562 results

Mali's Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission has a mandate to examine violence dating back to 1960, but it faces serious challenges. Can it serve as a foundation of a peaceful future in Mali? We discuss with transitional justice expert Kora Andrieu, who is currently working with the TJRC as an independent consultant.

On November 25, 2021, The Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) presented its 17-volume final report and recommendations to President Adama Barrow, after multiple delays. The final report includes a record of serious human rights violations committed under Jammeh’s repressive regime and recommendations for pursuing justice. Despite the challenges, steps have already been taken that offer hope that the TRRC’s recommendations will take effect.

Because transitional justice processes are complex, politically contested, and not necessarily linear, they present unique theoretical and practical challenges for measuring their results. This report seeks to improve monitoring and evaluation practices and support evidence-based proc...

Children, women, and men look at a wall covered in faces of people.

Diala Brisly and Hani Abbas, two cartoonists and contemporaries, know firsthand the power of images to document conflict, and of cartoons —consumed by children and adults alike —to promote action.

For years, ICTJ has championed the media and the role it plays in supporting truth-seeking and advancing accountability and redress for victims of conflict-related atrocities. In the places where we work, from South Africa, to the Gambia, Guatemala, Colombia and the Philippines, media projects and coverage—both mainstream and alternative—have been crucial in ensuring participation, mediating public discourse, contributing to acknowledgment for victims, and revealing long-hidden truths about crimes. This month, we share a dispatch from our work in Uganda.

Following the first international conference on the subject (Memorialization and Democracy), this report considers how memorialization efforts around the globe can serve democracy. It encourages policy-makers to view memorials as serious social and political forces and to create innov...

Dr. Alex Boraine, founder of the ICTJ, was larger than life. In his long career, he touched the lives of thousands in his beloved South Africa and around the world.

ICTJ and the Center for Memory, Peace and Reconciliation of Colombia are organizing an event on Memory: Public Policy for Transformation. Dialogue at the conference will serve as the basis for providing recommendations to the process of creating the Center for Historical Memory and designing public memory policy in the country.

In a simple house made of wood and straw and smelling of earth, women, girls, and the occasional man narrate, sometimes laughing and other times crying, the stories of how their life used to be before being forcibly displaced to San Juan Nepomuceno. This is one of the many local memory initiatives taking place throughout Colombia today.

Colombia's Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP) aims to achieve criminal accountability through a mixed system of restorative and retributive justice. Generally speaking, the SJP envisions large-scale restorative justice measures involving public acknowledgments of responsibility, as ...

ICTJ’s Gender Symposium, held on February 2 to 4, 2019, in Tunis, Tunisia, brought together fearless women leaders working in 8 countries to advance the needs of victims and to bring gender issues to the center of transitional justice processes. What was achieved? What experiences cut across these diverse contexts? Kelli Muddell and Sibley Hawkins reflect on these questions and more in this short podcast.

Ahead of Pope Francis' visit to Bosnia Herzegovina, ICTJ's Communications Director, Refik Hodzic, asks the leader of the Catholic Church to actively contribute to "a genuine reckoning needed for a genuine peace" in a society still stuck in the past, even 20 years after the war.

Morocco’s “Years of Lead” period was marked by policies of state violence against political dissidents including torture, arbitrary detention, and enforced disappearances. “ Morocco: Gender and the Transitional Justice Process” analyzes whether the various transitional justice processes undertaken by the IER sufficiently fulfill the gender-specific focus of its mandate.

The month of January has a particular significance in the Middle East and North Africa. It was the month when the Arab uprisings were sparked five years ago. It was also the month when the transitional justice process was inaugurated in Morocco, 12 years ago. What can be learned from Morocco’s experience?

This study examines how transitional justice measures in Morocco have helped prevent state violence repression and social and economic exclusion. These measures included the Equity and Reconciliation Commission, which diagnosed some historical wrongdoings and called for reform to prev...

On November 28, 2023, ICTJ organized an international dialogue in Bogotá, Colombia, to share innovative strategies for advancing victims’ rights to redress for human rights abuses and for establishing more victim-centered development policies. The gathering also marked the official launch of ICTJ’s new report—Advancing Victims’ Rights and Rebuilding Just Communities Local Strategies for Achieving Reparation as a Part of Sustainable Development—which presents findings from a two-year comparative study of local efforts in Colombia, The Gambia, Tunisia, and Uganda to advance reparations.

During peace negotiations, there is often a belief that providing amnesties for certain crimes will help promote national reconciliation. Nepal's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Bill currently contains provisions on both amnesty and reconciliation. However, the Bill itself i...

As Nepal’s parliament enters the final discussions on a draft Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) bill, questions remain regarding the relationship between amnesty and reconciliation provisions within the bill.

This report asserts that dealing with past abuses in Myanmar is essential to achieving genuine progress on peacebuilding and economic development in the country. Conflict and high levels of political repression have racked Myanmar for more than half a century. Both President Thein Sei...

The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) and the Barcelona International Peace Resource Center (BIPRC) are pleased to announce an Intensive Course on Transitional Justice and Peace Processes, taking place in Barcelona, Spain, June 6 - 10, 2016. It will focus on practical examples of recent or paradigmatic peace processes where the question of justice formed a significant part of the negotiating context.

In this opinion piece, Lucia Withers argues that Nepal's elected parties and their representatives should not limit their discussions to the establishment of a truth commission or whether it will provide for amnesties and/or prosecutions. Rather, they should focus on designing policies that are more comprehensive and that would better serve the rights and needs of conflict victims and contribute to broader peace-building efforts.

The survey sought to ascertain the opinions and expectations of the victims and their families in Nepal on a range of transitional justice issues, such as human rights violations, truth-seeking, justice, accountability, reparations, and reconciliation.

ICTJ and the Bridges of Truth project are launching Tomorrow We Continue, a new short animated documentary that follows a young mother of two whose husband was detained and disappeared by security forces in Syria some years ago. The film takes the viewer on her journey as a refugee searching for safety in Berlin and depicts the daily struggles she encounters once settled as she tries to earn a living and care for her children while continuing to search for her husband. Since the uprising in Syria began in 2011, more than 100,000 people have been disappeared or arbitrarily detained. The families they leave behind may move to safer places as refugees, but the search for their loved ones persists wherever they go. This film is one of their stories.

A new book by ICTJ titled Justice Mosaics: How Context Shapes Transitional Justice in Fractured Societies examines the challenges of responding to massive human rights violations in different and difficult circumstances in today's world.