9 - Receiving and Contesting

Summary

When after lengthy adjudication reparations eventually materialise in the locations where the atrocities occurred, survivors’ responses to such reparations vary greatly. Such responses may include relief and celebration, but reparations are just as likely to be met with confusion, contestation and/or rejection. The practices that determine how reparations are conceived significantly influence the responses that victims and others in society develop regarding such reparations. Behind these questions is the dynamic interrelationship between what courts have to offer and what victims accept as reparations. This chapter explores this conundrum by way of three concrete reparative measures considered or implemented in the context of the ECCC’s reparations mandate. In juxtaposing measures that were granted by ECCC judges as reparations and those that were rejected, the chapter shows some of the effects of courts’ practices on the meaning of reparations.