The 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police ignited a once-in-a-generation racial justice protest movement in the United States. Black Lives Matter protestors demanded justice in multiple forms: acknowledgment of racial violence, accountability for perpetrators, reparations for victims, creation of memorials, and establishing legal reforms.
The combination of these policies—truth seeking, criminal justice, reparations, memorialization, and reform—is known internationally as transitional justice and has a long and successful history outside the United States. Transitional justice has been used in many countries to address human rights violations and other abuses, especially following authoritarian rule and armed conflict. But it is a model that can be used wherever violence and injustice have not been acknowledged and redressed.
