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About the Program | Transitional Justice

About the Program

About the Fried-Gal Transitional Justice Program

The Transitional Justice Program benefits from the generous support of the Fried-Gal Transitional Justice Initiative.

The Transitional Justice is a field of contemporary practice and study, concerned with processes that can provide societies that have suffered from widespread human rights violations - such as in the course of severe political and social disruption, armed conflict, military rule, authoritarian regimes or genocide - with ways of dealing with the effects of these experiences in the course of transition to sustainable conditions of reconciliation, democracy and peace. These mechanisms and processes can include, among others, truth-seeking, acknowledgement, accountability, apologies, reparations, community empowerment, institutional and legal reform and redistribution of resources.

 

The Hebrew University's Minerva Center for Human Rights and the Faculty of Law in 2011 established "TJ @ HU", a long-term interdisciplinary program for research, education and outreach activities related to transitional justice. This was the first academic program in Israel devoted to the development of transitional justice concepts and mechanisms, and to their application in Israeli contexts. The program established an introductory transitional justice course in the Hebrew University's Law Faculty curriculum, study tours in Rwanda and Northern Ireland for transitional justice students, scholarships enabling outstanding Hebrew University students to intern at international criminal tribunals and a series of international symposia on transitional justice issues.
See more about former study tours to Rwanda and Northern Ireland.

 

 

The Fried-Gal Transitional Justice Program at the Faculty of Law of the Hebrew University (TJ @ HU Program) in Jerusalem offers a unique academic program, which explores the application of notions and mechanisms of transitional justice – addressing justice and accountability consideration at times of political transition - within the context of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The program explores the roles that civil society can play in such mechanisms. The TJ @ HU Program initiates research, study and outreach activities, for students, designed to explore, inter alia, the possibilities of applying transitional justice theories and principles to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Although transitional justice theories have mostly focused on post-transition reconciliation, accountability arrangements and constitutional reform, the TJ @ HU Program also explores the potential contribution of notions of justice to the process of arriving to a political settlement.

Whereas "classic" transitional justice theory and practice has focused on post-conflict settings, the field holds great potential for conflict transformation, education towards peace and the development of a sustainable culture of acknowledgement, recognition and respect. The field of transitional justice therefore has much to offer in our own local context - both internally, between Jews and Arabs in Israel, as well as in the broader context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Under the guidance of an Advisory Board of leading international and local scholars and practitioners in the field, and drawing on the collective comparative experience of international scholars, practitioners and institutions from other conflict/reconciliation settings around the world - the program includes undergraduate and graduate-level academic courses, student internships, study trips to other conflict/reconciliation settings around the world, and in Israel, major annual international conferences, symposia and workshops with scholars and civil society practitioners, scholarships for minority students and community outreach activities.

 

 

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