The aftermath of military conflict can be an occasion for transforming politics and society. In postwar Europe, aided by the Marshall Plan, statesmen such as Jean Monnet and Konrad Adenauer rebuilt the smoking ruins of an international conflict into an economic community with a strong democratic ethos, a common political identity, and a workable social balance. The old rivalries of the continent were abated by joint-security commitments, and the sense of Europe as a political space was strengthened by the human rights standards of the Helsinki process.

Although still in the early stages of their institutional life, die International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and for Rwanda (ICTR) provide a unique empirical basis for evaluating the impact of international criminaljustice on postconflict peace building. The pursuit of justice may be dismissed as a well-intentioned, but futile, ritualistic attempt to restore equilibrium to a moral universe overwhelmed by evil. Moreover, measuring the capacity of punishment to prevent criminal conduct is an elusive undertaking, especially when a society is gripped by widespread habitual violence and an inverted morality has elevated otherwise “deviant” crimes to the highest expression of group loyalty. Yet an appreciation of die determinate causes of such large-scale violence demonstrates that stigmatization of criminal conduct may have far-reaching consequences, promoting postconflict reconciliation and changing die broader rules of international relations and legitimacy.

Transitional states have elected divergent strategies in dealing with their pasts. Some have opted not to confront the past at all by invoking general amnesty laws, whereas others have determined that some form of accountability is needed. Postapartheid South Africa presents a novel illustration of the attempts of a transitional state to balance the legal, political, practical, and cultural interests of its society as it moves toward the democratic ideal. In this vein, the purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine whether individual amnesty was the optimal method of accountability for South Africa to deal with its past; and second, to analyze the extent to which the Amnesty Committee has succeeded in its application of the individual-amnesty provisions and the effects of those efforts.

Within the span of only a few months in 1999, the United Nations was faced with one of the greatest challenges in its recent history: to serve as an interim government in Kosovo and East Timor.

In Kosovo, in response to massive attacks on the Kosovar Albanian population, including orchestrated and wide-scale “ethnic cleansing,” the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) conducted an eleven-week air campaign against Yugoslav and Serbian security forces and paramilitary groups. The campaign resulted in the agreement of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to withdraw all Yugoslav and Serbian security forces from the territory. On June 10,1999, one day after the suspension of NATO’s air strikes, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1244 (1999), establishing the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK).

A “second liberation” swept the African continent beginning in 1989. In many places, multiparty elections and a measured optimism gained ground. Yet during the 1990s, the spirit of moderation and tolerance typical of the early independence movements began to fray. The recent armed conflicts of Central and West Africa and the columns of refugees crossing borders have served as a blunt reminder of the fragility of many of the continent’s democratic experiments.

In this new era, law plays a central, visible, yet delicate role in many peace settlements and democratic transitions, from South Africa to Ghana. Africa’s courts have been challenged to provide the kinds of basic dispute resolution that lie at the core of what it means to be a “government.” At the same time, Africanjudges are mindful of Learned Hand’s caution in The Spirit of Liberty, taped above a secretary’s desk in Uganda. “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women,” Hand wrote. “[W]hen it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.” The success of a postconflict transition will depend, in part, on the role of courts in sustaining a spirit of liberty and tolerance in their societies.

Since the end of the Cold War a decade ago, the United Nations has exercised authority in significant new ways to address various aspects of resolving conflicts and dealing with their consequences. These new approaches have included the use offeree to end interstate and internal violence, the resolution of boundary issues and other disputes that might prolong the conflict, the elimination of threatening weapons capabilities, the prosecution of violations of international humanitarian law, and the compensation of victims of the conflict. These actions have been taken either with the consent of the state or states involved, or pursuant to the authority of the Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, or both.

The central question of postconflict societies remains political: how to construct a stable form of domestic power sharing and governance. Adversaries mutually exhausted by conflict will still set an adequate degree of influence and voice in future political arrangements as the price of terminating the conflict. Where adversarial identities have become all-encompassing or the war has gone on for too long, the only available solutions may be more radical, including autonomy or partition.

The task of international mediators is to help the parties assess the available forms of sharing power. In the dominant view of the United Nations community and international financial institutions, the available choice set is the various forms of representative government—for both idealistic and practical reasons. Democracy has become the dominant political philosophy of the multilateral community, even where it is not always observed in practice, and its breadth of participation may be likeliest to placate former adversaries. But any social engineer or planner must also take into account the practical problems that democracy will probably encounter in the aftermath of conflict, including the conditions necessary for its stability and prestige. In addition, the portfolio of democracy has varied structures that may give greater confidence to both sides and persuade the combatants to lay down their arms.

Intrastate war is now the predominant form of armed conflict. The civil wars of the last decade have scarred the world’s poorest countries, leaving a legacy of more than five million dead, many more driven from their homes, billions of dollars in resources destroyed, and wasted economic opportunity. Meeting the challenge of curbing such civil wars—and preventing their re-ignition—requires a radical readjustment. Restructuring must reach beyond traditional institutional mandates and methodologies. New players—particularly the private sector, as well as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—must be enlisted in a new approach to economic peace building.