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Studies of law and visual culture address important aspects of symbols of justice,1 the courtroom venue itself,2 and how representations of harm, justice and violence possess a transformative power...

This chapter focuses on key questions concerning truth commissions' work and presents important examples throughout the discussion. It considers the definition of a truth and reconciliation commission, and that its key components of truth, reconciliation and commission carry a broad plethora of responsibilities and expectations. Most truth commissions base their work on testimonies gathered from thousands of victims, witnesses and perpetrators. The East German regime is discussed differently in the literature, compared to its counterparts who were also the subject of commission inquiries. The Commission was given the power to grant individualised amnesty, search premises and seize evidence, subpoena witnesses and run a witness protection programme. The impact of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission on reconciliation has been the subject of ongoing debate. The Commission recommended that the process be based on traditional dispute-resolution mechanisms. The Liberian Commission's work has made an invaluable contribution to the mapping of human rights abuses.

'There has for a very long time been a strong feeling against making legislation, and particularly criminal legislation, retrospective […] I use retrospective in the sense of authorising people being punished for what they did before the Act came into force'. 'Writing the recent history of the Central and Eastern part of Europe is unlike the work of the Western historian, who can turn to published sources, contemporary reports, memoirs by participants and eyewitnesses, whose work is embedded in solid, mostly normalized and consolidated public memory. Usually it is not the historian who is the messenger there, unlike the less fortunate part of the world, where the message is, more often than not, bad news. The recent history of Central and Eastern Europe is the history of bad times'. This chapter examines the similarities and differences of the legal discourses on the prohibition of retroactive laws within the European human rights framework. It also considers the significance of the notion of retrospective justice in the post-dictatorial period (post-1989) in Europe, and more specifically in Germany and Poland. It begins by setting out key legal definitions in national and regional legal frameworks in order to determine what underpins the prohibition on retroactive laws. An examination of key German, Polish and European jurisprudence reveals that the legal narratives on retrospective justice run parallel and in opposite directions, revealing cracks in consensual histories that bring historical sensibility and issues into sharp relief. Retrospective justice in post-Communist Europe contributes a defined set of problems to the field of transitional justice, beginning with the challenges posed by statutes of limitations and ending with unfinished narratives on select chapters of Communist histories. RESEARCH QUESTION This chapter examines the similarities and differences in the legal discourses on the prohibition of retroactive laws within the European human rights framework. It also considers the significance of the notion of retrospective justice in the post-dictatorial period (post-1989) in Europe, and more specifically in Germany and Poland. From a common law perspective, for example, the idea of punishing people for an act that was not a crime at the time of commission is regarded as loathsome.

Part 1 Right of the child to a clean environment at international and European levels: the right of child workers protection from enviromental hazards right of the child to a clean environment in European Union Law. Part 2 Right of the child to a clean environment at national levels - selected case studies: environmental rights of the child in India the right of the child to a clean environment in Poland the right of the child to a clean environment in Nigeria does the Gambian child have a right to a clean environment? the constitutional right to a clean environment - constitional reform in Argentina and environmental education in Patagonia. Part 3 Right of the child to a clean environment - the role of international organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs): the susceptible child - does the child have a right to health and a safe environment? children and the right to grow up in an environment supporting their health and well-being - a sound environment provided for and encapsulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Annexes: summary of project and questionnaire responses human rights and the environment - final report

This volume considers the important and timely question of criminal justice as a method of addressing state violence committed by non-democratic regimes. The book's main objectives concern a fresh, contemporary, and critical analysis of transitional criminal justice as a concept and its related measures, beginning with the initiatives that have been put in place with the fall of the Communist regimes in Europe in 1989. The project argues for re-thinking and re-visiting filters that scholars use to interpret main issues of transitional criminal justice, such as: the relationship between judicial accountability, democratisation and politics in transitional societies; the role of successor trials in re-writing history; the interaction between domestic and international actors and specific initiatives in shaping transitional justice; and the paradox of time in enhancing accountability for human rights violations. In order to accomplish this, the volume considers cases of domestic accountability in the post-1989 era, from different geographical areas, such as Europe, Asia and Africa, in relation to key events from various periods of time. In this way the approach, which investigates space and time-lines in key examples, also takes into account a longitudinal study of transitional criminal justice itself.