The Potential and Politics of Transitional Justice: Interactions between the Global and the Local in Evaluations of Success

Abstract

Sierra Leone has become something of a touchstone in broader debates surrounding transitional justice (TJ) since its civil war ended in 2002: a site of competing imperatives and Conflicting ideologies and agendas. The country has been the focus of a sustained international effort to implement an ideological-normative TJ agenda and a setting in which TJ practitioners tried to correct perceived past shortcomings. Yet this was not purely a project of ethics or law: international and domestic politics, as this book makes clear, have also played important roles in dictating the opportunities and constraints for transitional justice in Sierra Leone.