Transformative transitional justice in brief

The policy briefs draw on the workshop results of the conference “Transformative Transitional Justice in Practice: Confronting Challenges, Recognising Successes” 2025 in Berlin. | PHOTO © Constanze Flamme

Three new briefs highlight the role of intergenerational trauma, victim participation, and social movements for advancing transformative transitional justice.

Transitional justice aims to help societies reckon with legacies of violence, rebuild trust, and prevent future abuses. Yet too many processes remain overly technical and detached from the lived realities of those most affected. To be effective, transitional justice must become more transformative: locally owned, victim‑centred, and tailored to the political and cultural contexts in which it unfolds. It must address not only individual violations but also the deeper structures of domination, exclusion, and inequality that enable violence to recur.

Three new Transformative Transitional Justice Briefs bring together insights from our practitioners’ conference Transformative Transitional Justice in Practice: Confronting Challenges, Recognising Successes, complemented by further research and analysis. Collectively, the briefs argue that without attending to a wider range of justice needs—including psychosocial, socioeconomic, and political dimensions—transitional justice will remain limited in its impact. Each brief explores a different but interconnected aspect of what can make transitional justice more transformative.

Perspectives on transformative change

The first brief examines trauma‑informed intergenerational approaches, showing how the effects of violence do not end when conflict stops. Trauma shapes social relations, political behaviour, and socioeconomic disparities long after the formal end of violence and oppression. When its intergenerational transmission is ignored, opportunities for healing and transformation are lost, as political actors manipulate traumatic experiences to mobilise fear and resentment. The brief argues that trauma-informed transitional justice must create opportunities for survivors, parents, elders and young people to engage in shared processes of addressing legacies of the past, allowing them to break cycles of stigma and violence.

The second brief focuses on the meaningful involvement of those most affected by violence. It demonstrates that when victims and survivors are genuinely included in transitional justice, they can regain agency, shape outcomes, and contribute to more transformative and sustainable processes. Conversely, when they are sidelined, transitional justice risks losing crucial knowledge, legitimacy, and community ownership. To have transformative effects, participation must be continuous rather than a one‑off event, with representatives involved from conceptualisation and agenda‑setting through to implementation and follow‑up. It also requires institutions to be flexible and inclusive, providing adequate conditions for engagement and adapting to the realities of victims rather than expecting victims to adapt to them.

The third brief examines the role of social movements in shaping more transformative agendas and pushing for broader social and political change. Social movements often emerge where formal transitions are incomplete, blocked, or captured by elites. In many contexts, they have linked demands for truth and accountability with wider struggles against inequality, exclusion, and the root causes of violence and socio‑economic marginalisation. The brief highlights the factors that strengthen the transformative effectiveness of social movements: legitimacy and rootedness within affected communities, broad alliances across sectors, adaptability and persistence over time, and the ability to combine grassroots mobilisation with strategic engagement in formal political or institutional arenas.

Recommendations for more impact

Together, these three briefs offer concrete recommendations for donors, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to make transitional justice more transformative, more inclusive, and ultimately more capable of preventing the recurrence of violence.