Skip to product information
1 of 1

Parents, Children, and the Ripples of Transitional Justice

Regular price $119.95
Regular price $0.00 Sale price $119.95
Sold out
This pioneering collection breaks new ground by examining how post-atrocity justice affects and is informed by familial relationships, particularly between parents and children. Moving beyond trad...
Read More
  • 12 May 2026
View Product Details

This pioneering collection breaks new ground by examining how post-atrocity justice affects and is informed by familial relationships, particularly between parents and children.

Moving beyond traditional discussions of victims and perpetrators, this volume centres the dynamics of care, responsibility, and identity in the aftermath of mass atrocity. It explores how attempts at addressing legacies of mass atrocity can undermine or strengthen families. Drawing on global case studies and innovative interdisciplinary insights, chapters reveal how socially constructed ideas about parenthood and childhood inform notions of responsibility with and for children within transitional justice frameworks.

files/i.png Icon
Price: $119.95
Pages: 274
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Imprint: Bristol University Press
Publication Date: 12 May 2026
ISBN: 9781529248555
Format: Hardcover
BISACs: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Human Rights, Peacekeeping operations, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Security (National & International), POLITICAL SCIENCE / Peace, Development studies, Human rights, civil rights, Age groups: children, Peace studies and conflict resolution
REVIEWS Icon
"Wanton wars on children in DRC, Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere make accountability more urgent and more fraught. This much-needed book calls on transitional justice to go beyond shopworn (and often paternalistic) invocations of “best interests of the child” and child-centric processes by paying greater attention to families and inter-generational relationality, as well as to critical childhood studies and care ethics." Lars Waldorf, Northumbria University, UK

"Combining sophisticated theoretical analysis with rich empirical research, this edited collection goes straight to the heart of the most fundamental of all human relationships. It is essential reading for scholars and practitioners of transitional justice." Renee Jeffery, Griffith Asia Institute

"An important volume that highlights how the family can and must be considered in any process to address broader legacies of violence in communities seeking to move beyond it." Simon Robins, Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York

"A necessary and truly global contribution to peacebuilding discussions, highlighting the family dimension and paternalist logics of transitional justice practices. A must read to reflect on effective sustainable peace." Patrícia Nabuco Martuscelli, University of Sheffield

Kirsten J. Fisher is Associate Professor of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.

Caitlin Mollica is Assistant Professor for the Business School at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

Introduction. Familial Care and Paternalism: The Parent-Child Relationship and Transitional Justice - Kirsten J. Fisher and Caitlin Mollica

PART I: Conceptualising Familial Transitional Justice Relationships 

1. Grown-Ups, Grown-Downs, and Pan Generationality – Mark A. Drumbl

2. Childhood and the Parent Subject: Encounters in Public Memory – J. Marshall Beier  

3. Queering Childhood and Paternalism in Global Transitional Justice – Caitlin Biddolph

PART II: Governed and Governing Familial Transitional Justice Relationships  

4. Rights to Supported Families and Non-Discrimination: The Ugandan National Transitional Justice Response to Children Born of War – Kirsten J. Fisher and Jess Mugero  

5. Transitional Justice as an Illusion: The Guatemalan State as Parent– Leonzo Barreno (K’iche’ Maya)

6. Children’s Voices: The Implementation of An Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Metis Children, Youth, and Families as a Transitional Justice Tool in Saskatchewan Canada – Jamesy Patrick  

7. Child- and Family-Sensitive Transitional Justice Policy Implementation in Africa – Bonny Ibhawoh and Adebisi Alade  

8. 'Artisans of Peace': When Children Challenge the Parent/Child Dichotomy in Contexts of Transitional Justice – Cadhla O’Sullivan

PART III: Lived Experience of Familial Transitional Justice Relationships 

9. A Search for Belonging: Children Born of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Northern Uganda and Post-Conflict Reunification with Paternal Families – Myriam Denov, Nathaniel Mosseau, and Atim Angela Lakor  

10. Parents, Children and Post-Genocide Justice in Rwanda: Intergenerational Echoes of Gacaca Trials – Barbora Holá, Veroni Eichelsheim, Lidewyde Berckmoes and Annemiek Richters

11. Undermining Family and Social Relationships in Iraqi Transitional Processes – Yousra Hasona 

12. Child Soldiers and Family Reunification in Nepal: Victimhood in the Absence of Justice – Kate Macfarlane  

13. Mothers’ and Children’s Resilience in the Context of the Years of Lead and their Involvement in the Transitional Justice Process in Morocco – Aziz Saidi

PART IV: Concluding Reflections 

14. Reflections on the Parent-Child Relationship in International Relations, Childhood Studies, and Transitional Justice – Caitlin Mollica and Kirsten J. Fisher

15. Reappearing what Disappears: Children, Families, and Relationships in Justice, Transitions, and Transitional Justice – Mark Kersten

16. Relationalities and Temporalities Beyond Binaries – Helen Berents