The project explores the influential struggle of the families of the disappeared in post-conflict settings to overcome amnesty laws and uncover the truth about their missing relatives. It investigates why the crime of enforced disappearances has been so influential in shaping contemporary transitional justice norms and institutions.
Drawing on a novel global database of countries with disappeared as a result of political violence since 1975, the project accounts for global variations in transitional justice policies. It also explores why the struggle of certain countries to overcome amnesty laws and establish the truth about the disappeared has been more effective than others.
Finally, it sheds light on the temporal aspect of dealing with the past by explaining why certain countries defer dealing with sensitive questions of human rights in transitions and why the same societies decide to unearth the violent past, although with a significant delay.
Findings from this line of research have been published in:
Explaining Prolonged Silences in Transitional Justice. The Disappeared in Cyprus and Spain, Comparative Political Studies (2013)
Delinkage Processes and Grassroots Movements in Transitional Justice, Cooperation & Conflict (2012)
Delaying truth recovery for missing persons (with Neophytos G. Loizides), Nations and Nationalism (2011)