Reparations for Slavery and Colonialism

Title

Reparations for Slavery and Colonialism

Creator

de Almagro, Maria Martin and Schulz, Philipp

Description

This entry from the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies provides a comprehensive overview of reparations as a legal, moral, and political response to the legacies of transatlantic slavery and European colonialism. It examines historical claims, international law frameworks, state apologies, financial compensation models, and contemporary movements for reparative justice across Africa, the Americas, and Europe. A critical resource for scholars, activists, and policymakers engaged in truth, justice, and restoration efforts.

Abstract

Transitional justice (TJ) refers to a set of measures and processes that deal with the legacies of human rights abuses and violent pasts, and that seek to aid societies transitioning from violence and conflict toward a more just and peaceful future. Much like the study of armed conflict and peacebuilding more broadly, the study and practice of transitional justice was traditionally silent on gender. Historically, gendered conflict-related experiences and harms have not been adequately addressed by most transitional justice mechanisms, and women in particular have been excluded from the design, conceptualization, and implementation of many TJ processes globally. While political violence perpetrated against men remained at the center of TJ concerns, a whole catalogue of gendered human rights abuses perpetrated primarily against women has largely remained at the peripheries of dominant TJ debates and interventions.

Catalyzed by political developments at the United Nations within the realm of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda and by increasing attention to crimes of sexual violence by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), however, the focus in the 2000s has been radically altered to include the treatment of gender in transitional contexts. As such, considerations around gender and sex have increasingly gained traction in TJ scholarship and praxis, to the extent that different justice instruments now seek to engage with gendered harms in diverse ways. Against this background, to the authors review this growing engagement with gender and transitional justice, offering a broad and holistic overview of legal and political developments, emerging trends, and persistent gaps in incorporating gender into the study and practice of TJ. The authors show how gender has been operationalized in relation to different TJ instruments, but the authors also unearth resounding feminist critiques about the ways in which justice is approached, as well as how gender is often conceptualized in limited and exclusionary terms. To this end, the authors emphasize the need for a more sustained and inclusive engagement with gender in TJ settings, drawing on intersectional, queer, and decolonial perspectives to ultimately address the variety of gendered conflict-related experiences in (post)conflict and transitional settings.

Date

2022

Format

pdf

Type

encyclopedia article

Bibliographic Citation

de Almagro, M. M., & Schulz, P. (2022, October 19). Gender and Transitional Justice. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies. Retrieved 21 Sep. 2025, from https://oxfordre.com/internationalstudies/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.001.0001/acrefore-9780190846626-e-669.

Date Issued

2022

Rights Holder

Author(s)

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.669

Subject

Gender

Transitional justice

Truth and reconciliation commissions

Queer perspectives

Structural violence

Criminal courts

Criminal courts

Reparations

Gender justice

Masculinities

Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV)

Transatlantic

International Law

Africa

Reparations Movement

Colonialism

Slavery

Source

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies

Publisher

Oxford University Press