How to Repair Historical Injustice?

April 15th-17th 2026

The last decade has witnessed an increase in civil proceedings brought before Dutch district courts by people adversely affected by colonial violence, military missions, sexual abuse, and environmental harm. Does legal action against institutions such as the Dutch state, the military, the church, and multinationals bring about the recognition and justice that people long for? Which conditions are conducive, and which less favourable for people to feel recognized? And what is the role played by state- and non-state institutions in enabling recognition procedures to become transformative?

Our three-day conference on ‘How to repair historical injustice?’ concluded the five-year long research project Dialogics of Justice – funded by a VICI-grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Based at the University of Humanistic Studies – our interdisciplinary team aims to broaden the classic Transitional Justice focus on mass human rights violations towards social, economic, and ecological violence. We advocate for a Transformative Justice Approach; for us this means to see and reveal the logics of systemic/institutional injustice and identify the coloniality in all our cases; also in the repair instruments. We aim to contribute to making future recognition and reparation procedures more effective and transformative.

The relational approach of the project brought different forms of grave historical injustices next to each other – to learn from each other: the failure to prevent genocide in Srebrenica, military atrocities in Indonesia, Royal Dutch Shell’s environmental and human rights violation in the Niger Delta, abuse by the Catholic church/Good Sheperd; as well as the gas extraction in Groningen, the Child Benefit Scandal, and intercountry adoption, Dutch injustice cases and international counterparts.

The conference brought together lawyers, plaintiffs, scholars, activists, stakeholders, artists and survivors. It bridged academic scholarship and lived realities. We reflected on the gains and losses of legal processes (in a wider sense); the merits of a related approach (when being productive or unproductive), the role of the imagination (art), and looking for lessons learned in bringing the local/global into a conversation. While we like to think those cases apart, the relation between them became evident by itself. We did not discuss ‘cases’ but ‘systematic practices’ of harm: Such as limited and fragmented recognition models that via institutionalising again exclusion produce new harm. Such as performances of distance that hinder to consider those victimised as neighbours we care of or subjects with rights instead of gestures of benevolence. Such as rhetorical practices of wrongdoing parties of “having good intentions”, which keeps stereotyping in place and the shame on the victim’s side. The conference showed how court cases are “places of civic education” (facilitating stories that challenge hegemonic narratives); as they are places of unlearning. To offer the right recognition, it is important to describe the wrongdoing in precise terms. Why are redress schemes not more inclusive, while we know that historical injustice has broad ripple-effects? The conference also showed how art can open spaces for justice and connection in ways that legal and academic language sometimes cannot. Questions of archiving and memory emerged here as forms of Transitional Justice and on archives as a means of achieving justice — insights that will continue to inspire our own archiving process. Through a relational approach we established patterns; showing similarities between victim groups was meant not to ignore differences but to empower by revealing the always same logics of harm; also within reparation policies.

We are deeply grateful to everyone who contributed to making this conference such a meaningful and memorable gathering. While this marks the conclusion of the Dialogics of Justice (DoJ) project, it is certainly not the end of the conversations and research it generated. The work will continue within the chair of Historical Memory and Transformative Justice.

talked about the many efforts taken by the Bosnian community to create visibility for their narratives, their faces, and their claims. She spoke about ethnic cleansing as a euphemism that neglects the genocidal infrastructure behind such violence, and reflected on how the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia stands for the idea of ending impunity and represents the face of justice. For that reason, she stressed how crucial it is to transform parts of the former court building into a monument. Referring to the exhibition by the Bosnian Girl collective, she explained how the phrase “Srebrenica is Dutch history” was intended to circulate the idea that, through displaying their faces in public spaces, Bosnian survivors and descendants are also part of Dutch history. She noted that “they other the project as if it is outside of Dutch history”, referring to official reactions to the plans for the ICTY monument project. Tanović described how the placeholder monument was realised in order to pressure the government into taking action, under the slogan: “Because of Nuremberg ICTY, because of ICTY Nuremberg.” She further observed that the negotiations surrounding the project also revealed forms of slow violence – polite smiles, slow procedures, and bureaucratic delay – which she described as a form of structural violence as well. Finally, she reflected on how some genocides are forgotten, others are positioned as the main genocide, such as the Holocaust, while others are silenced even as violence continues to unfold live-streamed, referring to the ongoing genocide in Palestine. To conclude, she presented a symbol of empathy and solidarity: the white flower of Srebrenica, combined in part with the colours of Palestine, to express that genocide scholars stand together.