The right to individual reparations for systematic crimes. Legal basis, scope, enforcement

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2016 in the subject Law - Penology, grade: 16,00, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Lehrstuhl für deutsches und internationales Strafrecht, Strafprozessrecht und Juristische Zeitgeschichte), course: Transitional Justice, language: English, abstract: The aim of this paper is to contour a normative model of reparations in transitional societies – alternatively dubbed as reparatory justice – and assess to what extent redress has become individualized and truly victim–oriented. It seeks to convey the vital demand associated with reparations: To restore the victim’s sense of dignity and moral worth and to remove his burden of disparagement often connoted with victimhood.Throughout the past decades various states have emerged in processes of replacing pre–democratic political systems which have commissioned mass atrocities under an authoritarian rule. These young nations – often lacking a coherent institutional architecture and financial resources – are confronted with the mammoth task of instating a functioning government and developing a rule of law. Criminal prosecutions, lustration, truth commissions and a general notion of reconciliation – said “policies of coming to terms with the past” (stemming from its German original Vergangenheitsbewältigung) form the cornerstone of what is collectively described as transitional justice.The arguably most important duty of transitional democracies, however, is to identify victims and perpetrators of the previous regime and to provide adequate redress for individuals without jeopardizing the newly found peace and stability. Much of the literary discussion has been criticized for poorly addressing the needs of victims and placing the issue of reparations on the sidelines. Further, transitional justice programs often had the practical effect of subordinating the individual victims to the majority’s desire to ignore the past. Several reparations initiatives have even been accused of re–victimizing the survivors or attempting to buy the victims’ silence.