Transitional Justice

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South Korea’s Plan to Compensate Victims of Forced Labour Employed in Japanese Factories During Colonial Rule: A Step Forward for Peaceful Relations, but not for Victims’ Rights

May 5, 2023

On 6 March 2023, the Republic of Korea, in the person of the Minister for Foreign Affairs Park Jin, announced a plan for South Korea to compensate South Korean citizens who were forced to work in Japanese factories under Tokyo’s thirty-five-year occupation of the Korean peninsula. The plan is an attempt to settle the long-standing dispute between South Korea and Japan over compensation for atrocities relating to the colonial past and, through this, improve the diplomatic, political, and commercial relationships between the two countries. In this blog post, I show how, despite its (potential) positive implications from an international relations perspective, the announced compensation plan proves problematic from the point of view of corporate accountability and victims’ right to prompt, adequate, and effective reparation under international law and according to human rights standards. The Context Japanese occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945 was marked by gross human rights violations and serious violations of international humanitarian law. These included the sexual enslavement of women and girls (the so-called “Comfort Women”)…

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Transitional Injustice? Concerns over Judicial Accountability at Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace

October 15, 2022

Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (“JEP,” for its acronym in Spanish) has drawn considerable attention for its attempt to balance calls for retribution with a restorative approach aimed at peacebuilding. Despite a myriad of challenges, the JEP has made significant progress in the investigation of hostage-taking by…

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The rocky road to peace II: additional challenges at the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia

May 12, 2022

The transitional justice process in Colombia and the institution at its centre, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), have faced a series of difficulties (see here and here). Aware of this, the Prosecutor of the ICC announced on 28 October 2021 the closure of the country’s preliminary examination. This decision was partly motivated by the JEP’s progress…

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Colombia: Time for the ICC Prosecutor to Act?

April 2, 2019

The controversy evolving around the role and competence of the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz, SJP) has reached a new peak: Colombian President Iván Duque initiated a frontal attack against the Jurisdiction’s statutory law that goes beyond all previous assaults directed against the country’s Transitional Justice (TJ) system. We argue…

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Joint Symposium with Justice in Conflict on Human Rights Watch’s Report on The ICC’s Impact on National Justice

December 6, 2018

While investigations by the International Criminal Court (ICC) have received the lions’ share of attention and scrutiny from scholars and observers, there has been a growing interest in the impact of the ICC’s preliminary examinations. The preliminary examination stage requires the ICC Prosecutor to ascertain whether alleged crimes fall within the Court’s jurisdiction, whether the crimes are of…

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