The Struggle for Justice in a Postcolonial Context
In recent years, there has been a significant increase in attention to the effects of colonial violence. Questions about reparations, paths to justice, or the persistence and consequences of harmful mindsets are not only of interest to researchers but also to society at large. PRIF dedicated its 2025 annual conference to these topics, inviting international scholars, artists, activists, and political education representatives to participate in an interdisciplinary discussion about decolonial approaches and the creation of postcolonial justice.
Colonial narratives and Eurocentric perspectives are still prevalent in academia, politics, the media, and everyday life. From colonial stereotypes and ways of thinking to laws, symbols, overt practices and subtle habits, there are countless examples that demonstrate how colonialism and its consequences have not yet been overcome. In recent years, numerous national, regional, and transnational movements have emerged that seek to expose and overcome colonial violence and its enduring effects.
The demand for justice spans many areas and is reflected in calls for various forms of redress for colonial injustices, such as the return of looted artworks or human remains, equitable access to land and natural resources, political participation for affected groups, and the acknowledgment of historical suffering. Although legal remedies can serve as tools, they often reach their limits. While financial compensation or restitution can send a signal, they cannot fully ameliorate the injustices suffered or the pain endured.
The call for justice goes beyond reparations. Efforts toward decolonization require profound changes. Colonial patterns of thought appear to be ingrained in the social fabric of postcolonial and settler states. This presents challenges for everyone involved—indeed, for society as a whole. Affected groups must break free from the role of victim and reclaim sovereignty over their history. Colonial societies, meanwhile, must abandon their sense of superiority and thoughtless arrogance. Exposing the deep colonial entanglements and their impact on today's power structures requires action on many levels and is a generational project. Reflecting on reparations and justice also means acknowledging societal changes and taking responsibility for colonial history.
PRIF Annual Conference 2025
Sabine Mannitz, Caroline Fehl, and Jana Baldus organized the PRIF Annual Conference 2025 in collaboration with the Research Center “Transformations of Political Violence” (TraCe). The Leibniz Research Alliance “Value of the Past” funded it. The event brought together over 70 participants from academia, the arts, and activism.
The two-day PRIF Annual Conference 2025, titled “Colonial Pasts and the Contemporary Search for Justice: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Restitution and Redress for Colonial Violence,” brought together experiences from around the world and perspectives from transitional justice and postcolonial studies. During the keynote address and four subsequent panels, participants discussed how to address and overcome colonial pasts and their continuities, the necessary institutional and political frameworks, and the extent to which transitional justice research, a field originally focused on addressing crimes committed by autocratic regimes, can provide a conceptual framework for analyzing and resolving colonial injustices. In her keynote address, Tanja Bührer (University of Salzburg) demonstrated how Europe developed rules to limit violence within Europe, while employing brutal violence in the colonies, often justified by alleged “civilizational progress.” The panels delved deeper into various topics, including the disparate treatment of colonial violence in postcolonial societies, the continued glorification of colonialism in nations like the United Kingdom, nuclear justice and its colonial origins, the legal obstacles to historical accountability and reconciliation, and the challenges of restitution. How can reparations go beyond the mere return of objects? Furthermore, how plausible is the concept of restitution, given shifting borders and populations?
The closing session focused on various ethical and methodological issues. One key focus was the challenges facing our research. How can we conduct research that is just, fair, and equitable with international partners? What pitfalls exist, and how can they be avoided? Within the Local Peace Orders research department at PRIF, various research projects (e.g., Local Perceptions of Regional Interventions: AU and ECOWAS in Burkina Faso and Gambia), are committed to a collaborative research approach. This approach avoids extractive research and organizes fieldwork, data analysis, and publication in tandem with researchers. However, structural barriers remain that hinder equitable collaboration.
On the evening of the first day of the conference, human rights activist and filmmaker Aigerim Seitenova presented her documentary, “JARA – Radioactive Patriarchy: Women of Qazaqstan.” In the film, she tells the stories of six Kazakh women affected by nuclear tests conducted in the Semipalatinsk region during the Soviet era and their lasting consequences. The film avoids sensationalism, portraying the women as more than just victims and honoring their agency in the fight against nuclear injustice. “Jara” documents how the women assert their right to tell their own story.
A panel discussion at the conference focused on nuclear colonialism, nuclear justice, and nuclear violence. This form of violence has rarely been considered in the context of colonial reparations. Caroline Fehl and Jana Baldus, co-organizers of the annual conference, presented their paper “Colonial Past and the Quest for Nuclear Justice: Addressing Legacies of Nuclear Testing in (Post-)Colonial Contexts.”
Interview with Caroline Fehl
Dr. Caroline Fehl is a Senior Researcher in the Research Department International Security and, together with Jana Baldus and Sascha Hach, leads the research project “Transitional Justice in the Nuclear Age: Addressing Past Legacies of Nuclear Use and Testing.”
What is meant by nuclear justice?
In the context of nuclear weapons, discussions over the past few decades have primarily focused on issues of interstate justice, specifically the inequality between recognized nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states, as outlined in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. However, for several years activists and scholars have used the term “nuclear justice” as an umbrella term for demands to address the human rights and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons use and testing. Today, many people are unaware that nuclear weapons have exploded on our planet over 2,000 times, not only during the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II but also in nuclear weapons tests. These so-called test explosions were by no means harmless. In particular, the above-ground tests conducted up to 1980 led to the persistent contamination of vast regions due to radioactive “fallout,” the displacement of local populations in the test areas, and thousands or even hundreds of thousands of serious illnesses and fatalities.
To what extent are nuclear justice and colonial power relations intertwined?
Almost all nuclear weapons tests were conducted in colonized territories. On the one hand, these included overseas or former colonies of nuclear-weapon states (e.g., U.S. tests in the Marshall Islands or French tests in Algeria and French Polynesia). On the other hand, they included internal territories with a high proportion of ethnic minorities or indigenous groups, and a history shaped by settler colonialism or imperialist expansion (e.g., the former Soviet Union's Kazakhstan, China's Xinjiang region, and the British test site in South Australia's Maralinga-Tjarutja land).
In which areas does the colonial logic become apparent, and when does it come into play?
It manifests itself in many ways, such as the choice of locations for various test series, the treatment of the local population, and the response to their subsequent demands for justice. Consider the United States, for example. At the beginning of the American nuclear weapons program, many tests were conducted domestically, though the first test, the Trinity test, took place on indigenous land. Once it became clear that the fallout from these tests posed a health hazard to the entire U.S., the increasingly large-scale tests were relocated to the Marshall Islands. After 1945, the U.S. assumed official UN trusteeship over this archipelago, formerly a German and then a Japanese colony. The Marshallese population was partially evacuated from their homeland and partially left unprotected and unwarned. The U.S. military conducted studies on the mass occurrences of illness and death resulting from the tests to assess the effects of nuclear weapon use. U.S. soldiers hastily sealed the radioactive debris from the tests under a concrete dome, which is now leaking and further endangered by the rising sea levels. During the negotiations on the independence of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the 1980s, the U.S. agreed to a one-time payment of $150 million as compensation for the suffering endured. By contrast, a much more comprehensive compensation package was approved for victims of U.S. nuclear testing in the 1990s. While the U.S. government has apologized to its own citizens for the consequences of the tests, it has not yet done so to the people of the Marshall Islands.
How can we promote nuclear justice? What has been achieved so far?
Although the U.S. compensation for the Marshall Islands has been minimal, it still ranks among the most extensive compensation programs. Aside from the U.S., only France has a compensation program. However, those affected in Algeria have only minimally benefited from it, partly due to high bureaucratic hurdles. The Soviet Union and its successor, Russia, as well as China, have provided no support to affected local populations whatsoever, and the United Kingdom has shown little commitment as well. This is not solely about financial payments to those affected, many of whom live in poverty, but also about their healthcare, acknowledging their suffering, and pursuing truth. All nuclear-weapon states still deny the health and human rights consequences of their testing practices. To date, only affected U.S. citizens have received an apology. Much work remains to be done in terms of environmental remediation of affected areas. International organizations, such as the UN Human Rights Council, are increasingly addressing these issues. Germany can and should get involved to keep the issue on the agenda and secure funding for victim assistance. Although we have not tested nuclear weapons ourselves, we bear indirect responsibility as beneficiaries of the U.S. nuclear umbrella.
Nuclear weapons seem to be experiencing a renaissance. Should we expect a backlash?
Yes, the backlash threatens to overshadow the issue entirely. In Germany, the “traffic-light coalition” government took up the topic of “nuclear justice” and addressed it in international forums. The federal government signaled interest in providing financial support for victim assistance and consulted with experts. However, under the new government, this initiative is not being pursued. Instead, the media and political debates focus on demands for German nuclear weapons that ignore history. In my view, this discussion is often conducted with an intolerable tone that glorifies nuclear deterrence without shedding light on its dark side, such as the suffering already caused by nuclear weapons. (kha)