Appraising the Socio-Economic Turn in Reparations: Transitional Justice for Cholera Victims in Haiti

Abstract

Abstract∞ After belatedly apologizing for the cholera epidemic in Haiti, the ‘New Approach to Cholera in Haiti’ by the UN and the promise of material assistance to victims through a ‘victim-centred approach’ highlight how the victims turn and the socio-economic turn are increasingly pivotal in the field of transitional justice. In light of these growing calls, we suggest a matrix to clarify the debate made of two separate dimensions: the focus of reparations – collective versus individual – and the means of reparations – symbolic versus material. Based on fieldwork conducted in March 2017 in the communities most affected by the cholera outbreak, this article demonstrates how the tensions between reparations offered by the UN (with a preference for collective symbolic reparations) and the reparations demanded by the victims (individual material reparations) can help understand the current stalemate in Haiti, and hopefully inform the next steps in the process of remedy for the victims.

The emerging corporate turn in transitional justice

“…TJ as a field of practice and scholarship has developed and gone through several phases (Teitel, 2000) or generations (Sharp, 2013). In this development, TJ has also had different, and sometimes, overlapping “turns”: a “technocratic turn” (Macdonald, 2019), a “local turn” (Kochanski, 2020), a “transformative turn” (McAuliffe, 2017), and an emerging “socio-economic turn” (Lemay-Hébert and Freedman, 2022). TJ’s emerging “corporate turn” comes as a (belated) continuation of this latter turn, linked to TJ’s “fourth generation,” which includes an increased focus on economic violence and economic justice, areas which have been pushed to the margins in traditional approaches to TJ (Sharp, 2013).…”

“…In the light of this potential “new era” (Van Der Merwe and Lykes, 2022) of TJ, it is interesting how the books explain the lack of corporate accountability historically. Given the multiple calls for accountability throughout the years, how have corporations managed to escape the last wave of TJ with its central focus on socio-economic justice (Lemay-Hébert and Freedman, 2022; Nolan, 2013; Sharp, 2013)? Do they see TJ, which has increasingly become a standardized set of mechanisms (Gissel, 2022), as a pathway for corporate accountability or does it require new tools, renewal, and/or expansion?…”