The drastic escalation of religious armed conflicts in recent decades has become one of the most persistent challenges for the global effort to reach peace and justice. Examples of religious armed conflicts in recent years include the conflict with Boko Haram and the Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) in Nigeria. Another recent example is a major outbreak of violence between Jews and Muslims in May 2021, which started in the area of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
Indeed, some previous studies show that religious conflicts can be deadly, difficult to settle, and more likely to endorse repression. Yet, a growing body of literature suggests that religion may play an ambivalent role: that it promotes violence but also is a force for peace, reconciliation, and justice. Moreover, researchers claim that the concept of reconciliation has deep religious roots and that religion has played a pivotal role in developing and spreading transitional justice practices. Transitional justice is defined by the UN Secretary-General as ‘the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempts to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses, in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation’. The concept of TJ includes a variety of elements to deal with past injustices such as truth and reconciliation commissions and reparation programs. Our research focuses on the ambivalent role of religion and on the connection between religion and transitional justice mechanisms. In addition, it examines whether transitional justice may lead to a complete peace agreement.
Our study uses quantitative analysis utilizing the Transitional Justice in Peace Processes (TJPP) Dataset, which contains innovative information on worldwide peace negotiations between 1989 and 2014. The TJPP dataset identifies six elements of transitional justice: truth commissions and reconciliation processes (symbolic aspect), reparations programs and rehabilitation of refugees (material aspect), amnesties and prisoners’ release (legal aspect). As for religious armed conflicts, we focus on two different definitions. The first definition refers to religious identity dissimilarity, which measures the difference in the religious identity of the rival groups who belong either to different religions or to different denominations within the same religion. The second definition refers to the presence of religious content, which relates to a main religious goal or demand, such as the demand for a rigid religious policy or maintaining holy places.
The findings demonstrate the following: (1) Peace processes of religious content-based conflicts are more likely to include transitional justice elements. However, these peace processes are more likely to include material elements of transitional justice rather than symbolic or legal ones. (2) Peace processes of religious identity-based conflicts are more likely to include transitional justice elements as well. However, this connection is rather weak and inconsistent. In addition, these peace processes are less likely to include symbolic elements of transitional justice. (3) Despite the great use of transitional justice elements, religious peace processes, of either kind, are not significantly associated with reaching a full peace agreement. A possible reason for this finding is that peace processes of religious conflicts lack the relevant transitional justice elements crucial for success, such as a strong reconciliation process. This implies that religion is indeed ambivalent – it uses some transitional justice elements – yet lacks a strong reconciliation process as suggested in previous research. For example, previous attempts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict included material components of transitional justice such as the release of prisoners but did not include symbolic components such as reconciliation.
These findings have important implications for theories linking religion and transitional justice. They can serve as a basis for additional future research to explore the complex connection between religion, peace, and justice. They also indicate that it is desirable for mediators and negotiators in future peace processes of religious conflicts to consider putting more emphasis on the symbolic aspect of transitional justice.
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The study was published on 22 April 2022 in Peacebuilding and available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21647259.2022.2065791
Yoav Kapshuk
Yoav Kapshuk is Lecturer at Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee, Israel; Head of Israel Studies Unit at the department of Multidisciplinary Studies. Former Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Center, and at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. Dr. Kapshuk focuses on peace research: peacebuilding, peace education, peacemaking and transitional justice, especially about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Mora Deitch
Mora Deitch is a Ph.D. candidate at the Political Studies Department of Bar-Ilan University, a Research Fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), and a Neubauer Research Associate at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). Mora’s research focuses on the influence of religion on politics and conflicts.
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