The new episode of the Justice Visions podcast is a first episode of a miniseries that explores the revolutionary potential of transitional justice. Recently, an evolution can be observed in which grassroots actors are increasingly mobilizing the rhetoric and tools of transitional justice as an element of their protest repertoire. These expressions of transitional justice co-exist with state-centric and standardized transitional justice mechanisms.
 
The practice mobilizing transitional justice as a tool to further resistance against authoritarianism or exploitation, can in several ways be traced back to the origins transitional justice, which was also rooted in protests against dictatorships. Yet, the dynamics of resistance in transitional justice is largely underexplored in transitional justice scholarship. In this mini-series we will shed a light on some interesting cases, ranging from the Middle East and North Africa, to Latin and North America.
 
The first episode focuses on the MENA region where protest movements in several countries have used transitional justice tools and concepts for revolutionary purposes, protesting state repression, neo-colonial practices and extractivism. Our first guest is Noha Aboueladab, who is a professor of transitional justice at Georgetown University in Doha. She is specialised in transitional justice in the Middle East and North Africa, and specifically also zooms in her latest research on the nexus between resistance and transitional justice. As Noha highlights, protest is integral to transitional justice: “The aspirations of transitional justice are by their very nature revolutionary in the sense that transitional justice seeks revolutionary change.”