Justice for Victims: Perspectives on Rights, Transition and Reconciliation

Justice for Victims brings together the world’s leading scholars in the fields of study surrounding victimization in a pioneering international collection. This book focuses on the current study of victims of crime, combining both legal and social-scientific perspectives, articulating both in new directions and questioning whether victims really do have more rights in our modern world.

This book offers an interdisciplinary approach, covering large-scale (political) victimization, terrorist victimization, sexual victimization and routine victimization. Split into three sections, this book provides in-depth coverage of: victims' rights, transitional justice and victims' perspectives, and trauma, resilience and justice. Victims' rights are conceptualised in the human rights framework and discussed in relation to supranational, international and regional policies. The transitional justice section covers victims of war from those caught between peace and justice, as well as post-conflict justice. The final section focuses on post-traumatic stress, connecting psychological and anthropological perceptions in analysing collective violence, mass victimization and trauma.

This book addresses challenging and new issues in the field of victimology and the study of transitional and restorative justice. As such, it will be of interest to researchers, practitioners and students interested in the fields of victimology, transitional justice, restorative justice and trauma work.

Inge Vanfraechem, Ph.D., is manager of the European FP7 ALTERNATIVE project and works at the KU Leuven, where she received her B.A., M.A. and Ph.D in criminology (2006) on the implementation of family group conferencing in Belgium, a path-breaking approach to the restorative justice field in Europe. She has worked as researcher and co-promoter on the Evaluation of Victim Policy in Belgium at the National Institute of Criminal Sciences and Criminology (NICC) at the Belgian Ministry of Justice during 2007-2010.

Dr. Vanfraechem returned to the KU Leuven Institute of Criminology in 2011 to work as coordinator and co-promoter of several interdisciplinary and collaborative European projects for the European Forum for Restorative Justice (EFRJ) and Leuven Institute of Criminology (LINC), such as: Victims and restorative justice, Conferencing: a way forward for Europe, and Restorative Justice and Crime Prevention. She is editor of ‘Restorative Justice: an International Journal’, the only peer-reviewed, high standard, academic and international journal in the field of restorative justice. Dr. Vanfraechem is also a key member of the Working Group on Victimology of the European Society of Criminology (ESC).

Antony Pemberton, PhD., is Associate Professor and Director of Studies at the International Victimology Institute Tilburg (INTERVICT) in the Netherlands. He has published more than 60 articles, books and book chapters on victimological subjects, with a particular emphasis on victims in justice processes. Dr. Pemberton has previously co-authored a book on victims of terrorism, (Assisting victims of terrorism, 2010), co-edited a volume on victims of international crimes (Victimological approaches to international crimes: Africa, 2011) and has also published a series of articles applying concepts from social and clinical psychology to victimology (included in The cross-over: an interdisciplinary approach to the study of victims of crime. 2010). More information can be found at http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/webwijs/show/?uid=a.pemberton.

Felix Mukwiza Ndahinda is an Assistant Professor at Tilburg Law School’s International Victimology Institute Tilburg (INTERVICT - Tilburg University - the Netherlands) and he is also the coordinator for the Masters in Victimology and Criminal Justice at Tilburg law School. He holds a PhD from Tilburg University (2009); an LLM from the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights (Sweden-2006) and a Bachelor’s degree (LLB.) from the National University of Rwanda (2003).

Dr. Ndahinda previously worked for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha-Tanzania (2003 and 2009) and for the Office of the Auditor General for State Finances in Rwanda (2004). He has also worked as a consultant for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and produced a report on Human rights and issues related to terrorist hostage-taking. His academic interests cover transitional Justice, ethnicity, minority and indigenous issues. Among others, he published Indigenousness in Africa: A Contested Legal Framework for Empowerment of ‘Marginalized’ Communities (Asser Press/Springer, 2011).