Why Justice Matters in Transition
Payam Akhavan, international human-rights lawyer, former UN prosecutor and professor at the University of Toronto, opened the Oslo conference "Justice in Transition: Challenges and Solutions" in September 2023 with a stark reminder of victims’ suffering.
“Transitional justice is the roadmap from darkness to peace and democracy,” he declared. He invited the audience to imagine a mother tortured in prison or a brother shot on his way home from school. When such losses extend to tens of thousands, he asked, “What does justice mean? How can justice be done when those responsible for killing and torture rise to the highest ranks of government? What is the line between punishment and revenge? Is there room for forgiveness?”
For Akhavan, transitional justice is the answer to the crises born of mass human-rights abuses. Each country’s path is distinct, but the dilemmas are universal: truth and reconciliation alongside criminal accountability. At its heart lies the restoration of victims’ dignity. Justice is not only punishing perpetrators, he said, but also returning confiscated property, paying reparations, ensuring access to education and health, and above all, recognising victims’ suffering. “Without their participatio, the process will fail,” he warned. “Evil triumphs when good people stay silent.”
He called for reforms across courts, police, security services and prisons, so that institutions become “instruments of justice, not repression.” Transitional justice also means remembrance—renaming streets, public apologies, rewriting school curricula—so that “future generations know what happened was wrong, and must never be repeated.”
Akhavan distinguished between national and international courts. The International Criminal Court in The Hague, he noted, depends on state consent and in practice defers to national courts. But under authoritarian regimes, courts themselves become tools of oppression. “Transitional changes must come first if justice is to be possible,” he argued. Only then can perpetrators be arrested and tried under fair procedures. Truth commissions, he added, complement courts by giving voice to victims. A mother may be unable to testify in court about her child’s death under torture unless she can identify the perpetrator. “A truth commission lets her tell her story in public,” he said—an essential step in healing a traumatised society.
To illustrate the variety of approaches, he cited Nuremberg after the Second World War, the Yugoslav tribunal in The Hague, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Canada’s inquiry into residential schools, and Rwanda’s village-level gacaca courts. There is no single model, he stressed: sometimes criminal trials, sometimes restorative justice, sometimes both.
He outlined a three-step path: first, public awareness of atrocities in the face of denial and propaganda; second, collective pursuit of justice; third, inclusive participation in deciding how to reckon with the past—an act of democracy in itself. Transitional justice, he said, is a roadmap to a more just and tolerant order. Its pace depends on the will of leaders, victims and civil society alike.
Turning to Iran and the “Zhina/Mahsa” uprising, Akhavan insisted that transitional justice must set boundaries between vengeance and forgiveness, while anchoring itself in truth, accountability and victims’ dignity. “How can perpetrators be punished without endangering peace and stability?” he asked. The answer, he said, lies in carefully designed transitions and fidelity to human-rights principles. “Without truth and justice, lasting peace is unattainable. With them, trust can be restored and the cycle of violence broken.”
Translated from Farsi via machine translation and lightly edited for clarity.