Gender and Transitional Justice: The Women of East Timor

Gender and Transitional Justice provides the first comprehensive feminist analysis of the role of international law in formal transitional justice mechanisms. Using East Timor as a case study, it offers reflections on transitional justice administered by a UN transitional administration. Often presented as a UN success story, the author demonstrates that, in spite of women and children's rights programmes of the UN and other donors, justice for women has deteriorated in post-conflict Timor, and violence has remained a constant in their lives.

This book provides a gendered analysis of transitional justice as a discipline. It is also one of the first studies to offer a comprehensive case study of how women engaged in the whole range of transitional mechanisms in a post-conflict state, i.e. domestic trials, internationalised trials and truth commissions. The book reveals the political dynamics in a post-conflict setting around gender and questions of justice, and reframes of the meanings of success and failure of international interventions in the light of them.

1. Introduction: A luta continua! (The Fight Continues!) 2. Sexing the Subject of Transitional Justice 3. Cecelia Soares Recalls: East Timor as a Case Study 4. Beloved Madam: The Indonesian ad hoc Human Rights Court 5. Wearing his Jacket: The Serious Crimes Process 6. Women Cut in Half: The Commission for Reception, Truth Seeking and Reconciliation and the Limits of Restorative Justice 7. Conclusion: 'Operation Love'. Appendices. Bibliography