Expectations that the end of Suharto’s thirty-two years of authoritarian rule in Indonesia in 1998 would usher in an era of political reform, including the end to separatist rebellions, human rights abuses, and military impunity, were dashed by the intensification of old conflicts and outbreak of new forms of violence. Despite initial optimism, efforts to address human rights violations during the New Order stalled. This article surveys the various forms of conflict in Indonesia over the past twenty years and the major trends in scholarship, together with the smaller body of literature framed specifically in terms of peacebuilding. It concludes that much of the literature on peacebuilding has been driven by institutional interests and the incentives created by the funding of these institutions.

This article explores the prospect of theorizing unarmed civilian peacekeeping as a transformative justice concept. Utilizing the principles of transformative justice theory as a framework of analysis, it finds that unarmed civilian peacekeeping produces an environment of everyday justice, thereby contributing to transformative peacebuilding. Crucial to this proposed concept of everyday justice is the ability of an unarmed civilian peacekeeping approach to form a link between the elite-level negotiating panels in a peace process and the grassroots constituency in a postconflict society. The case of voluntary and mandated nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in the Bangsamoro peace process in Mindanao is used to corroborate these conceptual suggestions.

The transitional justice policies employed in Timor-Leste are among the most multifaceted and comprehensive ever attempted. However, what these mechanisms have collectively accomplished has not been adequately evaluated. The long-term effectiveness of transitional justice should be judged in terms of the multidimensional relationships between the many policies and programs relevant to redressing the legacy of the past. The impunity of those most responsible for human rights violations casts a sizable shadow over the transitional justice efforts; however, analysis of the establishment of the Chega! National Centre (CNC) shows that the gradual development of transitional justice in Timor-Leste has broken through a structural bottleneck. This is due to persistent calls for transitional justice from civil society and the slow but steady implementation of relevant programs.

This article addresses the underexplored question of why some state violence cases in Asia are not followed by transitional justice even during a democratic transition. It explicates the two factors that obstruct or delay seeking truth and accountability and thus bring impunity for perpetrators. One is the context in which the violence took place, and the other is longevity of the violent regime. If the violence occurs during a period of conflation of state construction and regime building, and if the perpetrators’ power persists long enough to be institutionalized, transitional justice is least likely to take place. Five cases of violence violence which were committed by anticommunist regimes during the Cold War in four Asian countries are explored.