Why Former Dictators Should be Put on Trial

If you’re having doubts about whether former heads of states should be put on public trial (The Mubarak trial, for instance, has left many Arabs uneasy), perhaps you should read Kathryn Sikkink’s article in the New York Times today.

According to her research, human right trials end up producing countries with less human rights violations:

My research shows that transitional countries — those moving from authoritarian governments to democracy or from civil war to peace — where human rights prosecutions have taken place subsequently become less repressive than transitional countries without prosecutions, holding other factors constant.

Of 100 countries that underwent a transition from 1980 to 2004 (the period for which extensive data is available), 48 pursued at least one human rights prosecution, and 33 of those pursued two or more. Countries that have prosecuted former officials exhibit lower levels of torture, summary execution, forced disappearances and political imprisonment.

I wonder where our Lebanese willful collective amnesia of the war fits in that picture.