The Relevance of Transitional Justice in the time of COVID-19

The Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect-Philippine Office (APR2P - PO) based at the Ateneo de Manila University Department of Political Science and the ‘Of Mourning and the After’ (OMTA) of the Ateneo Areté Sandbox Residency, in cooperation with the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), shall be conducting a webinar on “The Relevance of Transitional Justice in the Time of Covid-19” on 08 July 2020, 0900-1100 Philippines time/1100-1300 Brisbane time. 

The webinar seeks to explore responses to the following questions: 

• What view does a transitional justice lens bring into focus during a pandemic?

• What lessons can we draw from the history of pandemics – specifically on the link between deep structural inequalities, gross failure of governance, the rise of populist rightwing leaders and predatory States, and environmental mismanagement?

• Through transitional justice, as political and socio-economic drivers of violence are unpacked in the context of increasing authoritarianism, what ways forward can be discerned?

• Given that, by definition, transitional justice deals with a society’s violent past, is it possible to invoke the transitional justice framework in matters of continuing or ongoing injustice –specifically in preventing atrocities in the ongoing pandemic response, and exacting accountability as they are committed?

• What are the narratives and memories of violation, pain, and loss that we can unravel to foreground the right to truth, justice, reparation, and guarantee of non-recurrence?

Serving as thought provocateurs in the conversation are Cecilia Jimenez-Damary, UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons; Marian Pastor Roces, independent curator and critic; Ruben Carranza, Senior Associate, International Center for Transitional Justice; and Loretta Ann Rosales, former Commission on Human Rights Chair.  

We hope that you can join us in this activity.  

Zoom pre-registration link is: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_6d6mcdyvQDumCJ959GiN5w