Role of Honor, Dignity and Face Values in Transitional Justice in Post-Conflict Cyprus

Transitional justice can help secure some level of justice for victims of human rights violations and reinforce the possibilities for peace, democracy, and reconciliation in societies that have experienced human rights abuses. Despite growing literature on the drives of transitional justice, little emphasis has been paid to the role of culture on shaping transitional justice preferences. The primary objective of the paper was to test the role of honor, face and dignity values in preferences for transitional justice in the context of post-conflict Cyprus. The major hypothesis tested was that honor values would be predictive of retributive (and not reconciliatory) justice preferences over and above any reconciliation related attitudes and intergroup contact. We recruited 450 Greek Cypriots in Cyprus, part of the Mediterranean region characterized by salience of honor values. They completed a questionnaire including measures assessing transitional justice preferences, honor, face and dignity values and other well-known predictors of transitional justice preferences concerning reconciliation attitudes (intergroup contact, trust, prejudice) and demographic variables. Analyses revealed that honor and dignity values predicted retributive justice preferences over and above other reconciliation related variables. Although not significant, there was suggestive evidence that face values predicted transitional justice in the opposite way to honor and dignity values.