For 24 days in May I enjoyed wonderful hospitality in Iran as a guest of Dr Mohammad Farajiha of Tarbiat Modares University. With his inspiring group of graduate students, Dr Farajiha organized a culminating conference in Tehran on Restorative Justice in Iran*, which was attended by visiting scholars from […]
Nicola Lacey and Hanna Pickard[1] draw upon the evolutionary psychology literature in a recent paper to find that both vengeance and forgiveness are universal human adaptations that have evolved as alternative responses to exploitation. This is why all cultures have both retributive traditions (that are more concentrated on out-groups such as invaders) and […]
Today, 25 April, I give the Call to Remembrance at the site of the Sandakan prison camp. From this site the terrible war crime of the Sandakan Death March departed in 1945. My father, Dick Braithwaite, was one of 6 survivors. More than 2400 Australian and British Prisoners of War from the camp perished. Many […]
The conviction of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic for genocide in Srebrenica, among other crimes, is a step toward justice after war. Yes, many populists in Serbia have publicly criticized the alleged bias against Serbs of The Hague Tribunal. At the same time, my fieldwork for Peacebuilding Compared with Aleksandar Marsavelski makes it clear that […]
Australian governments have so often been an international embarrassment to its citizens in recent times. On family and institutional violence, in contrast, they have really begun to grasp the nettle. Former Prime Minister Julia Guillard’s government recognized that Australia had a widespread problem of different kinds of institutions engaging in sexual abuse of those in […]