Sharing the Burden as a Path Toward Victim-Perpetrator Conciliation
Start Date
12-1-2012 3:30 PM
End Date
12-1-2012 5:00 PM
Description
Main argument: While the aftermath issues of genocides and related one-sided mass violence are similar to those of violent conflicts more generally, resolving the former entails addressing certain features that are usually not shared by the latter. One key feature is the relatively clear distinction between perpetrator and victim groups, whose relationships to the violent events and whose needs and desires for conciliation are quite different. A second key feature is the asymmetrical perpetrator-victim group power relation resulting from genocide. The residual victim group is inevitably in a significantly weakened state culturally, politically, economically, psychologically, health-wise, and in terms of familial structures and identity security. A perpetrator group typically gains in corresponding ways through genocide, most obviously economically but also in terms of political, cultural, and identity strengthening. This is true even long after a genocide, when no direct perpetrators are alive.
Efforts to resolve the legacy of a genocide and reconcile the victim and perpetrator groups are more successful if they take account of and even mitigate the asymmetrical power differential between the parties. An important means of doing so is sharing the burden of the genocide’s impact, which unless addressed falls almost exclusively on the victim community even decades and more after a genocide. The burden can be shared and trust built through symbolic and material reparations addressing the continuing, often devastating, long-term impact of a genocide on victims.
Materials used: This paper will employ the Armenian Genocide and current efforts toward Armenian-Turkish conciliation as its main illustrative case study. The paper will offer both a general theoretical analysis and a treatment of that particular case. The full paper will include examinations of the mainstream and critical literature on truth and reconciliation commissions, conflict resolution after mass violence, and reparations.
Disciplinary discussions involved: Because of the author’s own disciplinary focus, the paper will be grounded in philosophical ethics, but the nature of the topic is such that its treatment is necessarily interdisciplinary. Historical, political, legal, psychological, sociological, and anthropological approaches will all have roles.
Sharing the Burden as a Path Toward Victim-Perpetrator Conciliation
Main argument: While the aftermath issues of genocides and related one-sided mass violence are similar to those of violent conflicts more generally, resolving the former entails addressing certain features that are usually not shared by the latter. One key feature is the relatively clear distinction between perpetrator and victim groups, whose relationships to the violent events and whose needs and desires for conciliation are quite different. A second key feature is the asymmetrical perpetrator-victim group power relation resulting from genocide. The residual victim group is inevitably in a significantly weakened state culturally, politically, economically, psychologically, health-wise, and in terms of familial structures and identity security. A perpetrator group typically gains in corresponding ways through genocide, most obviously economically but also in terms of political, cultural, and identity strengthening. This is true even long after a genocide, when no direct perpetrators are alive.
Efforts to resolve the legacy of a genocide and reconcile the victim and perpetrator groups are more successful if they take account of and even mitigate the asymmetrical power differential between the parties. An important means of doing so is sharing the burden of the genocide’s impact, which unless addressed falls almost exclusively on the victim community even decades and more after a genocide. The burden can be shared and trust built through symbolic and material reparations addressing the continuing, often devastating, long-term impact of a genocide on victims.
Materials used: This paper will employ the Armenian Genocide and current efforts toward Armenian-Turkish conciliation as its main illustrative case study. The paper will offer both a general theoretical analysis and a treatment of that particular case. The full paper will include examinations of the mainstream and critical literature on truth and reconciliation commissions, conflict resolution after mass violence, and reparations.
Disciplinary discussions involved: Because of the author’s own disciplinary focus, the paper will be grounded in philosophical ethics, but the nature of the topic is such that its treatment is necessarily interdisciplinary. Historical, political, legal, psychological, sociological, and anthropological approaches will all have roles.