The Cambridge Handbook of Victim Engagement in Transitional Justice

A comprehensive framework, rooted in rich empirical cases, for understanding evolving victim engagement across increasingly intersecting transitional justice struggles.

This volume introduces an innovative framework for understanding how victims' evolving roles in transitional justice (re)shape justice after mass violence. By bridging theory and empirical case studies, it provides insights for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers working in human rights, international law, peacebuilding, and social movements.How have victims shaped – and reshaped – transitional justice? This volume introduces a novel framework for tracing and interpreting the evolving trajectories of victim-survivor engagement across different phases of grassroots activism, institutional participation, and various forms of resistance. Drawing on a diverse range of empirical case studies from across the globe, the handbook provides both a historical analysis of victims' evolving roles in (formal, informal, and everyday) transitional justice processes and a comparative perspective on the realities of victim engagement today – highlighting increasingly intersecting justice struggles and the porous boundaries of transitional justice. Written for students, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers in transitional justice, human rights, international law, peacebuilding, and social movements, this interdisciplinary resource draws on innovative, on-the-ground practices and the protagonism of victims to foster conceptual and methodological innovation for a forward-looking reimagination of victim-led justice after large-scale violence.