CIAO DATE: 11/2008
January 2003
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Joanna Quinn is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at McMaster University. She was awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship by the Institute during the 2000-2001 and 2001- 2002 academic years. During both of these years, she was doing work related to her doctoral dissertation, The Politics of Acknowledgement: Truth Commissions in Uganda and Haiti. In this dissertation, she is investigating the factors contributing to the apparent failure of truth commissions in these countries. In order to carry out this investigation, she needed to develop a theory of acknowledgement, consistent with notions of restorative justice. The ideals of restorative justice have fostered some interest in truth commissions as a kind of social organization, which might contribute to the forgiveness, reconciliation and trust-building needed in societies, which have experienced deep and violent communal conflict.
This short working paper sets out the theory of acknowledgement that Ms. Quinn elaborated during the tenure of her graduate research fellowship. It is a theory of potential interest to scholars interested in globalization and autonomy for two reasons. First, some argue that globalizing processes undermine nation-state sovereignty and capacity to respond to the needs of citizens, landed immigrants and refugees living within their territorial boundaries. In doing so, they create new opportunities and reasons for mobilizing communal groups within these same borders in ways that lead to violent and extensive conflict. Restorative justice approaches may be one way for moving forward once such conflict has occurred. Second, the gap between the formal existence of an international human rights regime and the implementation of its provisions on the ground is large across the globe. Truth commissions represent one of several innovative approaches used by some states and supporters of international human rights to build knowledge of human rights in communities where such knowledge has been lacking. International conventions on rights only become meaningful, such supporters suggest, when individuals and groups internalize this knowledge and then act to claim or assert these rights.
In developing a framework for evaluating the success and failure of truth commissions, Joanna Quinn adds to our understanding of the obstacles faced by those proposing the globalization of human rights.
Resource link: Acknowledgement: The Road to Forgiveness [PDF] - 97K