Limits and challenges of Transitional Justice in the new transitions: a critical analysis based on the cases of Sierra Leone, Morocco and Colombia

Transitional Justice has been understood as a field of studies that analyzes the mechanisms that societies in transition use in order to deal with the past. The first analyses of Transitional Justice addressed the way in which societies transitioning from dictatorship to democracy faced a past of human rights violations committed by state agents. Within this vision of Transitional Justice, mechanisms of criminal justice, truth and reparation constituted the bases of studies on transitions and the means of doing justice. However, this type of analysis began to receive important critiques. Among the main criticisms were the lack of a distributive vision, or the little attention that was offered to historical and structural problems. It was also pointed out that local actors were given little weight and protagonism in the design and implementation of the different measures. Exaggerated emphasis was made in the judicial question while other means to face the past were given little attention. Finally, the pervasive liberal approach drove transitions to end up with superficial changes in the legal or institutional frameworks.
This article analyzes many of the critiques made, as well as the different proposals put forward, such as the need to focus on the transforming nature of justice; on the use of justice to deal with the post-conflict phase; or on the need to promote initiatives based on the principle of local ownership. A brief state of the art is outlined in the first part of the article. The second part of the article will try to analyze the cases of Sierra Leone and Morocco as imperfect models that might advance some of the limits that Colombia might phase in the implementation of the Peace Agreement.