https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9267-1511
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ABSTRACT
The article contributes to literature that critically scrutinizes knowledge production and transfer in conflict and intervention contexts. Drawing on original research on the Tunisian transitional justice process, it contributes an empirically grounded picture to the study of co-production of governance orders and security knowledges through transnational assemblages. These transnational assemblages are formed by complex coalitions of actors from the Global North and South, and the socio-material context they operate in. The article shows how security knowledge is produced, channelled, and steered into confined knowledge flows as transitional justice processes unfold. It then shows the ambivalent nature and different qualities of confined knowledge flows as they may be enabling and limiting, exclusionary and protective, and implicated with power relations. By doing so, it contributes to the understanding of how the (neo-)liberal politics of transitional justice are reproduced.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thank my interview partners for sharing their insights and perspectives, and everyone who facilitated access to the settings I could observe to draw on in this article. Previous versions of the paper or the argument were presented at EISA 2018, the Political Ethnography thematic group of the German Political Science Association, the European Workshops in International Studies 2021, at Hanna Pfeifer’s research group at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, as well as the German Middle East Studies Association Congress 2022. I thank the participants, Anne Menzel, as well as the reviewers and editors of the journal and the special issue, for critical comments and valuable suggestions.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Many thanks to Reviewer 2 for pushing me on this point.
2 For a comprehensive analysis of the Tunisian transitional justice project until 2020, and how it interplayed with the political developments in the country, see Salehi (Citation2022a).
3 In Tunisia, I was mainly based in Tunis, but also did research in the central regions of Gafsa and Kasserine. In the US, I was based in New York in 2015, interviewing staff members of UN organisations and NGOs, such as the International Center for Transitional Justice. In 2019, I was based in Washington, DC, with short research stays in New York and the San Francisco Bay Area. I interviewed transitional justice professionals who (at that time or previously) worked in transitional justice for the US government or for NGOs, most importantly the ICTJ. Some had experience in both sectors.
4 Video interview with activist, November 2020
5 In general, there are several examples of former domestic ‘participants’ in transitional justice processes that later have become internationally working experts (see e.g., Eduardo González, who, in his own words, participated in Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and now works as an expert on truth commissions: https://gonzalezc.com/; last accessed 15 August 2022). There is also some struggle over who can be an expert where. For example, one domestic transitional justice professional complained to me in an interview that they ‘can’t be experts’ in their own country (personal interview, Tunis, August 2016).
6 The ICTJ is the largest NGO in the field, therefore it deserves particular mentioning here, but other NGOs include for example Impunity Watch.
7 Notably, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
8 I personally observed one panel discussion in Berlin in September 2015, where two truth commissioners were speaking. For other examples see the women’s commissioner participating at an event convened by ICTJ and UNICEF in New York (https://www.ictj.org/news/ictj-unicef-education-peacebuilding; accessed 21 December 2022) or the TDC’s president becoming an advisory board member for an American NGO (https://www.iri.org/news/luminaries-join-iris-international-advisory-council/; accessed 21 December 2022).
9 For example, the former (Tunisian) director of ICTJ’s Tunisia office moved to lead the Nepal office at some point, and later to work in other contexts as a consultant. Several personal conversations, the latest in November 2022 in Tunis.
10 Interview with civil society representative/member of the technical committee, Tunis, May 2014.
11 Personal interview, Tunis, May 2014; my translation.
12 Personal interview, Tunis, April 2014; my translation.
13 Personal interview, Tunis, 2014; my translation.
14 Phone interview with civil society activist, September 2020; professional translation.
15 Personal interview with member of the technical committee, Tunis, April 2014.
16 Group interview with three truth commissioners (interrupting each other), Tunis, March 2015; my translation.
17 Regional Expert Conference on ‘Integrating Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in Transitional Justice Processes: A Vehicle for Reform in the Middle East and North Africa?’, Tunis, September 2014. I participated at the conference in my capacity as a researcher and was invited by the German organizing institution.
18 Personal conversation, Tunis, September 2014.
19 Personal observation, Tunis, March 2015.
20 Phone interview with truth commissioner, December 2020; my translation. See below for more details on the statement-taking process.
21 Several interviews and conversations via phone, video and in person (the latter in Tunis and New York) with international and Tunisian actors, 2020-2022. I did not get the chance (yet) to ask the TDC’s president for her perspective on the issue.
22 Phone interviews with a truth commissioner and a victim’s representative/activist, September and December 2020.
23 Interview with transitional justice professional (UNDP), Tunis, May 2014.
24 Tunis, April 2014. Unfortunately, my notes here are not very precise with regard to the exact nature of the focus groups and their findings.
25 Interview with civil society representative, Tunis, May 2014.
26 I visited the main commission building for the first time in March 2015.
27 Appointments were usually made beforehand by telephone. At the truth commission building, there were usually also people with other concerns than research in the waiting room. I do not know how the procedures were for them.
28 Personal observation, Tunis, March 2015.
29 Personal conversation, La Marsa, September 2016; my translation. I discussed this instance with a transitional justice professional who did not work constantly on site but came to Tunisia occasionally as a consultant. They expressed surprise that the truth commission hired anyone at all for that role.
30 I visited the annexe building for the first time in September 2016.
31 This may also be true to some degree for the main building, but the assessment I draw from my various visits is that the exclusionary confinement of knowledge prevailed there.
32 Procedures in the regional offices of the TDC differed sometimes. Personal observation in Kasserine, August 2016.
33 There may have been three statement-takers when one or two were still in training. Personal observation with explanation from statement-takers, Tunis, September 2016.
34 Personal observation, Tunis, September 2016.
35 Phone interview with truth commissioner, December 2020; my translation.
36 Personal observation, Tunis/Sidi Dhrif, November 2016. Obtaining accreditation was also somewhat cumbersome, respectively, rules only became clear with a short lead-time before the hearings, which may have prevented those from attending who needed to make arrangements to be able to attend.
37 Personal conversations, Tunis, November 2016.
38 Personal conversations, Tunis, November 2016.
39 Personal observation and side conversations, Tunis/Sidi Dhrif, November 2016. See also Salehi, Citation2016.
40 From my own experience, as a researcher based in Germany, it was not easy to obtain accreditation, or to find out how to do so, until very shortly before the hearings took place. I was in touch with an ICTJ staff member in Tunisia, the Truth and Dignity Commission via various channels (my research assistant also got in touch with them via Facebook), the German Embassy in Tunis, as well as the UNDP Tunisia office. It was through a combination of the latter two that I eventually found out how to obtain accreditation for the event. Once in Tunis, I only found out by chance and through personal connections when and where I needed to pick up my badge.
41 For the latter, personal observation at the first public hearings, Sidi Dhrif, November 2016.