The Intolerable Narrative: How Politicizing Forgiveness Undermines Transitional Justice Processes

This chapter challenges the practice of compelling forgiveness in transitional justice processes seeking resolution of longstanding armed conflicts, particularly civil strife. Forgiveness through amnesties and pardons is central to transitional justice processes and essential for deconstructing conflict narratives, but it cannot be forced; True forgiveness is personal and can only be bestowed spontaneously, freely, and outside of formal justice. This chapter argues that governmental “forgiveness mandates” compelling individual forgiveness can undermine reconciliation by replacing personal with political processes, entrenching blame and resentment through assigning and reifying group moral valuations. Groups’ collective narratives in intractable conflicts distinguish victims (us) from persecutors (them). As forgiveness is a personal stance, that is reinforced, nonetheless, through internalized group’s conflict narrative, by politicizing it governments trap parties to a conflict in the roles of “victim” and “perpetrator,” impeding societal healing and the development of post-conflict collective identity narratives.
We use the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as a case study to demonstrate the detrimental effects of politicized forgiveness. We contrast it with the Colombian peace accords which designed a transitional justice mechanism that did not privilege forgiveness and allowed parties to evolve beyond their conflict roles by focusing instead on social integration, the search for historical truth, and other country reforms. Ultimately, we conclude that transitional justice processes should deemphasize compelled forgiveness to create better conditions to achieve longstanding peace and advance social cohesion.