How can memorialisation of the past support social reconstruction or transitional justice? This study evaluates the youth education programmes of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience in Italy, Bangladesh and Chile in order to suggest strategies for conceptualising and evaluating the impact of memorialisation. It argues that while much thinking remains to be done on how to evaluate memorialisation in societies in transition, transitional processes can make better use of the resources that memorial sites have to offer. The impact of memorial sites needs to be maximised through long-term investment, ongoing programmes and accompanying evaluation.
Of the many ways of addressing the past that make up transitional justice, such as prosecutions, truth commissions and institutional reform, memorialisation can involve larger numbers of people over long periods of time and be initiated equally by communities and governments. But memory and history are almost always highly contested. This contestation can be both helpful and harmful to victims of political violence, depending on how it is used.
Exactly how memorialisation supports social reconstruction or transitional justice is not well documented. At the same time, transitional justice practitioners are increasingly calling for memorialisation as integral to larger democracy-building strategies. While guidelines have been created for many other aspects of reform in times of transition, no commensurate tools are available for effective memorialisation programmes.
An evaluation of the youth programmes of the Liberation War Museum in Bangladesh, the Monte Sole Peace School in Italy and the Villa Grimaldi Peace Park in Chile found that the sites had a number of impacts on the young people who visited them. These impacts included changing opinions, raising awareness, improving relationships, encouraging civic engagement and increasing emotional understanding of the human consequences of atrocity. In addition, the following general observations emerged:
- Experiential learning at authentic sites creates a more lasting impression than classroom-based education, and programmes with follow-up plans produce better results.
- Self-reporting of impact, especially concerning attitudinal change, can be unreliable.
- Different sites articulate their larger goals as building cultures of peace, democracy, social reconstruction, social change or human rights. In societies in transition, the meanings of these terms can be overly determined by political circumstances and contested.
- Many sites avoid presenting one narrative, instead prioritising critical thinking and debate. However, multiple narratives can fragment the ‘memoryscape’. This can undermine efforts to develop certain shared values.
- Memorial sites can be used to force a specific ideology onto society, becoming more about glorification than memorialisation, seeking to legitimise governing ideologies.
Memorialisation and allied initiatives can have an impact on individuals and groups, but to exploit this potential fully at the macro and micro levels, additional processes should be considered:
- The impact of memorial sites needs to be maximised through long-term investment, ongoing programmes and accompanying evaluation.
- Other transitional justice mechanisms need to articulate how different processes might relate to one another to increase impact. Those working in memorialisation need to do the same, but the flow of analysis has to be bi-directional.
- Different initiatives and wider transitional processes need to make better use of the resources memorial sites have to offer and find ways of forming the most constructive relationships given their limited resources.
- It is important to reflect on the question of meta versus multiple narratives and narratives that might be counter to the dominant trajectory of the transition.
- A theoretical model is needed of how memorial sites can influence the wider goals of transitional justice, as well as how the broader social context can enhance what can be achieved at individual sites.
