Call for abstracts: Transitional justice and human rights network annual workshop

The Transitional Justice and Human Rights Network is inviting abstracts for its annual workshop, which is being co-organised by the University of Nicosia and the University of Cyprus on 28 and 29 May 2026.

Reconciliation and accountability are integral concepts within the transitional justice lexicon. In international frameworks—such as those developed by the UN—the two terms are often presented as mutually reinforcing: accountability is conceived as a pathway to reconciliation, rather than an obstacle to it. In practice, however, the relationship between the two is fraught with tension and not necessarily linear. Efforts at reconciliation—whether genuine or undertaken in bad faith—have at times sought immediate “closure” at the expense of making visible and addressing responsibilities, whether individual, collective or institutional. Accountability mechanisms, for their part, have been criticised (again, both sincerely and strategically) for reopening old wounds, producing individual stigmatisation, or creating alienation within and across communities. These dynamics can affect both victims and perpetrators, as well as potentially undermining broader processes of social healing and transformation.

The Call for Abstracts in Cyprus comes at a bleak moment for peace and reconciliation globally, with unfolding events demanding that we re-examine the relationship between reconciliation and accountability with renewed urgency. As countries adopt aggressive and divisive inter‑state and intra‑state political and military agendas that openly disregard basic principles of international law—and, in some cases, deliberately undermine the very institutions and norms required to hold them to account—the need arises to examine more deeply whether, and how, reconciliation and accountability can articulate any meaningful response to past –and sometimes ongoing- abuses. While transitional justice and modern human rights were created and evolved to address serious abuses perpetrated by authoritarian regimes, and are therefore, at first glance, well suited to engage with contemporary dynamics, the magnitude of the current rupture in the international order complicates this assumption. The erosion of institutions and norms that once helped navigate the competing claims of accountability and reconciliation raises the question of how these concepts need to be re‑envisioned in an age of resurgent authoritarianism.

Guiding questions include:

• To what extent do human rights and transitional justice provide a workable framework for navigating demands for both accountability and reconciliation?

• Can accountability be understood so as to encompass reconciliation, and vice versa?
• How can bad‑faith appeals to reconciliation that sideline victims’ accountability demands after serious abuses be challenged? What are the potentials and limitations of reconciliation in addressing increasingly polarised and violent rhetoric and action targeting vulnerable and racialised populations?
• How can we reconceptualise mobilisation and critique around legal frameworks and instruments to secure effective accountability at the global and inter-state levels amid dangerous shifts in world power and the erosion of international law on armed conflict (both jus ad bellum and jus in bello)? What is the role of reconciliation in this context?
• Do rising levels of forced displacement, migration, and refugee flows caused by war, conflict, polarisation, and repression require us to rethink transitional justice and human rights? What role do diasporas and displaced persons play in peace and reconciliation processes in their countries of origin, and how do they shape policies in their countries of destination?

Please send your abstracts to: trimikliniotis.n@unic.ac.cy and f.torres@bham.ac.uk by Friday 24 April 2026.

Please include both email addresses in your email.

Further details will be provided to those who are accepted for the workshop.

 [Photo credit: Artwork by Daphne Mavrovounioti-Trimiklinioti, to whom we extend our deepest thanks]