Resource Library

In the aftermath of armed conflict or repression, communities often struggle to rebuild social relations that have been damaged or destroyed by violence and abuse. Restorative justice can potentially play a valuable role in such societies, bringing together the people who have been harmed by crimes and the individuals responsible for those harms, often in the form of a dialogue, to address the offense and its consequences. A new ICTJ research report offers insight and guidance on the use of a restorative justice framework in responding to massive and grave human rights violations, drawing primarily from experiences in Colombia, Sierra Leone, Tunisia, and the Philippines’ Bangsamoro region.

Thirty years after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, painful memories of those gruesome 100 days, during which almost one million Rwandan citizens lost their lives, still haunt the people of Rwanda, the rest of Africa, and the world. It is a solemn occasion to remember and honor the victims and survivors of the genocide and to acknowledge the tremendous strength and resilience they have shown in the wake of unspeakable tragedy. However, it is also a time for candid introspection on the African continent, and around the world, about the policies and mechanisms in place to prevent such atrocities.

The Arabic word “Zyara” means “visit” in English. The Zyara documentary series takes an innovative, deeply personal approach to storytelling with a view to nurturing collective social and emotional healing. Through candid encounters, it paints poetic portraits of four Yemenis refugees living in Oman, including a human rights lawyer and activist, a restaurant worker, a martial arts champion, and a businessman. By telling their stories and celebrating the resilient spirit of the Yemeni people, the Zyara project seeks to raise awareness and preserve truth and memory.

Human rights violations as well as any official response to them affect women’s lives in distinct, profound, and often unseen and unspoken ways. For a society grappling with mass atrocities, it is crucial to shed light on these diverse experiences, if they are ever to be acknowledged and repaired. Space must therefore be created for women victims to share their experiences. Libya is one such country. To help raise the voices of women victims and human rights defenders there, ICTJ has been collaborating with diverse women-led civil society organizations since 2019, bringing them together and helping them build their capacities.

ICTJ acknowledges and welcomes the decisive action undertaken by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, requesting the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders – Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh – for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Yemen's nine-year conflict has devastated the country and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The regional upheaval stemming from the ongoing war on Gaza has created more obstacles on the country's already complex path toward peace and shifted attention away from the set of UN-brokered commitments agreed upon by the parties to the conflict in December 2023, which include a nationwide ceasefire. Amid these challenges, it is more imperative than ever to support civil society and victims and bring attention to victims’ grievances and needs.

In February 2024, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights hosted an event in Seoul, South Korea, marking the 10th anniversary of the release of the report of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. ICTJ Senior Expert Ruben Carranza spoke at the event and discussed lessons learned involving nonjudicial forms of accountability. In this interview, he talks about why a broader approach to transitional justice is necessary and how transitional justice measures can help promote peace and possible reunification on the peninsula.

On June 5 and 6, 2024, the African Union (AU) and the European Union (EU) hosted the fourth edition of the AU-EU Experts’ Seminar on Transitional Justice in Brussels, Belgium. The consortium implementing the Initiative for Transitional Justice in Africa, led by ICTJ, helped organize the event. The seminar explored how transitional processes can transform individual lives, societal relations, and dysfunctional state institutions.

In 2022, the Total Peace law was passed in Colombia, through which the government seeks to negotiate and reach agreements with armed organizations that still exist in the country. On June 19, 2024, the current director of ICTJ Colombia, Maria Camila Moreno, was appointed to be a member of the negotiating team that will help develop the peace dialogue table with the armed group Segunda Marquetalia.

CAPE TOWN, April 8, 2011—In a landmark judgment handed down today the Constitutional Court upheld the rights of victims of apartheid era abuses, as well as the media and public, to speak the truth about crimes amnestied by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The court held that truth...

The allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the final phases of the conflict in Sri Lanka, made in the Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka released on April 25, must be thoroughly investigated. This is the first comprehensive UN report examining the events in the Vanni region between January and May of 2009 and it alleges that “tens of thousands of civilians” were killed. The Government of Sri Lanka, but also the relevant international bodies, cannot claim credibility if these findings are ignored.

As the number of victims of violence against demonstrators in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere in the region rises, a question emerges for the government of Bashar al-Assad of Syria, but also those of Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifah of Bahrain and the vacillating international community: Can impunity for such crimes be permitted in this day and age?

Some habits die hard. This is especially true of ways of thinking. Despite significant changes in national and international law and practice in the last thirty years—the period that corresponds with the emergence of transitional justice as a field—the recent upheaval in the Middle East and Northern Africa region has provoked proposals that hearken back to a period that we may have thought long gone.

The international conference on transitional justice 'Addressing the Past, Building the Future: Justice in Times of Transition' concluded today in Tunis, following two days of discussions on justice models and measures implemented in transitions. View the conference blog The conference explored...

South Africa’s Constitutional Court recently made a landmark ruling on the right to speak the truth about crimes amnestied by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. ICTJ Truth-Seeking Consultant Howard Varney speaks about the ruling and its significance for South Africa and other countries.

As the United States and global audiences were informed of the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. special forces, we are reminded how crucially important justice is in the discourse on America’s fight against terrorism. On the eve of these momentous events, ICTJ President David Tolbert spoke to an audience at American University in Washington about the need for the U.S. to ensure accountability for the conduct of its “war on terror.”

ICTJ is pleased to announce the appointment of Theodore M. Shaw to its Governance Board. Mr. Shaw is an internationally recognized leader in the field of civil rights law. His broad experience as a civil rights advocate and scholar will bring added strategic vision to the Center’s board.

For a long time, making compromises on justice with powerful perpetrators of mass atrocities has been an integral part of peace negotiations ending conflicts. The immediate concern of ending the violence often resulted in amnesties for war crimes and crimes against humanity, sometimes even...

BOGOTÁ, May 12, 2011—The decision by President Juan Manuel Santos to recognize the existence of an internal armed conflict in Colombia is a positive step toward transparency and truth-telling in that country, ICTJ said today. The Colombian government has denied for years the existence of an internal armed conflict there, although it was never in doubt from an international law perspective.

As the United States and Colombia near the signing of a free-trade agreement and resolve differences over labor rights and other issues, the problematic extraditions of paramilitaries accused of savage crimes committed during the years of counter-insurgency remain far from the spotlight.

ICTJ spoke with Marlon Weichert, prominent human rights advocate and regional prosecutor with the Federal Public Ministry of Brazil (Ministério Público Federal), on Brazil's pending truth commission bill and calls for accountability measures addressing past violations in Brazil.

Brazil’s new government is showing strong support for the passage of a bill creating a National Truth Commission investigating past human rights violations, writes Eduardo González, director of ICTJ's Truth and Memory Program. ICTJ also spoke with Marlon Weichert, human rights activist and regional prosecutor for Brazil's Federal Public Ministry, on the current debate surrounding truth-seeking and accountability in Brazil.

May 24, 2011 – The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), Curious Pictures and Pivot Pictures hosted the premier of The Axe and the Tree: Zimbabwe’s Legacy of Political Violence at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Houghton, South Africa.

ICTJ is pleased to announce two films premiering at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival (HRWIFF) in June. IMPUNITY (New York premiere) + Q&A with filmmakers What is the cost of truth for families immobilized by Colombia’s violent past? In 2005, Colombia started gathering evidence...

The arrest of Ratko Mladic reignited debates on a wide spectrum of related issues, from its implications on the prospects for true reckoning with the past in the countries of the former Yugoslavia to the possible jolt it will give to Serbia’s hopes of joining the European Union. Beyond the immediate impact on the region, the strongest reverberations of Mladic’s transfer to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) will be felt in the discourse on international justice.

In April, the World Bank released its 2011 World Development Report (WDR) entitled Conflict, Security, and Development. It is the first WDR that links transitional justice to security and development and places human rights violations at the heart of its analysis of conflict. ICTJ has produced a fact sheet outlining the core findings of the report as they pertain to transitional justice.

ICTJ has released One morning they came to our community: Stories of political violence in communities of Peru, a compilation of victims’ stories about Peru’s internal armed conflict from 1980 to 2000. The stories constitute an important form of recognizing the truth, as well as a demand for justice and reparations.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) must better communicate what is driving its actions to the public of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and elsewhere around the world if it is to develop confidence in its capacity to act as a guardian of international criminal law.

On March 31, 2010, the Serbian parliament adopted a declaration "condemning in strongest terms the crime committed in July 1995 against Bosniac population of Srebrenica" and apologizing to the families of the victims. The declaration is a step in the right direction and, potentially, an educational...

The UN Human Rights Council and its mechanisms, notably the system of special procedures, have approached justice for mass atrocities in a piecemeal and sometimes politicized manner, according to a new ICTJ policy briefing.

The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) will hold its second of seven national events from June 28 to July 1 in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. The event will provide survivors of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools (IRS) and other participants an opportunity to contribute to documenting and publicizing what took place in this program of forced assimilation.

Although Brazil's dictatorship ended years ago, focus on transitional justice there is peaking now, as debate stirs over how to best address its past. Recent developments - including the Brazilian government's proposal of a truth commission, the opening of national archives, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights' decision limiting the 1979 amnesty law - are at the core of the discussion. Eduardo Gonzalez, director of ICTJ's Truth and Memory Program, discusses the role accountability for the past can play in Brazil today.

The second Latin American Conference on Transitional Justice closed July 8. In the concluding remarks, ICTJ Truth and Memory Program Director Eduardo Gonzalez stated that while this conference has focused on sharing the comparative experiences throughout Latin America, this has not been an academic exercise but a call to action. Read more on the conference blog

“Residential schools affected everything about how we live. They targeted and destroyed our strong family unit, the basic foundation of our communities. They destroyed the glue that holds us together—love, respect and sharing.” These words, spoken by Charlie Furlong, a community leader of the Gwich'in people of Canada’s Northwest Territories, sum up the chilling legacy of the country’s policy of forced assimilation of indigenous cultures implemented through a system of Indian Residential Schools (IRS) from the 1870s to 1998.

ICTJ's expert conference on the relationship between truth-seeking and indigenous rights is in session. View the live stream here.

As we approach International Justice Day on July 17, calls for accountability for human rights abuses resound across the globe, from Cairo to Washington, from Bogotá to Kinshasa, from Srebrenica to Colombo. The demands for justice are today a driving force of social change and popular revolutions, and their reach now extends to those at the highest levels of power.

NEW YORK, July 19, 2011—Leaders of the global indigenous rights community gathered in New York today for a three-day meeting to discuss how truth commissions can support indigenous rights. The Strengthening Indigenous Rights through Truth Commissions conference was organized by the International...

NEW YORK, Oct. 4, 2010--Ten years after Israeli security forces killed 13 Palestinian demonstrators, 12 of them citizens of Israel, the families' calls for accountability have gone unanswered, the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) said today. "Despite an official commission of...

Your Excellency, We, the undersigned civil society organizations, are writing to urge your government to support recommendations in the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (Goldstone Report) and work with others in the General Assembly to secure adoption of a...

The report by the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict has reaffirmed the importance of justice in the pursuit of sustainable peace in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Released September 15, 2009, the 575-page report (PDF) documents violations of international law...

ICTJ hosted a conference on “Strengthening Indigenous Rights through Truth Commissions” July 19-21, 2011. Regional and international experts convened to discuss how truth commissions can incorporate and address indigenous peoples’ rights. Videos of each session and summaries of the conference proceedings are available.

As Kenya continues to address its 2007-08 postelection violence, greater emphasis should be placed on victims’ reparative justice demands, according to a new ICTJ report. The report, “To Live as Other Kenyans Do”: A Study of the Reparative Demands of Kenyan Victims of Human Rights Violations, is a...

ICTJ is pleased to present the KickStarter campaign to launch the Iriba Center for Multimedia Heritage in Kigali, Rwanda. The Iriba Center, whose name means “the source,” is a project to make accessible an audiovisual history of Rwanda, to “keep the country’s history alive.”

As the international community considers its response to the surging violence in Syria, those responsible for gross human rights violations in the country should be held to account, said the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) today.

The appearance of Hosni Mubarak in the opening of his trial this week reassured millions of Egyptians that their revolutionary struggle was not in vain. But the truth about Mubarak’s ability to participate in his trial is still unclear. With the public doubting the court’s seriousness, Mubarak’s appearance could have been a political decision aimed at boosting confidence. If this is the case, the judiciary risks appearing politicized in the eyes of Egyptians.