International law obliges governments to assure adequate and effective reparations for human rights violations. To date, most evaluations of such programs focus on outcomes while overlooking the process of how the state engaged victims, or not, in the determination of what they needed to feel repaired. A consensus now points toward the need to better involve beneficiaries in reparations programs in the process of determining these outcomes, yet there remains a need to better understand how to assure meaningful and effective participation. In response, the authors present an expansive view of the right to participation that would oblige governments to assure the quality of this participation in all stages of reparation programming, including design, implementation, and evaluation. They argue that reparative processes are, in themselves, forms of reparation, which go toward citizen restitution. They offer preliminary guidelines on how to assure reparative processes, as well as their evaluation, through a dialogical model that helps reorient the view of “victims” to being active agents in determining not only appropriate reparations but also larger transformations. Reparative processes shift the focus of evaluation to look beyond outcomes and toward the quality of the design and implementation processes, which, if flawed, may ultimately undermine the overall impact of any reparation program.

国际法要求各国政府确保对侵犯人权行为给予充分和有效的赔偿。迄今为止，对此类计划的大多数评估都侧重于结果，而忽视了国家如何让受害者参与或不参与决定他们需要什么来获得修复的过程。现在达成的共识是，在确定这些结果的过程中，需要更好地让受益人参与赔偿计划，但仍然需要更好地了解如何确保有意义和有效的参与。作为回应，作者提出了对参与权的广泛看法，这将迫使政府在赔偿规划的所有阶段（包括设计、实施和评估）确保参与的质量。他们认为，赔偿过程本身就是赔偿的形式，旨在使公民恢复原状。他们通过对话模型提供了关于如何确保修复过程及其评估的初步指导方针，该模型有助于将“受害者”的观点重新定位为积极行动者，不仅决定适当的赔偿，而且决定更大的转变。修复过程将评估的重点转移到了结果之外，转向设计和实施过程的质量，如果存在缺陷，最终可能会破坏任何修复计划的整体影响。