From domestic to international instruments for dealing with a violent past : causes, concomitants and consequences for democratic transitions

Abstract

This contribution focuses on the way the state and the international community deal with the legacy of a violent past after repressive dictatorships or civil wars. During the 1980s and the early 1990s, attempts to institutionalize memory and to come to terms with the past in the transitional period after the collapse of repressive authoritarian regimes were usually undertaken within a domestic framework. Since the 1990s, there have been increasing numbers of external initiatives to promote democracy and, in light of increased international interventions to enforce and keep the peace, the mechanisms of truth, reconciliation and justice have also become internationalized. Institutional procedures and the politics of memory now increasingly involve international actors; the duty of lifting the lid of silence off painful periods of history has almost become an international norm.