Transitional justice in the Asia-Pacific: Comparative and theoretical perspectives

This volume seeks to describe and analyze the pre-viously unexplored processes of transitional justice in the Asia-Pacific region. In so doing, it not only fills a geographical void in the study of state responses to past atrocities, it contributes to our understanding of patterns of transitional justice processes, diffusion of those processes, and their impact on human rights and democracy outcomes. In the 1980s and 1990s, when studies of transitional justice began, transitional justice had penetrated less deeply in Asia than in other regions, such as Latin America and Eastern Europe. As a result, there were fewer scholarly studies of transitional justice in the Asia-Pacific region and less evidence to evaluate the impact of transitional justice mechanisms there. In recent years such mechanisms have started to be used with greater frequency in the region, thereby offering a unique setting for testing theoretical arguments about their emergence and spread. Likewise, evidence of the impact of transitional justice from other regions may be useful as scholars, policy makers, and practitioners debate what kinds of accountability mechanisms to adopt in the Asia-Pacific region. This chapter aims at contributing to these debates.