Justice and Peace Between the Global and the Local

Since the end of the Cold War efforts to develop global norms for the provision of human security and to endow them with international validity have intensified in an unprecedented manner. Embedded in these norms are particular notions of justice which emphasize the cosmopolitan understanding of civil rights and entitlements and alter the conception of state sovereignty that was predominant until 1990. Despite the widespread subscription to this emerging normative order it remains open to which extent actors agree on the substantive meaning of these norms. As actors hold diverging ideas and notions of justice efforts to establish global regimes of norms might turn into potential sources of conflict. Regional and local contexts in particular may shape distinct understandings of justice and the acceptance of corresponding norms. Attempts to universalize norms therefore may conflict with differences in political structures, needs, interests, experiences and traditions as encountered in diverse contexts.

The project focused on the interplay between global, regional and local levels in the diffusion and differentiation of political norms of behavior. The research concerned, first, the ways actors on the local and regional level react to the articulation of emerging global norms, and how this reaction translates into resistance, adoption or adaptation of global norms to regional and local conditions. Second, variables enabling the acceptance of global norms at the regional and local levels were investigated. Based on these research questions, the project contributed to the identification of prerequisites for and challenges to a transnational dialogue on just peace.

The above-mentioned processes has been studied in three fields:

1. the regional and local implementation of military peacekeeping, including the international responsibility to protect,
2. the localization of global norms in processes of transitional justice, and
3. the implementation of global norms of security sector reform on the local level.

The three sub-projects first identified the global norms and their origins relevant to their field. In a second step, they investigated how regional and local actors adopt these norms, reject them or adapt them to their interests and traditions. While the first sub-project focused on the interpretation of global norms in regional settings, the second and third sub-projects investigated the processes of localization based on comparative country studies. The analyses concerned measures of transitional justice in Timor-Leste and Sierra Leone and security sector reform programs in Burundi, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan.