[TimorLesteStudies] Seminar: Truth commissions trials and tool kits

[Jennifer Drysdale]

The School of Social and Political Sciences warmly invites you to a public lecture on
Truth commissions trials and tool kits: 
Rethinking the dynamics of transitional justice in East Timor


Presented by Lia Kent
School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne
 
Thursday 9th September 2010, 1-2pm
Faculty Function Room, 
Level 5 John Medley Building (West)
The University of Melbourne
Transitional justice mechanisms – including trials and truth commissions –  have become firmly entrenched as part of the United Nations ‘tool-kit’ for successful post-conflict recovery, promoted as a means of assisting both individuals and societies to ‘come to terms’ with complex legacies of violence. This presentation unsettles these assumptions by charting the interplay between international transitional justice narratives promoted by the United Nations, national narratives of justice and nation-building promoted by East Timor's political elite, and local narratives of injustice promoted by East Timorese survivors. I argue that in seeking to provide a form of justice that would mark a rupture between the past and future, the transitional justice process in East Timor has produced new forms of political engagement and is transforming local justice struggles in unexpected ways. The dynamic nature of these developments suggests that transitional justice might best be understood as a continuing and productive interaction between international, national and local actors. 
 
Lia Kent has worked and conducted research in East Timor since 2000 for a range of non-government and intergovernmental organisations, including Oxfam, the United Nations and the Judicial Systems Monitoring Programme. She has recently submitted her PhD thesis, entitled ‘Justica Seidauk Mai (Justice is yet to come): Rethinking the Dynamics of Transitional Justice in East Timor,’ which was undertaken in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Her thesis draws on fieldwork conducted in three districts of East Timor during 2007 and 2008.
 
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