BY JO-MARIE BURT In spring 2008, the Transitional/Transnational Justice Working Group, a group of Mason faculty and graduate students interested in issues of global justice and human rights, launched the Human Rights, Global Justice and Democracy Project. The project’s central concern is to examine how societies that experienced mass atrocity cope with the legacies of [...]
DAVID BACKER INTRODUCTION The last 65 years have exhibited competing currents and ongoing debate with regards to accountability for human rights violations.1 After World War II, the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes tribunals convened by the Allied powers, as well as parallel legal processes in a number of countries, established key precedents for the prosecution [...]
BY RONALD GAMARRA HERRERA On April 7, 2009, the Peruvian Supreme Court’s Special Criminal Court handed down a unanimous sentence against former President Alberto Fujimori in the four cases of human rights violations for which he was on trial: collective assassinations in Barrios Altos and La Cantuta, and the abductions of journalist Gustavo Gorriti and [...]
BY DEBRA SHUTIKA On the whole, Northern Virginia is not often associated with the U.S.-Mexico border. In the summer of 2005, however, it seemed as if the border had moved into the region’s backyard. In Herndon,Virginia, a group of male Latino day laborers had been gathering at a local 7-Eleven each morning looking for work. [...]
BY TERRENCE LYONS Globalization has shaped how processes of migration, exile, and the formation of diaspora and other transnational networks operate. Globalization has decreased communication and travel costs, thereby making it easier for migrants to form diaspora networks that link geographically distant populations to social, political, and economic dynamics in the homeland. Those forced across [...]
BY JULIE MOSTOV In the midst of domestic arguments for fortifying the United States’ borders, I argue for soft borders and thin social bonds. I have been thinking about borders with respect to Southeastern Europe, but my arguments are meaningful in a larger context. While boundaries are regularly and easily traversed by capital, electronic information, [...]
BY JO-MARIE BURT One of the most contentious issues facing transitional democracies is the problem of gross human rights violations committed during the previous regime. How should fragile democracies address the question of accountability, given the known deficiencies of their judicial systems; the ongoing power of the torturers themselves and/or those who benefited from their [...]