Author Archive

Alejandro Posada Téllez (DPIR, University of Oxford)

Alejandro Posada Téllez (DPIR, University of Oxford)

Alejandro Posada Téllez is a DPhil Candidate in International Relations at the University of Oxford, where he is studying the links between the politics of victimhood and post-conflict peacebuilding. Prior to this, he obtained a BA from SOAS, University of London, and Master's degrees in International Affairs from Sciences Po Paris and the London School of Economics. His main research interests are international security, conflict and peacebuilding, post-conflict transitions and reconciliation.

Statue of Justice System

Since the end of the Cold War, Transitional Justice (TJ) has become the dominant framework informing peacebuilding when wars end. Each year, countries establish TJ systems to come to terms with a violent past. However, TJ rarely lives up to its promises. Criticism of TJ often focuses on its (in)ability to heal the wounds of violence, foster forgiveness and reconciliation in divided societies, or deliver restorative justice for both the victims and victimisers of a conflict. In this piece, I shed light on an often-overlooked limitation of TJ: its disregard for the Rule of Law (RoL). RoL, understood as a principle of governance by which law governs societies, is often seen to belong outside the remit of TJ. This is …