Breaking the Justice Impasse in Syria

After the start of the 2011 uprising, Syrian and international justice actors embraced the transitional justice paradigm to support the hoped-for transition. However, the transformation of the uprising to a civil war altered the mobilisation for justice, shifting the main focus from democratic reforms and the redress of past harm to the recognition of, and accountability for, ongoing injustices. Notwithstanding the impossibility of implementing a model version of transitional justice, Syrian and international justice actors have continued to use transitional justice concepts and initiatives to mobilise for justice. In this presentation, I demonstrate how this endeavour has generated important innovations in the domain of documentation, criminal accountability and truth-seeking