Amnesty in the age of human rights accountability: Comparative and international perspectives

This edited volume brings together well-established and emerging scholars of transitional justice to discuss the persistence of amnesty in the age of human rights accountability. The volume attempts to reframe debates, moving beyond the limited approaches of “truth versus justice” or “stability versus accountability” in which many of these issues have been cast in the existing scholarship. The theoretical and empirical contributions in this edited book offer new ways of understanding and tackling the enduring persistence of amnesty in the age of accountability. Authors use social movement, ideational, legal, path dependent, qualitative case study, statistical, and cross-national approaches in their chapters. In addition to cross-national studies, the volume encompasses eleven country cases of amnesty for past human rights violations, some well-known and others with little scholarly or advocacy exposure: Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Rwanda, South Africa, Spain, Uganda, and Uruguay. The volume goes beyond merely describing these case studies, but also considers what we learn from them in terms of overcoming impunity and promoting accountability to contribute to improvements in human rights and democracy.