Guarantees of non-repetition in transitional justice processes, towards an international investigative unit of crimes committed during conflict

Transitional justice relies on the political interest to implement mechanisms such as a court of justice to hold perpetrators of grave human rights and international humanitarian law violations accountable; truth commissions to build a narrative of the conflict, law reforms, and institutions to provide reparations to victims. In addition, creating a permanent international investigation unit could provide additional information to prosecute the criminal networks that aided abusers to remain in impunity and serve as a way of collective reparations in transitional justice. To evaluate the creation of an international investigation unit, this dissertation navigates through the history of transitional justice, the evolution in time of the mechanisms, its implementation in different peace processes, and the ability to hold accountable the worst human rights abusers. The dissertation approach to the case studies is sociological to understand the local history and the local population approach to justice. The evolution of transitional justice shows that most of the mechanisms to transition from conflict into a strong democracy are expensive and require the support of host and foreign governments to allow its implementation. Moreover, different transitions have shown that accountability for perpetrators is sometimes limited to some high-ranking members in government or insurgency and for plenty of lower-ranked individuals while leaving the networks that aided and profited from the conflict in impunity. The dissertation also found that new transitional mechanisms implement investigative bodies to dismantle corrupt networks that allow perpetrators to remain impunity. Public corruption is a consequence of the post-conflict and an obstacle for justice, reparations and guarantees non-repetition. These investigative units enjoy high popularity due to the sense of justice that prosecuting corrupt individuals that profited from the conflict creates in the population, which could serve as a way of collective reparations. This dissertation concludes with the novel contribution of implementing a permanent international investigative unit for countries in transitions with international funding and cross-border jurisdiction to investigate criminal networks that supported human rights abusers and profited from conflict and provide technical investigative support to domestic transitional justice courts. The dissertation also proposes the addition of a local investigative unit in new transitional justice efforts and discusses creating an international court for transitions or a chamber in the international criminal court charged to prosecute those networks.