Wendy Lambourne

Bio: Wendy Lambourne is an academic researcher from University of Sydney. The author has contributed to research in topics: Transitional justice & Peacebuilding. The author has an hindex of 10, co-authored 19 publications receiving 503 citations. Previous affiliations of Wendy Lambourne include University of South Florida.

Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding after Mass Violence

Abstract: 1 Since the end of the Cold War, the international community has become increasingly involved in peacebuilding and transitional justice after mass violence. This article uses lessons from practical experience and theories of peacebuilding and transitional justice to develop a model of transformative justice that supports sustainable peacebuilding. This model is holistic and transdisciplinary and proposes a focus on civil society participation in the design and implementation of transitional justice mechanisms. It requires us to rethink our focus on ‘transition’ as an interim process that links the past and the future, and to shift it to ‘transformation,’ which implies long-term, sustainable processes embedded in society and adoption of psychosocial, political and economic, as well as legal, perspectives on justice. It also involves identifying, understanding and including, where appropriate, the various cultural approaches to justice that coexist with the dominant western worldview and practice. A syncretic approach to reconciling restorative and retributive justice is proposed as a contribution to developing transformative justice and sustainable peacebuilding. The development of this transformative justice model is informed by field research conducted in Cambodia, Rwanda, East Timor and Sierra Leone on the views and experiences of conflict participants in relation to transitional justice and peacebuilding.

Engendering Transitional Justice: a Transformative Approach to Building Peace and Attaining Human Rights for Women

Abstract: In this article, we examine the continuity of harms and traumas experienced by women before, during and after war and other mass violence. We focus on women because of the particular challenges they face in accessing justice due to patriarchal structures and ongoing discrimination in the political, economic and social, as well as legal spheres, and because of the gendered nature of the crimes and harms they experience. We use the four key pillars of transitional justice identified by the United Nations as a framework to analyse how these harms are addressed in the context of criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations and institutional reform. We conclude that a gender-transformative approach to transitional justice that focuses on transforming psychosocial, socioeconomic and political power relations in society is needed in order to attain human rights for women and build a sustainable peace.

Transformative justice, reconciliation and peacebuilding

Abstract: What is the purpose of transitional justice? The answer to this question has too often been assumed rather than explicitly articulated in the theory and practice of transitional justice. From the perspective of those recovering from mass violence and gross human rights violations, justice may be sought as redress for crimes, but it may also be sought as a way of coming to terms with the past and building a peaceful future. Justice, reconciliation and peace are seen as inextricably intertwined (Lambourne 2002). And yet, relatively few transitional justice scholars consider the goals of peace and reconciliation, instead continuing to focus primarily on the promotion of human rights, democracy and the rule of law without situating their research in a peacebuilding context.2

Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention

Abstract: This book suggests a new explanation for why international peace interventions often fail to reach their full potential. Based on several years of ethnographic research in conflict zones around the world, it demonstrates that everyday elements - such as the expatriates' social habits and usual approaches to understanding their areas of operation - strongly influence peacebuilding effectiveness. Individuals from all over the world and all walks of life share numerous practices, habits, and narratives when they serve as interveners in conflict zones. These common attitudes and actions enable foreign peacebuilders to function in the field, but they also result in unintended consequences that thwart international efforts. Certain expatriates follow alternative modes of thinking and acting, often with notable results, but they remain in the minority. Through an in-depth analysis of the interveners' everyday life and work, this book proposes innovative ways to better help host populations build a sustainable peace.

The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics:

Abstract: The Spectacular State explores the production of national identity in post-Soviet Uzbekistan. The main protagonists are the cultural elites involved in the elaboration of new state-sponsored mass-spectacle national holidays: Navro’z (Zoroastrian New Year) and Independence Day. The overall argument is that despite their aspirations to reinvigorate national identity, mass spectacle creators in Uzbekistan have reproduced much of the Soviet cultural production. National identity has been one of the most fraught questions in Central Asia, where nationality was a contradictory and complicated product of the Soviet rule. Although the category of nationality was initiated, produced, and imposed by the Soviet state in the 1920s, it eventually became a source of power and authority for local elites, including cultural producers. The collapse of the Soviet Union opened up possibilities for revising and reversing many understandings manufactured by the socialist regime. Yet, upon her arrival in Tashkent to conduct her research on the renegotiation of national identity in 1995, Laura Adams discovered that instead of embracing newly-found freedom to recover a more authentic history, most Uzbek intellectuals, especially cultural producers working with the state, avoided probing too far in this direction. Rather than entirely discarding the Soviet colonial legacies, they revised their history selectively. Whereas the ideological content of their cultural production shifted from socialism to nationalism, many of the previous cultural ‘‘forms’’ have remained. Similarly, the Uzbek government continued to employ cultural elites to implement the task of reinforcing its nation-building program, thus following the Soviet model of cultural production. The book consists of four chapters. The first chapter delineates the broad themes of national identity building, and the remaining chapters explore mass spectacle creation by distinguishing between three elements: form (Chapter Two), content (Chapter Three), and the mode of production (Chapter Four). The study is based on content analysis of two Olympic Games-style national holidays, interviews with cultural producers, and participation observation of festivals and behind-the-scenes preparation meetings. Although Adams provides a few references to viewers and their attitude toward the public holiday performances, her book does not offer an extended engagement with reception and consumption of these holidays. The comprehensive and multi-layered overview of the process of revising national identity in Uzbekistan is one of the book’s major accomplishments. For Adams, the production of national identity is not a selfevident and seamless production forced by the state but instead a dynamic, complex, and dialogical process of negotiation between various parties (intellectual factions, state officials, mass spectacle producers, etc.). Her account reveals the messy and often contradictory nature of national identity production and thus moves away from the tendency to reify the state and its policies. The book makes a significant contribution to studies of nationalism by suggesting that the production of national identity in Uzbekistan was centrally constituted by the consideration of the ‘‘international audience.’’ Although public holidays, studied by Adams, aimed at fostering national identification, the forms in which these celebrations are performed (including national dances and music) indicate the aspiration of cultural producers to be part of the international community. This kind of national production self-consciously oriented toward the international viewer has been the legacy of the Soviet nationalities policy where all cultural producers had to produce art ‘‘socialist in content, national in form.’’ Notwithstanding the difference in generations or genres,

From Transitional to Transformative Justice: A New Agenda for Practice

Abstract: Transitional justice has become a globally dominant lens through which to approach states addressing legacies of a violent past, most often implemented as a component of larger efforts at liberal statebuilding. From its beginnings as a largely legal approach to human rights violations committed by departed regimes, understandings of transitional justice have expanded to encompass largely state-led practices such as trials, truth-telling, institutional reform and reparations processes. An industry of praxis has emerged, supported by dedicated NGOs and large-scale funding from Western donors. Yet, the performance and impact of transitional justice mechanisms has been at best ambiguous and at times disappointing – critiqued, for example, for treating the symptoms rather than the causes of conflict. This suggests the need for a new agenda for practice, one that offers a concept of justice that is more ‘transformative’.

La justicia transformativa en el Acuerdo final para la terminación del Conflicto y la Construcción de una paz estable y duradera firmado entre el Gobierno nacional y las FARC-EP en 2016 en Colombia

Abstract: El sector agropecuario ha presentado gran importancia en la economia colombiana a lo largo de la historia, sin embargo, la baja productividad de este ha afectado su dinamica productiva -- El poco valor agregado por trabajador y el alto empleo agropecuario son unos de los mayores problemas -- Segun la informacion aportada por la Encuesta de Calidad de Vida del 2011 del DANE, la solucion al problema es reconocer el potencial productivo de las regiones y facilitar el acceso a mercados de la mano de estructuras asociativas de produccion (entre pequenos y grandes productores), a la vez que se capacite la mano de obra y buena parte se reubique en sectores de mayor productividad como la construccion -- La informacion de la Encuesta demuestra que la problematica de los hogares no es la falta de acceso a la tierra, pues a nivel nacional existe un gran porcentaje de esta en manos de los hogares mas pobres, aunque ciertas regiones, en donde la produccion agropecuaria ha sido extensiva como la ganaderia en la region atlantica o el cultivo de cana de azucar en el Valle del Cauca, la propiedad de la tierra se concentra en los hogares de mayores ingresos -- Por otro lado, tambien se muestra que los hogares con tierra agropecuaria en general tienen ingresos inferiores que los que no cuentan con tierras

Anticipating the Past: Transitional Justice and Socio-Economic Wrongs

Abstract: Even as transitional justice struggles to deliver on its original promises of truth, justice and reconciliation, more demands are being placed on it. Over the past several years, the transitional j...