Queering the Global Governance of Transitional Justice: Tensions and (Im)Possibilities

ABSTRACT∞ In recent years, scholars and activists have been asking queer questions about transitional justice. Queer perspectives advocate for the recognition of anti-queer violence within transitional justice; the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people in transitional justice processes; and the development of queer decolonial critiques of transitional justice. Informed by this research agenda, I develop a queer perspective to the global governance of transitional justice. I analyse documents from the UN, the International Center for Transitional Justice and the International Criminal Court. Representing mechanisms from across global transitional justice, I trace the (cis-heteronormative, colonial, carceral) violence of transitional justice and its institutionalization at the global level. I reflect on the queer tensions and (im)possibilities of global transitional justice, a site that is violent but holds transformative potential. The global governance of transitional justice must be queered to expand its social, political and conceptual remit, and to seek more radical, liberatory worlds within and beyond formal justice mechanisms.