Human Rights Quarterly has accepted for publication an article co-authored by Line Jespersgaard Jakobsen, Thomas Obel Hansen and Line Engbo Gissel, entitled ‘Calling for Inclusion’: Negotiating Boundaries in the Transitional Justice Script.
The publication is an outcome of the 4-year research project, ‘The Standardisation of Transitional Justice: Consolidation, Innovation and Politics’, funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (grant no. 1028-00206B), to which Ulster University is a part.
The article examines the negotiation of the boundaries of TJ prompted by calls for inclusion, specifically for environmental justice and corporate accountability. Through a novel conceptualization of TJs possible ‘substantive expansion’, and by building on theory on boundary work and standardization, the study contributes to TJ scholarship by highlighting paradoxes of TJ's standardization:
Firstly, it both restricts and encourages substantive expansion.
Secondly, the adoption of new issues into the script does not guarantee enforcement, leading to a norms-enforcement paradox.