Victims’ Rights and Distributive Justice: In Search of Actors Jemima García-Godos Published online: 27 July 2013 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract The aim of this article is to discuss the role that victim groups and organizations may have in framing and supporting an accountability agenda, as well as their potential for endorsing a distributive justice agenda. The article explores two empirical cases where victims' rights have been introduced and applied by victim organizations to promote accountability—Colombia and Peru. It will be argued that if transitional justice in general and victim reparations in particular are to embark in a quest for distributive justice, it cannot do so without considering victims as political actors, and putting forward demands in terms of victims’ rights. Keywords Victims’ rights . Victim organisations . Distributive justice . Victim reparations Introduction The international community’ s expectations regarding what transitional justice (TJ) is able to deliver are in need of a serious reality check. According to Weinstein (2011), peaceful coexistence, plain and simple, is not enough compared to much-repeated assumptions of closure and reconciliation, as well as increasing demands concerning social inequalities (Waldorf 2012). Raised expectations over what TJ is supposed to deliver go hand in hand with calls for more awareness over the national and local contexts where TJ mechanisms are to be applied. This contextual awareness refers not only to cultural traits and traditions, but also to socio-economic structures. The focus has been formulated in different terms, such as ‘structural inequalities’, ‘socio- economic conditions’, ‘social inequalities’, and ‘historical wrongs’, signaling a desirable move towards ‘development’, ‘transformative justice’, and/or ‘distributive justice’. While the simultaneous use of this terminology as if the terms were synon- ymous with each other is problematic in itself, what is more intriguing is the implications that these calls raise concerning what transitional justice is, what it Hum Rights Rev (2013) 14:241–255 DOI 10.1007/s12142-013-0272-4 J. García-Godos (*) Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway e-mail: jemima.garcia-godos@sosgeo.uio.no