UJ hosts advanced academic workshop on Transitional Justice in South Africa

It also includes visits to important South African sites such as the Apartheid Museum in Soweto, the Constitutional Court, the Women’s Prison, Lilliesleaf Farm, some victim rights groups and Constitutional Court judges. This workshop is the first of its kind in South Africa,” says Prof Swart.​

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She highlighted that Transitional Justice, an emerging interdisciplinary field of study and practice concerned with judicial and other social processes, is aimed at addressing legacies of human rights abuses in the course of transitions to peace and democracy. “The field of Transitional Justice started attracting international interest after the successful operation of the South African TRC. This field is particularly relevant yet under-utilized in the Israeli-Palestinian contexts, both in relation to Jewish-Arab tensions within Israel and to the international Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” says Prof Swart.

Prof Swart concludes: “South Africa demonstrated how Transitional Justice mechanisms, such as the TRC as well as a new Constitution and Constitutional Court, can help a society transition peacefully to democracy. A South African perspective could therefore inspire Israeli and Palestinian students to consider the applicability of Transitional Justice to their local contexts.”