Transitional Justice: Is the Justice Cascade Over?

Kathryn Sikkink
Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy
Harvard Kennedy School

Despite Sikkink's previous claims that we have entered an age of accountability with a “justice cascade” of human rights prosecutions, her most recent data show that there has been a marked decline in domestic, foreign, and international prosecutions worldwide after peaking in 2010.  In the talk, she will discuss how changes in both the conditions for the demand and the supply of accountability have contributed to this new trend of declining prosecutions, especially because of the retrocession of liberal democracies.  

Kathryn Sikkink is the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. She works on international norms and institutions, transnational advocacy networks, the impact of human rights law and policies, and transitional justice. Her many publications include The Hidden Face of Rights: Toward a Politics of Responsibilies and The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics, which was awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Center Book Award and the WOLA/Duke University Award. She has been a Fulbright Scholar in Argentina and a Guggenheim fellow, and she holds PhD from Columbia University.