Dilemmas of accountability

Politics, the military and commissions of inquiry during an ongoing civil war the Sri Lankan case

Bibliographic Data

ID12611069
AuthorsChandra Lekha Sriram (International Peace Institute, corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume5
Issue2
Pages96-121
Publication date2002-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCivil Wars (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1369-8249 • E-ISSN: 1743-968X
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13698240208402504
OpenAlexW2018572669
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited35

This article seeks to contribute to the literature on transitional justice by examining the somewhat novel case of Sri Lanka — one where the country is not emerging from authoritarian rule, but is rather a relatively democratic one yet engaged in an internal armed conflict. I argue that even in such novel cases, same sorts of trade‐offs must be made with the security forces as are made in ‘traditional’ transitional situations. Specifically, the putative trade‐off between stability and justice is oversimplified, and a country always has a range of choices between prosecution and amnesty, but other trade‐offs, specifically concessions to the very parties responsible for abuses, may yet be necessary

Accountability · Amnesty · Authoritarianism · Democracy · Economic Justice · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · South asia · Spanish Civil War · Sri lanka · Transitional justice · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · International Law and Human Rights · Law

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