The During Conflict Justice (DCJ) Dataset was collected with support from the National Science Foundation (SES# 1227985) and the United States Institute of Peace, and was recently updated with support from the Reserach Council of Norway.
Justice and rule-of-law measures have often been touted as a solution to prevent the resumption of violence following conflict; yet, little work has been undertaken to understand the prevalence of these practices while conflict is ongoing. The DCJ dataset provides an evidentiary basis to determine the conditions under which implementation is more likely, to facilitate the development of these conditions in countries that may benefit from justice measures and to prevent the development of circumstances detracting from these goals. This data greatly improves our understanding of the presence of such processes and expands the current state of research on both the implementation of during-conflict justice and the dynamics of conflict more broadly.
The During Conflict Justice (DCJ) dataset includes 2205 justice processes implemented during 204 internal armed conflicts in 108 different countries between 1946 and 2011. The DCJ dataset includes information on six forms of addressing wrongdoing: trials, truth commissions, reparations, amnesties, purges, and exiles. Each DCJ process is a separate observation in the dataset. A given country-year can have multiple observations as more than one DCJ processes can be implemented in that context. 76% of the countries that experienced conflict used at least one form of DCJ.
An introduction to the data: Cyanne E. Loyle & Helga Malmin Binningsbø. (2018) “Justice during armed conflict: A new dataset on government and rebel strategies” Journal of Conflict Resolution 62(2): 442-466.
In 2022, our team created a dyadic version of the DCJ dataset. Information on this coding can be found in the DCJ Dyadic Codebook.