics (2014), Reason and Emotion in International Ethics (2014), Evil and International Relations: Human Suffering in an Age of Terror (2008) and Hugo Grotius in International Thought (2006), and the editor of Confronting Evil in International Relations: Ethical Responses to Problems of Moral Agency (2008).
Hun Joon Kim is a Senior Research Fellow at Griffith University. His PhD dissertation, 'Expansion of Transitional Justice Measures: A Comparative Analysis of its Causes', was selected as the winner of the 2009 American Political Science Association Best Dissertation Award (Human Rights Section). He is the author of The Massacres at Mt Halla: Sixty Years of Truth-Seeking in South Korea (2014).