Your research focuses on the role of private actors in transitional justice processes. What motivated you to pursue this research project?
First of all, thank you so much for the invitation and for your interest in my research. Let me start by briefly explaining what transitional justice is. In a few words, transitional justice is a way for countries to deal with mass violence or atrocities that happened during wars or dictatorships. It is mostly about establishing mechanisms or institutions to find out the truth about the crimes committed, hold those responsible accountable, support victims, and rebuild fairer institutional and legal systems for the future. You might have heard about the prosecutions of war criminals from the former Yugoslavia or the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.
I became interested in the role of private actors in these processes because transitional justice usually happens in extremely fragile contexts, where states often lack the resources to organise these initiatives on their own. This creates a space for other actors – NGOs, philanthropic foundations, and businesses – to step in and support the process. They do this in various ways: The two most prominent ones are providing funds, for example for criminal tribunals, and organising these processes, which also includes performing certain functions such as conducting investigations of international crimes.
While I acknowledge the importance of such private involvement in the delivery of justice, I also feel the need to critically look at what they do, as these actors aren’t formally tasked to help or perform functions that otherwise remain legal obligations of states. And yes, we do live in a world where we often can’t rely solely on our governments, but I see a problem with private involvement in transitional justice. If something goes wrong, these private actors can’t really be held responsible for their actions, at least not under international law, since they do not have an international legal personality as states as certain international organisations do.
Could you provide an example of how exactly private actors can be involved in transitional justice?
One example of a private actor’s financial support would be the Ford Foundation which had a special programme on truth commissions that helped many countries establish truth-seeking mechanisms. Those mechanisms aimed at uncovering what happened during armed conflicts or dictatorships in different contexts across the globe. The Ford Foundation did this by funding these initiatives but also by providing experience and training for people who would work in such commissions.
An example of a private actor taking over part of a justice process would be organisations involved in private investigations of international crimes. For instance, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability is an NGO that collects evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other gross human rights violations, such as torture in places like Syria, Iraq, Myanmar, etc. The collected evidence is later used in court proceedings, by national courts or specialised criminal tribunals.
Overall, I think that it is hard to deny that the work of private actors is important in the broader pursuit of justice. But at the same time, we have to look at it critically. There are several risks involved: questions around legitimacy, the accuracy of their findings, the methodologies of their work, what stories they chose to tell and whose voices they listen to, the agendas they may carry, as well as, sometimes, overreliance on their work by states who are the primary duty bearers when it comes to dispensing justice. So, these concerns for me present a compelling need for my study and I hope it inspires others to pay closer attention to these issues so that we can find the best possible ways to organise transitional justice processes.
What are your thoughts about the ever-growing role of private actors in performing public functions more generally? Do you see an impact of your study in a broader context of international law?
I think that the general question of whether private involvement in public functions is good or bad is definitely up for debate, but either way, I believe that we need to look at it critically. Private actors have become so embedded in public life that we often don’t even notice them anymore. One of the clearest examples is the privatisation of prisons or the outsourcing of the provision of basic services like water and food.
This trend of privatisation is growing – especially in areas like human rights and politics. In his recent Max Weber Lecture, Philip Alston pointed out the privatisation that is happening across the globe at the moment. I completely agree with his take that when public funds are not directed toward meeting people’s social and economic needs, it opens the door for private actors to step in and fill those gaps.
Private actors, whether businesses or foundations, operate according to their own logic. For companies, it’s usually profit; for philanthropies, it might be pushing a certain agenda or shaping public narratives. The irony is that many of these foundations are creatures of tax exemption policies – meaning the money that could’ve been used by the state to improve the conditions of schools, hospitals, or infrastructure is instead being redirected by private actors, based on their own priorities.
We’re also seeing this trend in politics more generally. In the US, private influence is growing even at the highest levels of government with people like Elon Musk and other ‘tech-bros’ being so deeply involved in shaping public policies - and this isn’t going to slow down. States, even in Europe, are shifting public spending priorities, often toward militarisation. That money has to come from somewhere, which means other areas – like education, healthcare, or the environment – get less funding. And again, this creates space for private actors to take over public roles.
So, the big question is: How should we respond to these changes? I am an international lawyer, so I look for answers in my own field. We can’t ignore the importance of states fulfilling their legal obligations in the first place. But the issues related to privatisation should be tackled much more broadly, of course. That’s where I see my research contributing to a broader picture – connecting political economy with various areas of international law such as human rights or transitional justice.
If private actors became so entrenched in public functions such as transitional justice, what are the alternatives? Where does the research take you from there?
One solution I’ve been considering is to rethink international legal frameworks to actually include private actors. In short, I propose a model of international legal responsibility where private actors would have the same obligations as states when they voluntarily take on functions that are usually the responsibility of governments.
But even if we had such a legal framework, I realise that we would still face serious challenges – especially when it comes to cooperation between states and private actors in sensitive contexts like transitional justice. The problem is that states, or their representatives, are often the very actors who were involved in committing the violations in the first place.
So, that led me to think: Maybe the answer isn’t just about regulating private actors better. Maybe we need to rethink the whole setup. Even when justice efforts are led by private actors, they usually remain very top-down and state-focused. There’s a strong belief that rebuilding state institutions, like police or courts, will prevent future abuses and bring reconciliation. But this often ignores the needs, knowledge, and voices of the people most affected. Transitional justice is ultimately about the people who suffered and survived. That’s why I became interested in whether we can take some inspiration from political theories of anarchism, which advocate for decentralised, community-led approaches. Anarchy sounds very unrealistic to some people at first – but some of the mechanisms behind it might actually help us imagine transitional justice in a way that puts survivors at the centre of the process and truly supports their agency and healing.
For me, it is important to showcase within legal academia that anarchy doesn’t necessarily mean chaos – at its core, anarchy is about questioning top-down state control and imagining more horizontal, decentralised, direct-action approaches. It’s surprising, though, that these ideas haven’t really been explored in international law, even though they could help shift the focus away from institutions and towards people. This does not mean that there should be just one fixed model of doing things. It’s more about asking: How can we create justice processes that are truly built by and for the people, where healing comes through collective care and solidarity rather than punishment or control?
Here at the EUI, I started to explore these questions in my new postdoc project, and I am currently working on an article that focuses on how we can ‘prefigure’ transitional justice, meaning to enact future justice in the present and build the new world in the shell of the old. I hope to offer some useful ideas for rethinking how we organise not only justice processes but also societies in which people’s needs constitute a driving force – and not power, profit, or maybe even law. More about that soon!
Julia Emtseva is an international lawyer from Kyrgyzstan and a Fellow at the Max Weber Programme of Postdoctoral Studies, the largest international postdoctoral programme in the social sciences and humanities in Europe. Her PhD project focuses on the role of private actors in transitional justice processes, especially on how philanthropic foundations, NGOs, and companies get engaged in criminal trials, truth-seeking, and reparation programmes. As a Max Weber Fellow, Julia is working on her new project on anarchism and international law.