Simon Robins is a humanitarian practitioner and researcher with an interest in transitional justice, humanitarian protection and human rights. The issue of persons disappeared and missing in armed conflict is a focus of his work, and empirical work on the issue forms the basis of his critique of current practice in transitional justice. He has recently published a book on the topic: Families of the Missing: A test for contemporary approaches to Transitional Justice, with Routledge. He has consulted for a range of international agencies, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Save the Children UK, the International Centre for Transitional Justice and the Institute for Security Studies, and has also worked with the ICRC in Geneva as Advisor on missing persons and their families, and as a delegate in the field in Timor-Leste, Uganda and Nepal.
Toward Victim-centered Transitional Justice: Nepal and Timor-Leste
The first decade of the twenty-first century has been characterized by the emergence of a new politics of human rights that has become the defining agenda of much national and international politics. This universalist discourse of rights has gained unprecedented leverage in global debate, propelled by narratives that rarely pause to question the evidence or ideology that underlies it. This is nowhere more true than in the practice of human rights after conflict or political violence, in which transitional justice has become a dominant approach to addressing legacies of violations, backed by an industry of practitioners and donors.
