Ricerc@Sapienza

Since the aftermath of WWII the multidisciplinary debate on the relationship between mass atrocities, memory and redress has attracted attention by lawyers, historians, philosophers and sociologists. To overcome past atrocities, including historic crimes, justice need to be done, crimes to be established and victims to be afforded some kind of remedy. At the same time legal, political and economic difficulties militate against such a scenario and measures adopted at the national and international level have largely been inadequate to provide an appropriate redress, notwithstanding the increasing legalization of such scenarios especially through a growing ¿individualization¿ of claims.

The project aims to scrutinize challenges raised by mass atrocities in order to map out measures adopted in response to such events, duties requested to States to address such situations and potential best practices to be developed. In particular the project aims to focus on: sociological and historic perspectives addressing these issues and the relationship between individual and collective measures of redress; difficulties raised by legal instruments favouring oblivion and their relation with positive obligations; practice developed at the domestic and international level to address mass atrocities especially taking into account theoretical challenges and shortcomings raised in such scenarios; ¿crimes of history¿ dating back to historical events that raise several theoretical issues such as those related to intertemporal law and intergenerational justice.

A systematic analysis of such issues is still lacking. Therefore, a comprehensive multidisciplinary exam of this topic would provide a significant innovative theoretical contribution, especially taking into account its continuous relevance as emphasized by recent cases of States involved in transitions processes or addressing historic crimes.