Transitional justice and constructing victims and victimhood

The importance of victims and victimhood to transitional justice has been the subject of significant scholarly and policy attention in recent years. Paralleling this rise is an increasing body of scholarly literature that recognises the complexity of the terms ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ and associated descriptors of ‘innocent’ and ‘guilty’ victims. Yet, the construction, reproduction and contestation of victimhood is also determined by larger questions of identity and national imagination, voice, agency, blame, silence, denial and heroes and hierarchies. As I argue in this chapter, to be truly ‘victim-centred’, transitional justice needs to expand its conceptual and practical boundaries to recognise the multiple and overlapping variables that construct and reproduce understandings of victimhood. To begin to prise open this debate, the chapter begins by providing an examination of the need to move beyond ‘innocence’ and ‘guilt’ when seeking to define and understand victimhood. The chapter then moves on to consider three themes of significance to the construction and reproduction of victimhood in transitional and post-conflict contexts – ‘Victimhood and Voice’, ‘Victimhood and Agency’ and ‘Victimhood and Silence’.