This PhD is part of the 2012-2015 SNF research project “Resisting Transitional Justice? Alternative understandings of peace and justice”. This research project focuses on three case studies: Cambodia, Burundi and the Ivory Coast.

This dissertation analyses resistance to transitional justice in Cambodia. The focus is laid on institutionalized forms of transitional justice: the process analysed in Cambodia is the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the hybrid tribunal established in 2004 to deal with the crimes committed under the Khmer Rouge regime.

This PhD is embedded within critical approaches to transitional justice. In this literature, transitional justice is analysed as a political process of negotiations between different actors; as such, it is necessarily contested. Such approach to transitional justice enables to see resistance to transitional justice not as deviant but as a legitimate object of enquiry. This dissertation will further ask whether resistance to transitional justice points to alternative understandings of peace and justice.

This PhD is based on an empirical approach with a strong emphasis on qualitative fieldwork.