THE PROBLEM OF “COMPETING PASTS” IN TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE

While significant scholarly attention has been devoted to transitional justice programs that rectify the wrongs of one single past, to date scholars have generally ignored that most countries must reckon with multiple pasts, each characterized by different crimes perpetrated by different torturers against different sets of victims. These multiple and layered pasts – which compete with each other for the attention of governments, civil society groups and international actors – allow political actors to manipulate the transitional justice agenda for their own purposes. I argue that more research is needed to fully understand the selective reckoning with competing pasts.