Why is it necessary to talk about the past when it comes to justice? What characterizes recognition of historical injustice? And what is recognition anyway? In her inaugural lecture Nicole Immler examines the social dimensions of recognition and repair from structural violence: When do people feel seen, heard and recognized? In doing so, she focuses on the potential that recognition instruments have to bring about so-called transformative justice. Transformative justice shifts the focus from the legal to the social, to the meaning and impact of legal processes on the lives of those involved, whereby agency, relationship building and above all participation are key words. Transformative justice also balances a backward-looking liability and a forward-looking responsibility approach, by saying: Without knowledge of the past, meaningful repair – addressing the root causes of injustice – is impossible. Using the example ‘Dutch slavery past’, this article first discusses how limited our imagination is about what recognition means, and how it could be expanded. Subsequently, by making use of some other cases of historical injustice from the research project ‘Dialogics of Justice’, she advocates for broadening the conversation on recognition and repair by questioning the underlying structures that make us think recognition too often too narrowly.

This contribution pays attention to the relevance and form of national apologies for colonial slavery. The focus is on the legal-political meaning of apologies: how can apologies actually contribute to the recognition of legal injustice from the past? It will be argued that apologies in which colonial slavery is declared a criminal form of injustice (a crime against humanity) repeals its historical legal validity. In doing so, the enslaved will posthumously obtain the legal recognition they deserve as persons in their own right. Next, the formal side of national apologies is discussed: should they indeed take the form of statutory law, as recommended by the Dutch Advisory Committee on the History of Slavery? What exactly happens if national apologies are accompanied by a ‘disclaimer’, ruling out in advance any legal liability that might result from the apology? It is argued that the legal form recommended for this purpose by the Advisory Committee would merit reconsideration if national apologies for the slavery past come ‘from the heart’. The recommendation that those legal apologies be provided with a ‘disclaimer’ should be critically examined, because apologies for legal injustice that involve new forms of exclusion are highly problematic.

Between 1945 and 1949, ten thousands young men were, as conscripts for military service, sent to Indonesia, to join the Dutch colonial army in what at that time was called a ‘politionele actie’ (operation to restore order and security), but in fact was a war against the Indonesian Republican army fighting for independency. Some thousands of them refused to join, and were prosecuted and convicted to severe prison sentences. In February 2022, the Dutch government recognized – urged by the publication of the findings of three institutes that did research about the violence applied by the Dutch military during the independence war – that this violence was of a ‘structural extreme’ nature. Therefore, the refusers of military service have to be rehabilitated. The government up to today presented no proposals for a regulation of such a kind. Arguably, legislation is necessary to create that regulation. It would do justice to the refusers (a few of whom are still living), who by their choice were ‘on the right side of history’.

It can be argued that for a widely shared way of handling and doing justice to the Dutch colonial past and the harm it has caused, not only (representatives of) Dutch institutions, but also the Dutch population should show greater accountability for this history. In this article, the author focus on the psychological phenomenon of identification with the own group (here the Dutch national group), and how this impacts current group members’ acknowledgment of past wrongdoings. In particular, and largely based on studies conducted for his dissertation, as well as more recent work, he elaborate on the influence group identification can have on feelings of guilt for the group’s harm doing during the colonial past, and how such feelings of guilt can motivate current group members to support restorative actions such as apologies and increasing awareness in the Netherlands for the negative colonial past. The research discussed in this article firstly shows that on average, current Dutch people do not tend to express strong feelings of guilt for their nation’s colonial history. That said, there are subgroups of Dutch people who may report stronger feelings of guilt, depending on their degree of group identification. The author argues and substantiates based on the studies conducted that a high group identification is unlikely to predict strong feelings of guilt, because people high in identification are more motivated to maintain and protect their positive view of their own group – which forms an important part of their identity. They therefore employ defensive strategies to downplay the historical misdeeds for current Dutch people. Perhaps counterintuitively then, those who are less invested in the own group and do not identify as strongly (‘lower identifiers’), are most likely to express strong feelings of guilt for the colonial misdeeds and support restorative actions also more. The author concludes this article by discussing studies that indicate under which circumstances higher identifiers may also come to feel strong feelings of guilt and associated restorative intentions – the key ingredient of such circumstances is, he argues, that it provides higher identifiers the opportunity to show their group’s strong morality when expressing guilt. Finally, he relativizes the beneficial contribution feelings of guilt can have for group relations: it may contribute to reparation of colonial harm doing, but other studies have indicated that this emotion is less fit to motivate people to combat structural and ongoing inequality between groups with a shared colonial past.

In July 2020, the Belgian Parliament established a Commission to look into Belgium’s colonial past in the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. The Commission received a very broad mandate, that comprised looking at the state of the art of historical research, access to the archives, reconciliation and reparations, and the link between colonialism and racism. The Commission called upon the assistance of ten experts. The author was one of the experts and provided a contribution on the restorative or transformative approach of the Commission and on the development of a reparations programme. To this end, it is recommended that the Commission develops a reparations matrix, based on a diversified approach of reparations measures depending on the type of prejudice and the category of victims. In order to ensure the implementation of the reparations matrix it needs to be adopted by law. After the publication of the report of the experts, the Commission heard over one hundred victims, witnesses, and experts. Its final report is due in December 2022. It remains to be seen whether this per essence political Commission will be able to issue recommendations for a meaningful further apolitical process of restorative justice, that will certainly require more time and efforts.