Reparative Approach towards Victims of Armed Conflict - Global Experiences and Lessons for India

In recent years, relentless efforts have been made worldwide for repairing the past harms done to victims of armed conflict. There has been a paradigm shift in international human rights law addressing the needs of victims for reparation, rather than emphasizing the punishment of the perpetrators. A rights based approach has been adopted towards repairing the harm done to the victims in the past. Reparation is such a rights based approach, a diverse complementary form of justice to restore the life of the victims/survivors by means of restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantee of non-recurrence of the violations upon the victims. Effective and inclusive response to violations during armed conflict and addressing those wrongs by way of reparation has become a priority within the international community to sustain peace and development in the conflict ridden countries. As said by Ta- Nehisi Coates “The country in which reparations actually happen is a very different one than the one we live in”. India, over the last few decades, has been faced with persistent violence perpetrated through armed conflict in regions such as Jammu & Kashmir as well as the Northeast. The lives of common men have been unsettled as a result of incessant killings, rapes, and other brutalities. The present article explores the development of reparations in the regime of international law and its implication for the victims of armed conflict. It underlines the initiatives of countries emerging from armed conflict in addressing the plight of victims by means of reparative approach and argues that India needs to adopt a framework to reach out to those whose lives have been destroyed as a result of such violence and provide necessary reparation to them.