Introduction

This chapter addresses both ‘values’ and ‘value’ in reconciliatory political practices and looks in particular at the significance and meaning of reparative justice values and practices. These are often claimed to service the aims of political reconciliation, where reckoning with past state crimes is made central to transitions from authoritarianism to more democratic political orders, such as in Argentina, Chile and South Africa. This chapter pays particular attention to the practice of granting compensation to victims of atrocities in order to investigate and critique both ‘values’ – that is, some of the normative dimensions of reconciliation – and the idea of ‘value’ (as compensation) in repairing the crimes of the past regime. In order to do this, the chapter takes a primarily empirical approach to Becker's (1967) question of ‘taking sides’ by engaging with the ways in which some victim groups have contested, and even refused, reparatory attempts. By analysing the reception of reparations by victims, this chapter consequently helps us to rethink in a more nuanced way the normative terrain and, by implication, the practices of power upon which human rights and reconciliatory politics are predicated and executed. In so doing, it attends to what these contestations tell us about the social and political power that humanitarian values – in this case, reparatory ones – accrue at particular historical junctures.

The departure point for this discussion concerns current debate about the imperative to repair past wrongs. This is grounded in the idea that state reparation benefits the victims of atrocity by acknowledging wrongful acts, recognising harms and ameliorating victim suffering. As a consequence of this assumption, much theoretical and practical work has concurred to establish state reparation to victims of state crimes as a cornerstone of human rights. Most recently, reparation has been cast as a ‘right’ in itself: in 2005, the UN General Assembly adopted The Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law. The legalisation of reparation is testimony to the moral certainty that characterises the contemporary debate and practice around reparations.