Shifting spaces of transition: an analysis of women's participation in the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Transitional justice refers to the ways in which states emerging from conflict attempt to address widespread human rights violations. Instruments such as UNSCR 1325 have attempted to ensure women’s participation in post-conflict justice efforts, however, women have historically been underrepresented in transitional justice spaces.

While many traditional analyses of transitional justice focus on the application of international law to redress historical wrongs, transitional justice processes actually represent the interaction of many territorial and legal borderlands. They are characterised by the interaction of multiple, intersecting international and domestic laws, legal systems, cultures and customs which compete for primacy, with these dynamics evolving constantly throughout the process. This can be observed in the case of Liberia, with the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) aiming to achieve national reconciliation among multiple warring ethnic groups, in many languages, by applying principles of both national and international law, all while respecting customary and religious justice practices.

This paper argues that it is the very interaction of these legal borderlands which shapes the transitional justice process itself, with these dynamics thus creating barriers or opportunities for women’s participation. The paper proposes a unique analysis of the Liberian TRC grounded in the legal geographical concepts of space, complexity and constitutivity. It argues that, by understanding the legal complexity of this transitional justice space, we can understand how women were constituted by and within that space, perhaps revealing previously unseen factors which affected their participation in the TRC.