MARTHA ALBERTSON FINEMAN AND ESTELLE ZINSSTAG, DIR, FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES ON TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE,
SERIES ON TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE, VOL 13, CAMBRIDGE, INTERSENTIA, 2013
Carolina Jimenez Sanchez*
Transitional justice has emerged in recent literature and practice as a combination of different mechanisms whose main goal is to help societies moving into a post-conflict stage by seeking to bring about an integral improvement in human rights in relation to the conflict itself and the long emergence phase. As has been stated by the International Center for Transitional Justice, the concept
refers to the set of judicial and non-judicial measures that have been implemented by different countries in order to redress the legacies of massive human rights abuses. These measures include criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations programs, and various kinds of institutional reforms1.
In this context, it is easy to understand the link between transitional justice and feminisms, since after all conflicts, old and new, gender has been largely ignored in the post-war reconstruction process, which has been conducted according to a strongly patriarchal (mono) vision. This volume2 is needful and valuable due to the rare appearance in the literature of these two aspects— feminism and transitional justice— together3, which have now acquired a central position in the Series on Transitional Justice. Martha Albertson Fineman and Estelle Zinsstag offer in this book a feminist perspective of transitional justice incorporating different views. They try to demonstrate that the diverse gender sensitive conceptions of justice can contribute to an improvement in the position of women in peace-building and transition processes. Consequently, the book is made up of a wide range of feminist perspectives in essays (chapters) by fourteen authors. They are arranged in four parts: “ Feminist Perspectives in Contexts”, “ Feminist Legal Strategies and their Consequences”, “ Emerging Alternatives within Transitional Justice”, and “ Case Studies.”
* Lecturer on International Law and International Relations of University of Málaga (Spain). She received her Ph. D. in Gender and Armed Conflicts in 2013. Her research interests are in the fields of gender and International Law, specially Human Rights, International Criminal Law and Refugee Law.
1 International Center for Transitional Justice, “ What is Transitional Justice ?” (2014), online : International Center for Transitional Justice < http :// ictj. org/ about/ transitional-justice>.
2 Martha Albertson Fineman and Estelle Zinsstag, Feminist perspectives on transitional justice, Series on transitional justice vol 13 (Cambridge : Intersentia, 2013).
3 There are a few publications whose central question is the relation between gender and transitional justice, such as Susanne Buckley-Zistel and Ruth Stanley, eds, Gender in Transitional Justice, (New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), or between feminisms and transitional justice, such as Christine Bell and Catherine O’Rourke, “ Does Feminism Need a Theory of Transitional Justice ? An Introductory Essay” (2007) 1 International Journal Of Transitional Justice 23 [ Bell and O’Rourke].
