The Symposium on Apologies and Human Rights, published in the latest issue of the Journal of Human Rights, includes a publication by Juliette, Marieke & Thia titled “Closing chapters of the past? Rhetorical strategies in political apologies for human rights violations across the world”. The article draws on a presentation given by Juliette at the online workshop, “Political Apologies for Historical Wrongs,” hosted by the University of Aberdeen in February 2021, which brought together a nice group of academics to discuss the topic.
Relying on our Political Apologies Database, we identified various rhetorical strategies that diverse countries use – to varying degrees – to (1) break from or acknowledge past wrongdoings, (2) bridge past wrongdoings with future intentions, and (3) bond with the intended recipients of the apology. In the article, we shed light on these strategies. In doing so, we show how countries and their representatives use apologies not only to address the needs of victims or their relatives, but also to portray and understand themselves, whereby there is substantial overlap between countries in the types of rhetorical strategies and scripts that they use to accomplish this.
The article can be found open access here:
Schaafsma, J., Zoodsma, M. & Sagherian-Dickey, T. (2021) Closing chapters of the past? Rhetorical strategies in political apologies for human rights violations across the world, Journal of Human Rights, 20:5, 582-597,
DOI: 10.1080/14754835.2021.1977919