TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN CENTRAL AMERICA: EVALUATING POSTCONFLICT SOCIETY THROUGH TRUST IN GOVERNMENTAL INSTITUTIONS, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND DEMOCRATIZATION

Abstract

Central America saw major conflict across the 20th century because of colonial, economic, and social history. Specifically, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua endured civil conflict that included widespread human rights abuses in the latter 20th century. As part of the peace building effort, international mediators implemented the usage of transitional justice mechanisms in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, but not Nicaragua. This paper looks at the peace building process in these four nations and analyses the effectiveness of transitional justice mechanisms in establishing peace and justice within each state. By utilizing three data sets, we look at the growth in trust of the population in key governmental institutions, human rights data, and democracy in each of the four central American countries listed. Our findings illustrate that transitional justice seems to have a positive effect in each metric. However, there seems to be a disconnect between trust in governmental institutions and the reality of human rights protections in nations which have experienced transitional justice. The data indicates that transitional justice has higher effectivity at building trust between the population and governmental institutions than it does at increasing human rights protections. Additionally, democratization from a generalized perspective has been achieved partially through transitional justice in each of these nations, yet democratic rights vary in protection across the board.