Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics

Abstract

Compensation can contribute to moral regeneration and reconciliation, when the material transfer is made by wrongdoers to explicitly atone the harm they caused, but also to assume their moral responsibility. This means that material reparations are important for achieving justice as accountability and as victim restoration. On this view, material reparations may be a tool for moral regeneration, if there is voluntary acceptance of guilt from offenders as a manifestation of their desire to lift their stain of moral disgrace. However, even being compensations provided in this way, the project of moral recovery in the wake of atrocities must be undertaken as a task that entails great transformations of existing “stained and torn” social relationships.