Reimagining Victims' Reparation Global Network (RVRGN)

Second International Workshop

Reimagining victims' reparation: building new perspectives on empathy, dignity, and justice for victims of serious human rights violations in the Global South

Conventionally, efforts to reimagine how international organisations, multilateral bodies, nation-states, private actors, NGOs, grassroots movements, and civic associations can deliver reparations to victims of serious human rights violations have been focused on legalistic approaches, viewing victims as ‘objects’ of reparation rather than ‘subjects’ with their own agency, organisational capability, and initiatives. Some outcomes of this institutionalisation of reparation processes are a dominant legalism, privileging state-led prosecutions over victims-based reparations, and socio-cultural and economic rights being usually ignored by reparative mechanisms.

Thus, traditionally, victims have had little influence or involvement in state-led reparative processes, participating as instruments of those processes rather than on their own terms. It is argued that rather than being driven by victims, reparation is a consequence of global neoliberal governance, driven by complicated international bureaucracy and developing systems that create many of the needs that victims articulate. As a result, what developing a victim-centred reparative process actually means becomes ambiguous despite the general commitment of international bodies, states, and civil society organisations involved in such a principle.

For this reason, this second international workshop aims to keep reimagining victims' reparation from novel perspectives in order to contribute to the development of more critical reparatory theories and practices, which have victims’ needs, initiatives, and expectations at the centre of the process.

The Secure Societies International Research Collaboration and Production Fund (IRCPF) at the University of Huddersfield and the University College Roosevelt - Utrecht University support this second international workshop.