Towards Recognition of Subsistence Harms: Reassessing Approaches to Socioeconomic Forms of Violence in Transitional Justice

Transitional Justice and Its Discontents: Socioeconomic Justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Limits of International Intervention

“…Authors in this tradition commonly complain that violations of socioeconomic rights have taken second place in post-conflict justice efforts, despite their relevance for the populations affected. Even within this group, views diverge substantially between those who argue for focusing on established socioeconomic rights (Arbour 2007, Szoke-Burke 2015 or 'subsistence harms' (Sankey 2014) whose cases could be adjudicated in court, 1 and those who propose a systemic approach to socioeconomic violence and injustice (Mullen 2015;Evans 2016). As Sharp (2014, 5) points out, economic violence includes, but goes beyond, violations of social and economic rights.…”

“…Neglecting socioeconomic injustice could, for instance, impair post-conflict security and access to justice (Chinkin 2009), and go against victims' expectations and demands (Waldorf 2012, 175). At the same time, there is still uncertainty as to what mechanisms would be more appropriate for dealing with it, with some authors pointing at the potential role of truth commissions (Arbour 2007;Sankey 2014), or arguing for giving victims the political 1 'Subsistence harms' are defined as 'deprivations of the physical, mental and social needs of human subsistence' (Sankey 2014, 122). agency necessary to achieve distributive justice (García-Godos 2013).…”

Feminist scholarship in transitional justice: a de-politicising impulse?

“…2 The question of structural inequalities, and the capacity of transitional justice to ameliorate such inequalities, are ever more mainstream in scholarly and policy analysis. Mainstream scholarship in transitional justice increasingly grapples with questions of socio-economic harms and the deprivation of subsistence needs (Sankey, 2013) and the capacity of transitional justice to ameliorate group harm. In regards to structural inequalities, therefore, feminist scholarship in transitional justice has been influential in shaping the legal reach and the conceptual depth of the discipline.…”

Gendered Experiences of Subsistence Harms

“…4 Employing the concept of subsistence harms enables contestation of both the fragmented approach of current legal framework, which fails to reflect the interrelationships of violence centred on deprivations of subsistence needs, and the failure of current offences in international criminal law to fully capture gendered experiences. Rather than reflecting deprivations of subsistence needs as a particular type of violence, the legal framework fragments recognition of the harms through separation into discrete offences (Sankey, 2014). The linkages between forced displacement and attacks on homes, livelihoods and basic resources, which have often been apparent in the use of such violence, are elided and the nature of the harms as being centred on deprivations of subsistence needs is therefore often silenced.…”

“…Elsewhere, I have advocated the term subsistence harms to name deprivations of subsistence needs as a discrete form of violence (Sankey, 2014). This article further explores the gendered nature of subsistence harms and highlights the implications of the concept for feminist research.…”