Reparations in Northern Ireland – A duty to victims? - Transitional ...

The transitional justice landscape in the north of Ireland is a constantly changing and evolving map.
Yet through all of the initiatives, programmes, reforms and restructuring we have shied away from
mainstreaming the concept of reparations.
To many people in the community, reparations are payments made by the losing side to victims and
survivors following war. That creates difficulties. In our context, some contend that the community
was at war, some characterise it as a civil conflict, and the euphemism of “the troubles” takes us no
further along the road of agreement on managing transition after 30 years of conflict.
It is perhaps the case that the term reparations, which is now so enshrined in the lexicon of
transitional justice policy and practice, is something our broader society thinks is not right for our
circumstances. In the majority of international experiences, implementation of reparations placed a
duty on the state to address the needs of victims and survivors. In accepting such measures are
needed there is the potential to place an unfair or undue burden on the state, and indeed to hold
the state wholly accountable for all human rights violations that took place during the conflict.
In respect of linking initiatives, it could be viewed that prosecutions are concerned with perpetrators
of wrong-doing, truth-seeking initiatives and institutional reforms concern wider society, reparations
are and primarily for the benefit of victims. To an extent, these areas are intertwined: the question
is have we, in dealing with victims and survivors of our past, ensured that the co-dependency
between initiatives is managed?
I will return to these areas later, but firstly I want to set out what is meant by reparations and go on
to look, through a victims lens, what measures have been put in place in a northern Ireland context
that could be said to meet that definition.
United Nations General Assembly resolution 60/147 sets out the categorisation of reparations
measures as follows 1 :
Restitution refers to measures which “restore the victim to the original situation before the
gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international
humanitarian law occurred,” for example, restoration of liberty, enjoyment of human rights,
identity, family life and citizenship, return to one’s place of residence, restoration of
employment and return of property
Compensation “should be provided for any economically assessable damage, as appropriate
and proportional to the gravity of the violation and the circumstances of each case, resulting
from gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of
international humanitarian law,” such as lost opportunities, loss of earnings and moral
damage
Rehabilitation “should include medical and psychological care as well as legal and social
services.”
Satisfaction is a broad category of measures, ranging from those aiming at a cessation of
violations, to truth-seeking, the search for the disappeared, the recovery and reburial of
remains, public apologies, judicial and administrative sanctions, commemoration and
memorialization, and human rights training.
Guarantees of non-repetition is another broad category which includes institutional reforms
tending towards civilian control of military and security forces, strengthening judicial
1 See General Assembly resolution 60/147, annex, paras. 19–23.
1