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To What Extent Domestic Actors Internalize

International Norms?

Dr. Anil Sigdel

Paper for the International Studies

Association (ISA)

Global South Caucus 2015,

Singapore

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Abstract

The international practice of resolving domestic conflicts through a democratic political

process which accommodates both rebels and governments, thereby neutralizing their

security dilemma has been globally institutionalized. Domestic actors, warring parties in

particular, have accepted the international normative formula mainly because it provides

a common political space in which they could continue to pursue their redefined

objectives. However, this study hypothesizes that actors tend to defy any normative

requirements that actors are expected to fulfill which could potentially jeopardize their

political future if not ultimately their existence itself. This article conducts a small-n

comparison among the conflict resolution cases of El Salvador, Guatemala and Nepal; it

examines, in particular, the issue of truth commissions to test the hypothesis. These

resolution cases were based on the framework of democracy and did not relapse into war.

The study shows that while warring parties had internalized the political process to give

up arms, they either resisted the formation of an independent truth commission or a full

implementation of the recommendation thereof.

Key Words

International Norms, Domestic Conflict, Truth Commission, El Salvador, Guatemala,

Nepal

Acknowledgement: I would like to thank the University of Vienna and the

Austrian Society for Political Science as well as the ISA GSCIS 2015 for granting me

some financial assistance so that I will be able present my work at the ISA GSCIS

2015.Similarly, I would like to thank Univ. Prof. Dr. Heinz Gaertner, University of

Vienna and Austrian Institute of International Affairs, because without him this work

would not have been possible. Finally, I must thank Prof. Markus Kornprobst, Vienna

Diplomatic Academy, because without his comments and suggestions this work would

not have taken the present shape.

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Introduction

For centuries, the realist discourse has dominated the world politics (Mearsheimer, 1995).

This fact shows in itself a very powerful explanatory capability of the realist paradigm.

However, International Relations (IR) scholars started to engage in an ideational

explanation – vis-à-vis realists’ material explanation (see Waltz, 1979) – under a different

ontology known as constructivism, particularly since the end of the Cold War (for

instance, Wendt, 1992; Finnemore, 1993; Katzenstein, 1996; among others). The post-

Cold War period not only saw a firm establishment of norms discourse, or the return of

norms (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998), but also unleashed a huge debate between

constructivists and realists, neo-realists in particular (see Mearsheimer, 1995; Wendt,

1995).

Most IR constructivist and realist scholars characteristically remained at the

systemic level of analysis of world politics, not taking into account domestic politics.

Among several strands of realism in IR, the neo-classical realism takes the domestic

variable into account in order to underpin its foreign policy theory (see Rose, 1998).

Some constructivists did start examining the effects of international norms in domestic

politics, but again only in relation to explaining state behavior in international politics;

their focus was on the explanation that change occurs via domestic politics (Cortell and

Davis, 2000). Constructivists also started critically examining the tradition of checking

norms’ effect by taking them (norms) as fixed. They instead examined the robustness or

salience of norms, “hard” or “soft” norms, adaptation or localization of norms (Legro,

1997; Cortell and Davis, 2000; Acharya, 2004) as a causal factor of why and how some

norms are internalized and others not (see Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998).

Checkel examines norms diffusion across varied regimes – the European Human

Rights regime in Russia, Ukraine, Germany and the UK (Checkel, 1997). Klotz explains

the implications of an internationally institutionalized norm for coordinated sanctions and

for domestic change – the norm of racial equality against the Apartheid regime of South

Africa (Klotz, 1995). Hawkins shows the impact of human rights on the military behavior

of Chile while under the dictator Pinochet (Hawkins, 2000). Some also examined why

and how an idea becomes a norm in the first place before talking about actors’ selection

of a norm. Kornprobst explains why domestic actors in the Republic of Ireland came to

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choose the European norm of territorial status-quo (Kornprobst, 2007). Hirsch shows that

how an ideational change in terms of the South African truth commission has paved the

way for the international institutionalization of the norm of truth commission (Hirsh,

2013). Risse even goes beyond the explanation of “logic of appropriateness” and “logic

of consequences” (see March and Olsen, 1998) and brings in Habermas’s

“communicative theory” and “logic of arguing” (Risse, 2000). In the same line,

Kornprobst also employs the concept of argumentation to overcome the two logics to

explain why and when actors accept a norm vis-à-vis their existing beliefs in a domestic

setting (Kornprobst, 2007).

All the explanations given above, apart from those that explain the making of a

norm, either talk about the quality of norms- salience, robustness, specificity etc. – as

determining factors for their effect (Legro, 1997) or the role of norm promoting side like

transnational advocacy (Risse, 2002) or domestic resonance of international norms and

coordination power of norms (Klotz, 1995) or modifying a systemic norm to a sub-

systemic institutions or organizations (Acharya, 2004)or norm diffusion in different

domestic settings (Checkel, 1997). Legro explains why some matter and others not by

examining the quality of norms – durability, clarity etc., but remains at the international

level by examining war time prohibitory norms like submarine attacks against merchant

ships, the bombing of nonmilitary targets, and the use of chemical weapons (Legro,

1997).

Acharya goes beyond his predecessors by arguing that not only some norms

matter and others because of their quality, but norms matter by being localized also

(Acharya, 2004). Some other devised “resonance” to explain variation across different

settings (Checkel, Cortell and Davis, Ulbert cited in Risse, 2002). But these explanations

do not convincingly explain the behavior of norm-takers vis-à-vis a norm - a hard norm

in particular. To be more specific, when a hard norm cannot be localized, cannot be

adjusted with previous beliefs or system and has a huge implication for norm-takers

political identity and future, or an existential threat for that matter, the above-mentioned

explanations do not explain how do norm-takers behave and why. Furthermore, here

there is no question of resonance argument vis-à-vis norm-takers’ fear and insecurity. It is

true for communicative or argumentation theory also, since the norm jeopardize the very

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existence of norm-takers, there is no possibility of arriving at a reasoned consensus

(compare Risse, 2000; Kornprobst, 2007; for the theory see Habermas, 1996).

Why IR Constructivism?

The research question requires theory that adequately addresses the dynamics of the

shared understandings – social norms and institutions – and the mechanism of norms

reconstituting identities and interests of social actors. Realism seeks to explain conflicts

in terms of material elements – scarce resources – independently from ideational

elements –social identity or group-identity. Similarly, since the research question

warrants social psychological insights, as factors like fears and insecurities are involved,

constructivism has them embedded. Constructivism not only borrows insights from the

social psychology but takes it further from its traditional elements of beliefs to shared

norms and their observance (Stein, 2002). Rationalism can explain the dynamics of

conflicts through its strategic dilemmas, but does not go as far as constructivism in

endogenizing interests and identities. Rationalist approach only examines behavior and

takes identities as fixed. Constructivists argue that identity lies at the root of conflicts

(Adler, 2002).

Similarly, in terms of the necessity of constructivism, the path that is needed to

bring the systemic theory into the domestic level, the Transnational Actors (TNA)

literature provides a “two level game” (Risse, 2002). The game refers to the role of

international actors in promoting human rights norms by pressurizing an authoritarian

regime through a top-down approach, and domestic norm entrepreneurs supported by the

international advocacy to pressure the regime through a bottom-up approach.

Neoclassical realists also examine domestic politics but they are realists, therefore, their

foundation is the balance of power which is not relevant in studying shared social

understanding-related questions. Similarly, the peace research tradition either largely

remains positivist and examines large-N cases with numerical analyses or assumes liberal

paradigm. Sociologists or cultural anthropologists remain at the domestic societal level

and cannot explain the norms links between global and local level. Consequently, the IR

theories can give convincing explanations when it comes to the link between national and

international dimensions of internal conflicts.

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Hypothesis of the study

Building upon the insights of the humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow, according to

whom safety is one of the basic human needs that motivates a certain behavior (Maslow,

1943; Maslow, 1954), and also building upon the social psychological explanations of

conflict which argue that fears of collective insecurity, if mobilized by some, could

transform into violence (Stein, 2002), I argue that for fear of a hard norm’s implications

for their basic needs, norm-takers circumvent the logic of appropriateness, and try to just

anyhow block their (norms’) diffusion.

Maslow explains his “hierarchy of needs” in his works, “Theory of Human

Motivation” and “Motivation and Personality” in a five-stage pyramid model which

starts from the most basic needs to self-actualization – physiological, safety, social,

esteem and self-actualization (Maslow, 1943; Maslow, 1954). He explains that these

needs, like instincts, motivate behavior. Here, the first need, physiological, is irrelevant

for the study, thus the second need, safety (I add here survival also), is considered to be

the basic need. Maslow explains that human needs move from lower to upper stage when

the need associated with the lower level is satisfied. But this study simply focuses on the

fact that safety and survival are the basic needs of humans, thus when they are threatened,

their instinctive reaction cannot remain in line with norms (or appropriateness).

Janice Gross Stein, similarly, explains how the origin of collective fears of future

insecurity and impetus to those fears could lead an identity-group to resort to violence

(Stein, 2002). While explaining the dynamics of “incompatible group identities as a

permissive context of conflict”, she argues that realist explanations are faulty in only

focusing on scarce resources as a cause of violence by ignoring the collective identities of

contending groups. However, she argues that the rational choice model becomes

compatible with psychological explanations. Rationale choice also assumes that the

collective fears of future insecurity causes strategic dilemma which leads to a rational

response of violence. She explains that, as long as the rationalists bring the intervening

variable of ethnic entrepreneurs who play on fears to cause violence, their approach is

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compatible with psychology. However, this study stays at the constructivist side as

discussed earlier as opposed to the rationalist explanations.

I examine how the issue of truth commission norm played out in the post-conflict

period of El Salvador, Guatemala and Nepal.1 The truth commission norm in these cases

would not take anything less than an independent commission and would prosecute those

involved in serious crimes. This means the warring sides, state army and rebels, in

particular, have no option of adapting the commission as per their interests but to either

accept or go to any extent to block it for their survival- i.e. to defy trial and justice and to

opt for reconciliation and amnesty. This norm gives only dichotomous possibility; either

you accept it and be “good” or else be “evil”. For instance, when in El Salvador an

amnesty law was passed in the parliament or when the Guatemalan stakeholders did not

implement the recommendation of the truth commission or when Nepal’s Constituent

Assembly passed the truth commission bill without the consent of rights organizations,

the stakeholders have clearly chosen to remain bad.

Furthermore, this norm provides no possibility of any congruence building or

tallying some norms vs. other norms to see which prevail (see Acharya, 2004). The Truth

and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, which preferred reconciliation vis-à-vis

justice, would not give such scope. Although South African practice did propel global

institutionalization of truth commissions (Hirsh, 2013), many experts argue that it was

not an ideal model because it gave undue preference to reconciliation as opposed to truth,

trial and justice. South Africa is excluded in the analysis anyway because it does not meet

the case selection criteria laid out below.

Rationale for Case Selection

All three cases of El Salvador, Guatemala and Nepal, represent ideological cases –

communist insurgency – seeking central governance, post-Cold War period conflict

termination and non-recurred war case (see Kreutz, 2010). El Salvador was the first case

of extensive involvement of norm promoters in the absence of the US and USSR’s

1 In Nepal’s case, as of this writing the TRC has not been formed. The TRC issue has been in the public eye

for quite some time now, and even the Constituent Assembly-II passed the TRC bill in June 2014, there has

been strong opposition from the rights activists. Previously, the ordinace of the TRC was eventually

blocked by the Supreme Court. For the detailed information on Nepal’s TRC issue, see Sigdel, 2014.

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ideological interests. Guatemala was a case where lessons learnt from El Salvador were

implemented. Nepal case happened at a time when the non-military post-conflict

reconstruction had become an internationally internalized norm.

While norms are not apt to explain the conflict resolution in every region, argue

Peceny and Stanley, the Central American cases are suitable region to study norms’ effect

(Peceny and Stanley, 2001). They showed how liberal values helped transformed

conflicts in El Salvador and Guatemala peacefully. This article brings a South Asian case

of Nepal which has very different social, historical, cultural and political settings from

Central America. Besides, the geopolitically hard-pressed Nepal, being situated between

India and China, represents a challenging setting for international norms to project their

power and effect.

To explain the problem, this article proposes three stages of norms internalization

(see Sigdel, 2014). Three stages because, like in a general process of actions, first, norm-

takers commit to or endorse prescribed norms. Second, norm-takers seek to understand

the guidelines in detail and interpret. Third, norm-takers make the decision either to

internalize or defy norms as per their understanding. With regard to the term

“internalization”, this study has followed this concept since, as mentioned earlier, the

norm of democratic post-conflict reconstruction has been internationally institutionalized

or internalized. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink explain the concept of

internalization and its measurement in their norm life cycle explanation (see Finnemore

and Sikkink, 1998).

The question however, definitely arises of whether actors are internalizing norms

or using them tactically. Rationalists would argue that actors do the latter and that

constructivists would argue the former. My research question seeks to address the extent

of the internalization of a norm under the logic of appropriates or, in other words, to test

the norm-takers’ behavior in terms of how far they act appropriately vis-à-vis a particular

norm. Therefore, I employ the constructivist ontology that norms constitute identity and

interest, thus, the behavior corresponds to those (re-)constituted identity and interest.

Incidentally, the matter of a possible or an impossible synthesis between rationalist and

constructivist approaches is extensively dealt with by scholars under ontological versus

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pragmatic ground (see Fearon and Wendt, 2002; Checkel, 1997; Finnemore and Sikkink,

1998; Klotz, 1995; Risse, 2000; Kornprobst, 2007).

El Salvador

El Salvador’s negotiated settlement between the rebels Farabundo Marti National

Liberation Front (FMLN) and the right-wing government, Nationalist Republican

Alliance (ARENA), represented a successful post-conflict reconstruction case right at the

beginning of the post-Cold War era. The UN led the peace process with a broad mandate

and the conflict resolution strategies applied by the UN together with other international

norm agents achieved a significant success: from the guerrillas’ transformation (into

political parties) to security reform to judicial reforms.

Since the Cold War ended, the international supply ended, which was mainly

responsible for the war to continue. In the new world order, the dominating reason for the

endurance of El Salvador’s peace happened to be the “liberal social reconstruction” of the

socio-polity. The term “liberal social construction” refers to liberal democracy and open

market economy as means of post-conflict reconstruction (Peceny and Holiday, 2001). It

was particularly the emergence of the insurgents’ understanding of (also of the

government’s and the military’s) and belief in the democratic polity, as means to pursue

their objectives (Peceny and Holiday, 2001).

The rebels were pushed to that end by several factors: a result of the changing

international conditions, a stalemate situation between the warring sides and the

international community’s policy to rely on a framework of democracy and human rights.

The international community had not enforced peace with military power but put strong

conditions of respecting human rights on the warring sides. Even though there were no

security guarantees provided to the FMLN rebels vis-à-vis the heavily militarized state of

El Salvador, the international community succeeded in neutralizing their security

dilemma (for this argument of outsider’s security guarantee, see Walter, 1997) through

diffusing the international norms and carrying out institutional reforms.

While the tough agenda of extensive security sector reform (SSR) succeeded to a

large extent (Toft, 2010), the right-wing ARENA did not cooperate as expected in terms

of the Ad Hoc Commission’s and the Truth Commission’s recommendations. The two

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sides had agreed upon the Ad Hoc Commission which would try to transform the

powerful military by purging their staffs who were involved in human rights violations

during the war. In order to form a strong base for democracy, the Ad Hoc Commission

was viewed as a necessary step to hold the military responsible for its wrong deeds in the

past. Although initially some portion of the SSR materialized, the military vehemently

resisted the Ad hoc Commission’s pressure. The army was not only apologetic but also

issued threats to harm the cadres of the FMLN, forced the PM to speak in their support by

resisting the Commission’s recommendations.

In terms of the Truth Commission, the UN itself had presided over this

transitional justice mechanism, which was agreed upon in the Mexico Peace Agreement

between the FMLN and the ARENA. The Truth Commission, led by three international

commissioners, produced its report amidst strong opposition: mainly by the government

and the army, but also by the FMLN to some extent. The Truth Commission had given its

report in just six-month time. Given the speed of the Commission’s formation and

investigation (within one year), the UN was, arguably, concerned about somehow

completing the process, even without producing a satisfying outcome. Therefore, it only

examined a few infamous cases of the El Salvador conflict: El Mozote village massacre,

murder of six Jesuit Priests and so on (Call, 2002). As was the case with the Ad Hoc

Commission which was limited to investigate the cases of few army personnel.

The Truth Commission’s report “attributed 85 percent of the acts of violence to

state agents”.2 Even though the Commission’s recommendations were binding as per its

mandate, apart from some half-hearted judicial reform and purging some army staffs, the

government and the army refused to implement the recommendations. They went to the

extent to which the legislative assembly passed an amnesty law in complete defiance of

the international effort. Even the Supreme Court judges charged the Commission with

being excessively over-reaching in its mandate and a few convicted army officers were

even released, also retaliating to the Commission’s recommendation that the judges

proven to be involved in defending human rights violators should resign.

2 Truth Commission: El Salvador. United States Institute of Peace (USIP). Available at:

<http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-el-salvador> , accessed 15 October 2013

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PM Cristiani, unlike the case of Chile, criticized the international norm of

transitional justice, the UN, and did not sufficiently acknowledge the needs of those who

hoped for truth and justice. Cristiani was under such pressure by the army that he had

urged some states to influence the UN to soften its stance on Truth Commission issue. He

apparently had the fear that El Salvador would relapse into potential violence or would

suffer a coup d’état to be staged by the army.

The Truth Commission only managed to denounce some individuals and

jeopardize their elections prospects (although some won anyway). Otherwise, neither the

ARENA government nor the FMLN followed the ban on public office for those charged

of crime (Call, 2002). It should be noted that the Commission was mandated to

investigate “serious acts of violence”, not all the cases, since 1980.3 The same

stakeholders, particularly the right-wing ARENA, who accepted the guerrillas in the

political power-sharing and significantly cut down on the security forces, did not follow

the Truth Commission. The same is true of the FMLN.

Guatemala

While El Salvador learnt the practice of post-conflict reconstruction from the

international community, Guatemala had sought to employ that increasingly

internationalized practice for its increasing importance and usefulness. Guatemalan

stakeholders came to believe that a democratic peace process was essential in taking the

war-torn country on the path towards democracy and economic growth. Thus, it

demonstrated to the international community its desire for a post-conflict reconstruction

similar to what was employed in El Salvador. However, the international norm promoters

played a critical role in motivating Guatemalans to move into that direction. For instance,

the US and other international organizations, particularly the World Bank and the

European Parliament, had put human rights as a strong condition (Stanley and Holiday,

2002).

Unlike El Salvador, Guatemala had more of a moribund civil war than a

stalemate. The staggering thirty-six-year long civil war had exhausted both the

government and the insurgents – Guatemala National Revolutionary Unit (URNG),

3 Truth Commission: El Salvador. United States Institute of Peace.

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which ended definitively with the 1996 peace agreement. The agreement was the final

accord in the series of accords signed since 1994. Therefore, both domestic and

international stakeholders had to worry about the post-conflict reconstruction but not

about how to stop the war or to maintain the ceasefire. The then-UN-Secretary-General

Boutros Boutros-Ghali credited the implementation of the definitive ceasefire as “a

testimony to the determination of both the Government of Guatemala and URNG to put

an end to the bitter armed conflict between them”.4 The European Union (EU), the

Organization of American States (OAS) and several UN agencies and other

states/governments contributed their resources and expertise to complete the

demobilization process. In Guatemala, norm promoters had the opportunity to apply the

lessons learned from El Salvador and further consolidated reconstruction programs to

another liberal foothold in Central America.

Guatemala represents an example of extensive participation of the civil society in

the initiatives to end the war, through the Grand National Dialogue and the Civil Society

Assembly, which were emboldened by the involvement of the United Nations. These

initiatives led to several agreements on norms and institution-building. Thus, the

Comprehensive Agreement on Human Rights, emerged from the Oslo negotiation

process, was established in 1994. In fact, the United Nations Verification Mission in

Guatemala (MINUGUA)5 was already in place under the UN General Assembly, and the

verification had already begun before the final negotiated settlement took place. In the

post-accord period, the emphasis on human rights worked as a deterrence of abuses

(Stanley and Holiday, 2002).

The Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) established under the UN,

chaired by the German Law Professor Christian Tomuscat, produced its report in 1999

after operating for 18 months. The report claimed that the “state forces and related

paramilitary groups were responsible for 93% of the violations documented” during the

conflict which had claimed two hundred thousand lives - 83 % of those killed were

4 Guatemala: Minugua. Background. Available at:

<http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/past/minuguabackgr.html> ,accessed 20 October 2013. 5 MINUGUA was initially named the United Nations Mission for the Verification of Human Rights and of

Compliance with the Commitments of the Comprehensive Agreement on Human Rights in Guatemala,

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Mayan.6 Given the difficulty in examining all the cases of human rights violations, the

Commission prioritized to examine the cases of “attacks on life and personal integrity”.

However, CEH was one of the two largest truth commissions worldwide, alongside South

Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Unlike in El Salvador, this Commission

was not allowed to name the perpetrators. Therefore, some symbolic measures, some

reform in the military and judiciary, were recommended. Human rights advocates

protested the idea of not naming the perpetrators because such steps would undermine the

very objective of truth commissions. However, unlike El Salvador where PM Cristiani

spoke in favor of the army who was against an independent implementation of the Truth

Commission’s recommendation, President Arzu immediately apologized to its citizens

for past abuses inflicted by the state. Leaders of the URNG also asked for forgiveness to

the people for the crimes they had committed. The implementation process, however,

practically stalled. By 2009, merely one military staff was convicted of human rights

violation as charged by the Commission report.

Stanley and Holiday (2001) write that the charges of the Commission did not

come as a surprise. But the charges of genocide and racism committed by the armed

forces (in their ruthless campaign against the guerrillas in the early 1980s) were taken by

many as if they (charges) were UN-sponsored. The government refused to implement any

of the key reforms proposed by the Commission, saying that important reforms were

already under way, including reparations for war victims. The government did not

implement the Commission’s recommendations since that would have implicated the

military significantly. As a result, the good cop UN which steered the peace process

became a bad cop.

6 Truth Commission:Guatemala. United States Insitute of Peace. Available at:

<http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-guatemala>, accessed 20 October 2013.

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Nepal

As in the cases of El Salvador and Guatemala, the Nepalese Maoist insurgency also met a

stalemate situation. Although it was claimed that the Maoists were exhausted fighting the

state army, the state army could not achieve military victory either. Against that

background, the Maoists sought to give up arms and pursue their agenda through politics.

The war ended as the rebels (Maoists) and the democratic parties (Seven Party Alliance)

signed the 12-Point-Understanding in 2005 in New Delhi and subsequently the

Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2006 in Kathmandu. There was no direct

involvement of norm promoting organizations in the negotiated settlement; rather India

had a major role in it. However, the growing discourse flared up by the norm agents to

end the conflict through political dialogue under the framework of human rights and

democracy created a space for negotiated settlement.7 Several international peacemakers

were involved indirectly in providing expertise during the previous peace efforts which

had failed. The United Nations Mission to Nepal (UNMIN), which provided support for

the elections of the Constituent Assembly and oversaw the SSR and Demobilization,

Disarmament, and Rehabilitation (DDR) to a large extent, was invited by the local parties

after the peace agreement.

Similarly, the warring parties’ commitment to human rights and democracy,

which has been articulated several times in the peace document, reinforces the fact that

actors’ pursuance of norms made security guarantees unnecessary. The national and

transnational human rights advocacy diffused among the elites the understanding of the

importance of forming several peacebuilding institutions to oversee the conflict

transformation. Among those commitments appears the agenda of the Truth and

Reconciliation Commission (TRC) formation, first articulated in the CPA-2006

document, and then enshrined in the Interim Constitution 2007.

7 During the intensive conflict before the settlement, the multiplicity of international peacemakers

contributed to that normative understanding in different ways. Teresa Whitfield listed those actors which

are as follows: UN good offices, Swiss government special advisor to peace-building, Centre for

Humanitarian Diaolgue, Carter Center, Crisis Management Initiative, Community of Sant’Egidio, Friedrich

Ebert Stiftung, International Alert, International IDEA, Transcend, and US Instiute for Peace. Denmark,

Finland, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, US (in the period of 2002-2006) (Whitfield, 2012). Ivan G.

Somlai has given some important behind-the-scene details of the negotiation attempts (Somlai, 2005).

Similarly, many other bilateral organizations, UNDP, EU, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch

and so on. Most important were, perhaps, the OHCHR and UNMIN.

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However, since the early days, a bill drafted by the government in order to establish

the TRC (in 2008) drew wide criticism from the civil society, human rights activists, and

national and international rights agencies. This is because the bill failed to live up to the

international standards, owing in particular to the bill’s granting of discretionary power to

the Commission in relation to granting amnesties to perpetrators. This is because as the

peace process entered the implementation phase in which those broader agreed

frameworks of the CPA were to be worked out in detail through wider consultations and

consensus, the Maoists reconsidered their normative obligations and their implications

vis-à-vis their existence.

Since the CPA did neither provide any specific model of truth commissions nor

specify formation procedures, despite the continuous effort from the National

Commission of Human Rights, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for

Human Rights (UNOHCHR), and other stakeholders to pursue the government to form

the Commission as per the international standards (Martin 2010), in 2008, eventually, the

government planned to draft the bill bypassing the concerns of the right groups and

victims.

While the government continued to defend that the TRC was extensively discussed in

the Constituent Assembly, human rights activists claim that the government had been

dealing with the issue in a secretive manner all along. Commentators speculate that due

to the entrenched culture of impunity in Nepal, since the verdicts of past commissions

were never implemented, the Nepal Army and the Maoists presumably had some secret

understandings about being unsupportive, fearing huge consequences. They feared that a

truth commission formed as per the international standards would jeopardize their

organizations significantly.

The government repeatedly amended the TRC provisions responding to a wide

call from the human rights defenders. However, the amendments still would not satisfy

the opponents as the bill maintained some tricky provisions that eventually would allow

the Commission to grant amnesty. The government apparently did so in an effort to form

the Commission to give a clean-chit for past crimes rather than exhuming them.

Eventually, after a long tumultuous debate, despite the President’s endorsement of the

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bill, the Supreme Court blocked its implementation. Eight years after the commitment

had been made in the agreement, not a single individual was prosecuted or punished for

his/her war crime.8

Those charged with murders still hold strong position in the Maoist party and run

for elections. When a Nepal Army Colonel was arrested in the UK under the universal

jurisdiction in relation to torture during the insurgency, the Maoists, and also the Nepal

Army, criticized the UK government for attacking the sovereignty of Nepal. The Maoist

leaders were heard explaining their cadres that had they not resisted, they would be

ending up in the Hague at the International Criminal Court (although Nepal is not a

signatory of the Rome Statute). The Maoists had the attorney general on their side

through whom they tried to block the cases through conventional justice mechanism. Not

only did they use the TRC as a tool to bargain, but they also succeeded in threatening or

at least convincing other parties to form a Commission according to their own liking.

Consequently, their relations with the international community strained.

Findings and Conclusions

In the varied cases studied here, the norm of democratic post-conflict reconstruction

seems to have worked because in the absence of any security arrangement by the

international community, warring groups have subordinated their security concerns to

their faith in the political process. In terms of the truth commission norm, this study

shows a similar pattern of domestic actors’ behavior from Central America to South Asia.

The norm-takers have strongly defied the elements of truth commissions that would go

against their interests.9 In fact, their existence was at stake, rendering the possibilities of

redefining their goals irrelevant.

8 A murder case of a journalist, Dekendra Thapa, during the war in 2004 seems to be an exception. The

perpetrators, some of whom self-confessed their crime, were arrested by the police in 2012 as per the

regular justice procedure. The incident unleashed a huge outcry; the Maoists vehemently opposed it

claiming that all war-related cases should be dealt with by the TRC. But the rights activists argued that

serious crimes should be investigated and perpetrators must be punished even in the absence of transitional

justice mechanisms. As of this writing, in December 2014, the district court involved issued its verdict to

sentence the perpetrators. By the way, the Constituent Assembly had passed the controversial TRC bill in

June 2014 amidst a strong dissatisfaction of rights activists regarding the provisions of the bill. 9 Incidentally, it becomes relevant here to mention that the relationship between a truth commission, or in

fact truth-seeking and truth-telling, and peacebuilding is not systematically verified (Mendeloff, 2004).

17

The three cases showed the same pattern. The major stakeholders – insurgents and

the military –somehow tried to block the truth commission’s formation or implementing

the recommendations thereof. For that end, they did not care if their relations with the

international community strained or if such behavior jeopardized their national and

international legitimacy. They seemed to go down to any extent. In El Salvador, the

military issued threats of violence against FMLN cadres, possible coup d’état etc. In

Nepal, the Maoists intervened in the judiciary, carried out activities to disrupt the peace

process etc. In Guatemala, the government did not implement the CEH’s

recommendations. The state’s armed forces in Guatemala, when charged of committing

genocide, in turn charged the Commission for issuing “UN-sponsored

recommendations”, openly challenging the international community’s effort to book the

culprits. In all the three cases, albeit in a varied degree, state militaries and rebels

unapologetically defied the logic of appropriateness.

This study diverges from other approaches as it examines the norm-takers’

position in the context of psychological needs and motivations of behavior – instinctive

response to safety and survival. The result clearly shows the limitation of norms and the

agency of the norm-takers as critical in the diffusion or internalization process of norms.

This finding contributes to the literature about why some norms cannot matter. As Legro

puts it, it is equally important to examine the cases where norms fail as those where

norms succeed to better understand norm dynamics.

In terms of an alternative explanation, the social psychological explanation of

conflicts or rationalist explanations, which were discussed earlier, might also give some

useful insights. The psychological approaches assume that actors might resort to violence

if they fear others winning and they themselves losing because spoilers could play on that

fear. The rationalists would also argue that in such scenario, a strategic dilemma appears

which in turn causes violence as an optimal response. In the context of a post-conflict

reconciliation, there are groups who are directly responsible for war crimes –militaries

and former-rebels, and there are other groups which are not – political parties.

Consequently, those uninvolved groups enjoy a huge advantage over the involved groups

in the political competition. Therefore, the two above-mentioned explanations

(psychological and rationalist) become relevant.

18

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