Whose Testimony? Thinking about Other-Than-Human Witnesses in Transitional Justice

Witnesses play a crucial role in transitional justice processes. Existing scholarship, however, has focused exclusively on human witnesses. This interdisciplinary article does something different, analyzing the significance of other-than-human witnesses – and in particular trees. While it is not the first to problematize the fact that transitional justice is heavily anthropocentric, its novel emphasis on witnessing differentiates it from other critical transitional justice research which has mainly discussed ‘nature’ as a victim. To focus on more-than-human worlds as witnesses is not, to be clear, about detracting from the harms that they suffer during war and armed conflict. It is about accentuating their agency and exploring ways of doing justice not just for them but, also, with them. Drawing on Indigenous knowledges and conceptualizing witnessing as a deeply relational process that necessitates attentiveness and openness to more-than-human worlds, the article also thus makes an original contribution to discussions about decolonizing the field of transitional justice.