Chapter 1 is the introductory chapter. It introduces the reader to the two seemingly complementary global imperatives of ‘dealing with the past’ and ensuring non-repetition of mass atrocities. The chapter sets up a conundrum about transitional justice, ontological (in)securities, and non-recurrence. It then proceeds with a summary of the book’s key questions and core arguments. The chapter subsequently puts forward a brief history of the evolution of transitional justice as a global project, a vehicle of peace as well as security, discussing the claimed intersections between transitional justice and ‘Never Again’. This is followed by brief notes on methodology and contributions of the book. In outlining the contributions, the chapter demonstrates how the book interacts with and enriches scholarly knowledge in the field of transitional justice as well as in ontological security studies. Finally, the chapter introduces the outline of the book with brief chapter summaries.

Chapter 2 frames the book, drawing on structuration theory and ontological security studies to provide its theoretical underpinnings. This chapter begins by exploring the claims of positive influences of different tools found in the transitional justice project on ensuring non-recurrence of conflict. It proposes that while both scholars and practitioners remain unsure of what ‘works’ for a meaningful ‘Never Again’, they remain faithful that something does and that some transitional justice is better than none. The chapter then delineates some common threads based on these multiple promises of non-recurrence to reflect on the characteristics of transitional justice as a structure. Finally, the chapter theoretically complicates the existing position of non-recurrence in transitional justice scholarship by asking questions about temporality, security, and the purpose of transitional justice as a global project. In doing so, it provides a new outlook on the ontological security/transitional justice nexus and discusses where non-recurrence fits within it.

Chapter 8 is the concluding chapter. It aims to draw wider conclusions about prevention of conflict repetition in and after transitional justice as a field of research, policy, and practice. It summarises where non-recurrence stands theoretically and practically in relation to the book’s findings and stories of ‘Never Again’ as lived experience. Furthermore, it invites the reader to imagine the futures of prevention of conflict repetition and transitional justice, together as well as apart. The chapter ends by signalling how pertinent the ‘Never Again’ promise continues to be in the lives of millions of people around the world and invites further research on the topic that will enrich the discipline with new contexts and perspectives.

Chapter 3 is a critical genealogy which rests on a history of the global project’s trajectories in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) to reevaluate contemporary conceptions of ‘Never Again’. It paints the picture of the material and ideational aspects of the transitional justice project in this country from the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 1993 to the myriad of measures of institutional and legal reform implemented by the international community actors present in BiH in the early 2000s. The chapter opens with a brief description of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the war 1992–1995. It then illustrates the conflict resolution process and explains what kind of BiH was imagined in the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement. Next, the chapter outlines a skeleton of transitional justice in this country to show that certain areas, such as criminal justice and institutional reform, have been significantly more developed than others, putting these developments into the context of the promises of neoliberal legalism. Finally, the chapter poses questions about the end of transitional justice in BiH.

Chapter 5 continues to explore the connections and disconnections between the transitional justice project and non-recurrence of conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). It proposes that education can make or break meaningful assurances of conflict non-recurrence. The chapter demonstrates how ethnically segregated history teaching in BiH plays a key role in the maintenance of a post-conflict status quo which has frozen certain anxieties around the uncertain future of peace in the country. Further, the chapter posits that the global project of transitional justice, while not responsible for the burgeoning ethnonationalism, has actively made bad situations worse with its short-sighted security priorities and general misunderstanding of security as lived experience. In particular, the chapter focuses on how and why the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia undertook a role of an educator of the BiH youth and public and how the advocates of the transitional justice project have ignored the complexity of the prevention needs of the BiH society.

Chapter 6 concludes the three-partite discussion about what hampers meaningful assurances of ‘Never Again’ in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and what transitional justice has to do with conflict recurrence anxieties. The chapter first identifies the widespread glorification of war criminals and denial of atrocity crimes as key sources of anxiety about potential renewed conflict in BiH. Next, the chapter analytically links these practices to the global project and discusses how past practices of legal and institutional reform such as vetting led to a legal structure that did not regulate convicted war criminals’ access to power. The chapter then explains these behaviours as responses to the perceived threats to different political communities’ ontological securities. The chapter shows how the resulting widespread practices of glorification and the culture of denialism are framed by the international community as a ‘civilisational issue’ which serves to prolong the relevance and presence of the external actors in Bosnia and Herzegovina and stigmatise actors in international society.

Chapter 4 is the first of the three chapters that draw on interviews, observations, and life stories from Bosnia and Herzegovina to narrate a story about what ‘Never Again’ means for the people in this country and formulate a claim about transitional justice’s complicity in the construction of conflict recurrence anxieties. This chapter proposes that the lack of state-sponsored, state-wide truth recovery and a national dialogue about the characteristics, dynamics, and consequences of the war creates anxieties about potential conflict repetition. It then demonstrates how the global project of transitional justice is complicit in creating and sustaining these anxieties. In particular, the chapter shows how the normative hierarchy of transitional justice and the positioning of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia as a key source of the historical status quo helped enhance the building of multiple, competing, and often parallel biographical narratives about the war that prolong anxieties about potential conflict recurrence.

This chapter offers a global and pan-European account of Holocaust trials, which stretch from occupied Germany immediately after the war to Australia in the 1980s, and much in between. It shows that initially crimes against Jews were not in the primary prosecutorial focus of the thousands of trials dealing with Nazi crimes across Europe, but that over the decades Holocaust-related crimes moved to the center of Nazi war crimes and criminal trials related to the Second World War. The chapter trances the evolution of Nazi trials, from an initial period of intensive prosecution in the immediate aftermath of the war, to a period of relative quiet in the 1950s, to a renewed wave of prosecutions beginning in the 1960s.

The loss of human life and physical injuries through violence are an inherent consequence of armed conflict, including civil wars. Deliberate atrocities – such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, politicide and “ethnic cleansing” – have been a conspicuous feature of many wars. Civil wars – whether correctly or incorrectly from an empirical perspective – have often been regarded as particularly vicious, transgressing all norms of decency in the frequency and type of atrocities. This chapter explores several key questions that have arisen in the conflict analysis field in relation to atrocities in civil war – and war generally. Are atrocities specifically associated with certain “types” of civil war, such as separatist, ideological, intercommunal, or resource conflict? Are there patterns in terms of which types of actors – state or non-state rebel groups – are more likely to perpetrate atrocities? What motivates individuals and groups to perpetrate atrocities, and what “role,” if any, do such atrocities play in armed conflict? Do atrocities play a strategic role, or are they better understood as a manifestation of individual and group sadism, revenge, and hate or fear, spread in the contemporary era by social media? Are all combatants capable of perpetuating atrocities in the “right” circumstances? The chapter concludes with a discussion of the international norms that have emerged over the last century – which prohibit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide – and the calls for accountability and justice after mass atrocities that have arguably made a significant although limited impact on conduct in war. As a part of this, “transitional justice” has emerged as an important topic, designed to address the societal impact and legacy of atrocities.

This and the following chapter look at how infusing corruption into areas of human-rights related practice could make a difference. Here I consider transitions from dictatorship or internal armed conflict, and in particular how transitional justice has dealt with corruption. I focus on 3 emblematic transitions from different recent time periods: South Africa, Tunisia and Colombia, and add in some lessons from prior discussion of Guatemala. I find that failure to vet and control military intelligence officers, economic privatization and decentralization, and lack of attention to judicial selection and to auditing, tax and other controls contribute to the emergence of powerful alliances of corrupt officials, organized crime and predatory elites.

Thinking about humiliation and its consequences informs various areas of political theory – even if latently. Part of the point of classical jus in bello restrictions like the requirements of proportionality and discrimination is to limit the harm we do to our enemies, so as to keep alive the possibility of future reconciliation. Indiscriminate and disproportionate harms undermine the chances of peace, among other reasons, because they are humiliating. In the field of transitional justice, the prospect of ending the humiliations endemic to authoritarian governance can justify the compromise of liberal principles (such as retroactive criminalization and reliance on shaky evidence) that transitional policies often involve. Our discussion also takes up the role humiliation plays in political appeasement. We argued that one of the reasons that appeasement is wrong is that it involves a self-humiliation. By deferring to those who threaten force, the appeaser communicates that survival matters more to them than their self-respect.

This introduction sets out the aims and approach of the book. Following an introduction to the Norwegian post-war reckoning and a review of the existing literature on the topic, it argues that only an analysis of the full time span of the trials can uncover their complex dynamics and the changing positions of their key actors over time. The introduction then sets out the analytical framework of the book, which is to explore the – at times competing – legal and political rationales of the trials in face of a rapidly changing political and social climate.