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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...

As ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel company, invests 19.2 million pounds of steel to construct a monument marking London’s Olympic Games, a disturbing story is emerging about the refusal to memorialize a former concentration camp in Bosnia it owns today. Not only is ArcelorMittal unwilling to provide even a fraction of the cost of the London “Orbit” to commemorate the suffering of Bosnians in the notorious Omarska camp, but it has recently started denying victims access to the site.

In July, ICTJ’s Program Director Anna Myriam Roccatello and Senior Transitional Justice Expert Ruben Carranza traveled to Yerevan to meet with civil society organizations, human rights and anti-corruption activists, and key government officials, to join them in exploring strategies for change.

On February 8, ICTJ held an event in The Hague on the missing and disappeared in Syria, in partnership with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The event brought together activists, journalists, artists, and policymakers to reflect on the critical humanitarian needs of victims and their families and the role of the newly established international body on the missing in Syria, which is mandated in part to address these needs.

New York, June 3, 2019—Today, with just over a month to go before the 2019 UN High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development, ICTJ and its partners have released the Report of the Working Group on Transitional Justice and SDG16+, entitled “On Solid Ground: Building Sustainable Peace and Development After Massive Human Rights Violations.”

The Spanish Supreme Court has ruled the judiciary has no place investigating the deaths and disappearances of the Franco era. The verdict is a disappointment for the victims of Francoism and confirms Spain remains unwilling to deliver justice for the crimes of the past, writes Eduardo González, director of ICTJ's Truth and Memory program

On August 9, 2012, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation, and nonrecurrence Pablo de Greiff presented the first annual report to the Human Rights Council. The report provides an overview of key activities undertaken by the Special Rapporteur between May 1 and July 25, reviews the foundations of the mandate and outlines the strategy for its implementation.

Sparing almost no corner of the world from its wrath, the COVID-19 pandemic has now spread to every country. In an effort to slow the contagion, governments in most countries have been taking drastic measures requiring all residents other than essential workers to confine themselves in their homes, and shutting down vast sectors of their economies. The impact has been crushing. COVID-19 has profoundly affected every country where ICTJ currently works: Armenia, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gambia, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Uganda. We recently caught up with ICTJ’s heads of country programs to learn more about the impact the pandemic is having on transitional justice and society more broadly.

On International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, the families of the missing maintain their vow: "until we find them." As special bodies to search for their loved ones develop, what do victims expect?

Enforced disappearances continue to affect hundreds of thousands of people around the world. The hopes of Sri Lankan victims reached a peak in 2015, when President Maithripala Sirisena was elected on a centrist platform and a commitment to truth, justice, and reconciliation. Later that year, the Sri Lankan government agreed to a UN Human Rights Council resolution that offered a roadmap for the search for the missing and forcibly disappeared. To the dismay of many, however, the government has done little since to implement these commitments and to take the opinions of victims seriously.

The start of 2022 was marked by two important victories in the fight for justice and redress for victims of human rights violations in Syria. The first was the sentencing of Anwar Raslan, a former colonel in the Syrian intelligence service, to life in prison by the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz...

On Thursday, January 13, 2022, the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz, Germany, convicted Anwar Raslan, a senior official in the Syrian government, for crimes against humanity. The landmark trial, the first ever to prosecute a member of Bashar al-Assad’s regime for such crimes, highlights a crucial component without which Raslan would never have been convicted: the role of victims in achieving justice.

Constitutional reforms can be valuable in a transitional justice process, but their effectiveness depends on the degree to which they are woven into the social and cultural understanding of the country's legal framework.

In this op-ed, ICTJ Vice President Paul Seils calls on the international community to prioritize the return of Syrian refugees to their homes instead of posturing about Assad's ouster.

Why pursue transitional justice in the aftermath of massive human rights violations? “The Case for Justice” provides a window into the debate about the relevance of transitional justice in today’s world.

Throughout 2022, ICTJ’s experts weighed in on breaking news in more than 10 countries, offering incisive analyses of the political dynamics behind the coverage and the implications for justice, peace, and the rights of victims. In this December edition of the World Report, we look back at the year that was through our Expert’s Choice commentaries, bringing you all of our team’s valuable insights together in one place.

On International Criminal Justice Day, 2014, ICTJ joins the global celebrations marking the groundbreaking establishment of the Rome Statute in 1998, which created the International Criminal Court (ICC). To mark the day, we review five contexts where national systems proved it was possible to bring perpetrators to justice where it matters the most.

It is highly unlikely that we will see ad hoc international tribunals or elaborate hybrid courts such as the SCSL and the ECCC in the future, asserted ICTJ President David Tolbert at an expert meeting about the future of international justice in light of past experiences and progress made at the...

On October 25, the African Union (AU) and European Union officially launched their joint Initiative for Transitional Justice in Africa (ITJA) in Addis Ababa. The project will take place over a three-year period and will promote national transitional justice processes in Africa, in line with the AU Transitional Justice Policy and its roadmap. The ITJA has several unique features that, if embraced and advanced by all actors, have the potential to trailblaze a new and inspiring path to peace, justice, and sustainable development on the African continent.

In December, ICTJ partnered with NYU School of Law and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice to host Auschwitz survivor and Judge Thomas Buergenthal for the 7th Annual Emilio Mignone Lecture on Transitional Justice.

ICTJ and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law are pleased to announce that Judge Thomas Buergenthal will be the speaker of the 7th Annual Emilio Mignone Lecture on Transitional Justice. Buergenthal is one of the world’s most distinguished jurists, whose name is synonymous with human rights and international justice. The lecture will be held on Thursday, December 12, from 6:00 to 7:30pm, in New York City.

In this op-ed, ICTJ Vice President Paul Seils discusses how education can be used to address legacies of mass violence and dictatorship.

In a society grappling with the legacy of the past, citizens must make informed judgements and disentangle the facts from the sticky web of political rhetoric, denial, and polarizing propaganda. To do so, they rely on one key agent of social change: the media. But how can transitional processes effectively partner with the media and engage key constituencies? And what happens when media play a decisively negative role in mediating information about war crimes?

In this op-ed, ICTJ President David Tolbert argues that in order to meet the EU’s high standards on the rule of law and human rights, Serbia must address the legacy of its recent past in which Slobodan Milosevic’s regime and the institutions under its control were involved in some of the most notorious crimes committed in Europe since World War II.

Ukraine's Maidan Revolution in 2014 ushered in a wave of decommunization efforts, ostensibly in order to ensure respect for human rights and to prevent a recurrence of the crimes of Communist and Nazi regimes. However, the laws were largely a product of contentious politics of memory: they further a particular understanding of past events that will likely continue to fuel division and distrust among Ukrainians, and between Ukraine and Russia.