Call for Papers 2021 Special Issue

Nov 4, 2019 | Oxford Academic: The International Journal of Transitional Justice
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The International Journal of Transitional Justice invites submissions for its 2021 Special Issue, Land and Property Rights in Transitional Justice, to be guest edited by Jon D. Unruh, McGill University, Canada, and Musa Adam Abdul-Jalil, University of Khartoum, Sudan.

Housing, land and property (HLP) issues comprise some of the most provocative and contentious discussions in transitional justice scholarship, policy and practice. HLP-related forced displacement, damage and destruction and restitution for historical injustices are at the heart of many transitional justice policy debates, with repercussions for interventions and responses by the international community, governments and civil society as well as peacebuilding scholarship.

This Special Issue will look at how HLP injustices and the responses to them (both historical and recent) shape transitional justice claims, interventions and conceptual debates. The Special Issue seeks a broad range of contributions: from debates about historical land claims and reparative measures for colonial-era dispossession, to the structure and function of war-affected HLP restitution efforts, the repercussions of HLP in migratory processes, challenges particular to urban HLP transitional justice, HLP reparatory strategies vis-à-vis indigenous land claims and respect for the earth, the peace vs. justice trade-off, as well as issues relating to the broader design questions of how legal frameworks have evolved and been used to influence HLP-related transitional justice debates, policy and practice.

The Special Issue seeks to highlight both the symbolic significance of HLP transitional justice problems and their reparative measures, together with the fundamental role of such measures in rebuilding livelihoods and social orders that contribute to greater human dignity and equality.

The Special Issue will examine existing frameworks, models and assumptions in the field of transitional justice in light of the emergence of a greater awareness of HLP concerns, and explore if and how the field can engage effectively with such concerns. Does transitional justice provide a lens that can effectively frame appropriate responses to acute HLP problems without returning to old inequalities or producing new bases for conflict or injustice? Can transitional justice resolve HLP-related structural factors that drive collective injustice, inequality and historical abuses?

Transitional justice scholarship, policy and practice has made great strides in addressing injustices related to social, economic and cultural rights. Does this provide a sufficient foundation for understanding how best to respond to HLP grievances? Are the human rights legal frameworks relied upon by many in the transitional justice field prejudiced in how they shape our understanding of HLP problems, and do they provide appropriate redress across a variety of cultural and historical trajectories? What is the place of traditional, indigenous and customary laws and norms in HLP transitional justice efforts?

Transitional justice has always given great prominence to the symbolic value of various measures of justice and redress. Does this lens provide an appropriate entry to understanding how various transitional justice approaches attend to forms of injustice in the context of HLP grievances? Can it make sense of both the individual and group identities that are embedded in HLP questions?

HLP issues are highly politicized and ritualized in political discourse. How can HLP problems and solutions be reclaimed from political entrepreneurs? Does transitional justice provide effective avenues for marginalized groups to engage in current debates, and to voice their experiences and participate in processes of restitution?

Use and ownership of HLP has served as a basis of gender inequality in many societies. How do (or should) transitional justice processes engage with statutory, customary and indigenous traditional norms regarding gender and HLP, particularly after long-lasting conflict when female-headed households seeking to reclaim HLP have greatly increased in number?

Many HLP problems emerge in the context of inequality and exploitation that have been written into urban designs of exclusion and marginalization. Does transitional justice provide ways of conceptualizing these injustices and avenues for redesigning urban spaces, access to the city and more economically just urban planning?

Specific topics to be explored include ways to understand and address:

  • Collective claims to land (including sacred land) by historically dispossessed people;
  • Recovery from state expropriation of land during conflict and repression;
  • Management of claims due to forced dislocation, forms of ‘cleansing,’ damage and destruction, secondary occupation and transaction of HLP during conflict;
  • The construction and operation of large-scale HLP restitution programs after conflict;
  • HLP legal regimes during transitions, including authoritarian and exclusionary urban planning and design;
  • The utility of transitional justice in the management of large-scale migration HLP problems;
  • The role of technology in the application of transitional justice in HLP contexts;
  • Postconflict restoration of pastoralist rights over historical migration routes; and
  • The gender dimension in collective property reparations.

The International Journal of Transitional Justice encourages contributions from the global South, including those from transitional justice scholars and practitioners and HLP workers engaged in transitional justice processes. We welcome full-length articles, Notes from the Field, and creative works accompanied by short reflections.

Special Issue Editors:

Musa Adam Abdul-Jalil is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Khartoum, Sudan. His research focuses on the areas of ethnicity, migration, customary land tenure and traditional mechanisms for conflict management, with a special ethnographic focus on Darfur. He has published widely on the challenges and opportunities for dispute resolution and peacebuilding related to land conflict and forced displacement.

Jon D. Unruh is Professor of Geography at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. His research, applied and policy work focuses on war-affected human geographies, with a particular focus on the reestablishment of land and property rights after armed conflict. His past work has dealt with Islamic, customary, statutory and war-related approaches to land rights and how these interact with displaced populations, ethnic cleansing, restitution, legal pluralism and agriculture in postwar and peacebuilding scenarios.

The deadline for submissions is 1 July 2020.

Papers should be submitted online on the IJTJ webpage at www.ijtj.oxfordjournals.org.

For further information, please contact:
          The managing editor at ijtj@csvr.org.za.
          Co-Guest Editor Musa Adam Abdul-Jalil imusaadam@gmail.com
          Co-Guest Editor Jon D. Unruh jon.unruh@mcgill.ca