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Truth CommissionsCAN COUNTRIES HEAL AFTER ATROCITIES?

After war and unspeakable violence, countries around the world face the challenge of moving forward

while dealing with the past. But what should justice look like? From Bosnia to Burundi, from Ar-

gentina to Timor-Leste, millions of people around the world have been brutalized by genocide, tor-

ture, kidnappings and disappearances of loved ones — often at the hands of their own governments

and countrymen. Today countries have a variety of legal options, known as transitional justice, including truth com-

missions — official panels that investigate atrocities and create authoritative records of past abuses. Truth-telling can

foster social healing and reconciliation,

supporters say, but early research suggests

that results have been mixed. Other coun-

tries seek justice through international

trials or tribunals. In the end, justice —

however it is sought — seeks to expose

the truth, protect human rights and pave

a path to democracy.

Then-South African President Nelson Mandela (left)accepts the voluminous final repor t of the South

African Truth and Reconciliation Commission frompanel chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1998.The panel has become the gold standard of truth

commissions for its ability to avoid violence and reuniteSouth Africans after the fall of the apar theid regime.

JANUARY 2010 VOLUME 4, NUMBER 1 PAGES 1-24 WWW.GLOBALRESEARCHER.COM

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2 CQ Global Researcher

THE ISSUES

3 • Do truth commissionsproduce accurate recordsof the past?• Can truth commissionsreconcile individuals andsocieties?• Are truth commissionsmore effective than trials?

BACKGROUND

11 From Constantinople toThe HagueMany societies have soughtaccountability for abuses.

12 Truth vs. JusticeTension exists betweentruth-seeking and amnesty.

12 ‘Justice on the Grass’Traditional justice can becontroversial.

15 CompensationSome truth commissionsrecommend reparations,but it’s not easy to get themoney.

CURRENT SITUATION

15 Publicizing ResultsGroups use innovativetechniques to publicizetruth panel work.

16 Traditional vs. International JusticeInternational tribunals canhave a negative impact onpeace.

16 Future TRCs?Truth panels are beingconsidered in Iraq,Afghanistan.

OUTLOOK

18 Jurisdictional BattlesCan traditional justice trumpinternational intervention?

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

4 Many Countries SeekTruth After Past AtrocitiesCountries use a variety oftransitional justice tools.

8 Trials and Amnesties AreUsed Most OftenCriminal trials have been usedmost against authoritariangovernments.

10 Finding Out What ReallyHappenedStatistician separates fact fromfiction for truth commissions.

13 ChronologyKey events since 1915.

14 Do Truth CommissionsWork?The jury is still out, experts say.

17 At IssueCan the International CriminalCourt bring justice to Darfur?

24 Voices From AbroadHeadlines and editorials fromaround the world.

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

21 For More InformationOrganizations to contact.

22 BibliographySelected sources used.

23 The Next StepAdditional articles.

23 Citing CQ Global ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

TRUTH COMMISSIONS

Cover : AFP/Getty Images/Walter Dhladhla

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Truth Commissions

THE ISSUESI n Bomaru, a dusty Sierra

Leonean village along theLiberian border, nearly

800 residents gathered in early2008 for an unusual ceremo-ny — one they hoped wouldhelp them come to termswith their past and each other.

Up to 50,000 peoplewere killed during the coun-try’s decade-long civil war,2 0 0 , 0 0 0 women we r eraped and tens of thousandsof others were brutallymaimed, including children,after rebels hacked off theirhands or arms for refusingto join the cause. All told,the f ight ing displacedroughly 1 million people. 1

The Bomaru residentshad come to participate ina ritual of reconciliationthat included confessions bythe perpetrators and for-giveness from the victims.After music and dancing, thevillagers presented a gift totheir ancestors to cleansethe village and bring backthe harvests.

It wasn’t Bomaru’s firstattempt at reconciliation. TheSierra Leone Truth and ReconciliationCommission had arrived years beforeto gather some of the 7,000 state-ments it would use to write a defin-itive history of the conflict, whichstarted over control of the region’sdiamonds. 2 But the commissionhadn’t healed the village, elders said.Something more was needed.

During the 2008 reconciliation at-tempt, residents gathered to recallwhat had happened, but froze whena visiting American film crew movedin with its video cameras. The cere-mony came to a halt. “They are afraid

that if they talk,” one leader explained,“they will be prosecuted.” 3

Bomaru’s concerns are echoed incountries around the world recoveringfrom massive human rights abuses. Thefear of prosecution often prevents “thetruth” about past atrocities fromemerging. And when there are thou-sands of perpetrators, some of whomremain powerful, it is difficult for vic-tims to tell their stories and offendersto be brought to justice.

In the last three decades, severaldozen countries — from Argentina toZimbabwe — have chosen an innov-

ative answer: truth commis-sions. The panels are orga-nized by national govern-ments, usually with the helpof the international commu-nity, to create official recordsof human rights abuses com-mitted by past governments.The panels typically spend oneto two years recording state-ments from thousands of vic-tims and perpetrators, some-times offering perpetratorsimmunity if they cooperate.

While the commissionsuncover crimes, they arenot trials: They do not cor-roborate facts, cross-examinewitnesses or judge individ-ual guilt like the 11 inter-national tribunals — suchas the famous Nurembergtrials after World War II —established in the past 100years to investigate warcrimes and other humanrights abuses. Rather thanindictments and verdicts,truth commissions issue finalreports that function as of-ficial histories of what hap-pened and offer a series ofrecommendations, often fo-cused on reparations and onnurturing democracy, trans-parency and human rights.

A handful of commissions, however,have recommended certain individ-ual prosecutions.

In some countries, most famouslyin South Africa, truth commissions arealso asked to foster reconciliation.Such “truth and reconciliation com-missions” usually recommend how thegovernment can promote peaceful co-existence among formerly warring fac-tions or even individuals.

“Truth commissions are supposedto reconcile what are seen as two big,conflicting goals for a society comingout of a dark period of war and

BY JINA MOORE

AFP/Getty Images/Elvis Barukcic

Survivors of Bosnian-Serb war crimes protest on Sept. 16, 2009,at U.N. headquarters in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and

Herzegovina. The demonstrators said the International CriminalTribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague was not being

tough enough on former Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic, who ischarged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity

for his part in the four-year siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men in Srebrenica. Such tribunals can impose jail sentences and are an alternative to nonprosecutorial truth commissions.


human rights violations — peace onthe one hand and justice on the other,”says Martin Flaherty, a founder and di-

rector of the Leitner Center for Inter-national Law and Justice at FordhamLaw School in New York City.

Those goals first clashed in LatinAmerica in the 1980s, as countriesemerging from abusive authoritarian

TRUTH COMMISSIONS

Many Countries Seek Truth After Past AtrocitiesSince 1976, at least 58 countries have set up truth commissions — nonjudicial panels that establish ofÞcial records of human rights abuses by former regimes. Three commissions are currently operating or just getting organized: in Canada, Kenya and the Solomon Islands. The commissions are one method used by emerging democracies to obtain post-conßict “transitional justice.” Wartime crimes against humanity also have been prosecuted in 11 countries by international tribunals — ad hoc judicial bodies, usually established by the United Nations. The International Criminal Court (ICC), given universal jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity, is pursuing investigations in four countries: Sudan, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. In November, the ICC prosecu-tor asked for permission to open a preliminary investigation into ethnic-based violence following Kenya’s 2007 election.

Sources: International Criminal Court; United States Institute of Peace, Project on International Courts and Tribunals; Tricia D. Olsen, Leigh A. Payne and Andrew G. Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing EfÞcacy, United States Institute of Peace Press, forthcoming, Spring 2010

Major Truth Commissions or War Crimes Trials(Past or Ongoing)

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Transitional Justice Tools

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rule struggled to democratize. In Ar-gentina, the first country to success-fully hold a truth commission, theoutgoing leaders of a brutal militarydictatorship had granted themselvesimmunity from prosecution for theircrimes before the commission wasestablished. Challenging the amnestylaw was impossible: The judiciarywas too weak — and the people toocowed — to take on the junta. 4

Instead, Argentina’s new presidentlaunched a commission to gather testi-mony on the prior regime’s behavior.In just nine months the panel inter-viewed more than 7,000 Argentinesand documented nearly 9,000 storiesof the “disappeared” — civilians whowere kidnapped, tortured and mur-dered by the junta. In a country thathad long suffered in fear and silence,the 1984 truth commission report,Nunca Más (“Never Again”), becamean instant best seller. 5

Truth commissions since then haveemerged as a popular tool of “transi-tional justice” — a variety of legal op-tions for countries coping with pasthuman rights abuses. “A generation ago,there wasn’t even a phrase,” says MarthaMinow, dean of Harvard University LawSchool and an expert on transitionaljustice. “Now, in places all over the world,you hear people saying, ‘Maybe weshould have a truth commission.’ ”

Truth commissions aren’t the onlyoption for societies recovering fromrights abuses. In 2002, the world com-munity set up a permanent global courtin The Hague, Netherlands — the In-ternational Criminal Court (ICC) — toreplace the ad hoc international tri-bunals, most of which had been man-dated by the United Nations. The ICC— which prosecutes genocide, crimesagainst humanity and war crimes —has opened four investigations so far:in Sudan, Uganda, the Democratic Re-public of the Congo and the CentralAfrican Republic.

Some countries use a hybrid ap-proach to justice. Cambodia set up a

U.N.-backed national-international courtin Phnom Pehn, which in Novemberconcluded its first trial of a formerKhmer Rouge official charged withmass murder during the notorious 1970sregime. 6 A verdict is expected in Marchin that case. Meanwhile, genocide chargeswere filed on Dec. 18 against threeother former Khmer Rouge officials, in-cluding president Khieu Samphan, themost senior Khmer Rouge leader in-

dicted in connection with the deaths of1.7 million people during the 1975-79“killing fields” reign of terror. 7

But truth commissions have beenfar more popular than internationaltrials or tribunals; they’re cheaper anddon’t require as much internationalassistance. So far, nearly 60 truth com-missions have been establishedaround the world, mostly in Latin Amer-ica and sub-Saharan Africa, thoughthat’s beginning to change. 8 In 2002,Timor-Leste’s truth commission reportedon 30 years of violent and repressiveIndonesian rule, and in 2004 Moroc-co opened the Arab world’s first truth

commission, which focused on disap-pearances and arbitrary detentions overa 43-year period beginning in 1956.(See map, p. 4.)

Truth commissions often cast them-selves in transformative terms. “We be-lieve . . . that there is another kindof justice — a restorative justice, whichis concerned not so much with pun-ishment as with correcting imbalances,restoring broken relationships — with

healing, harmony and reconciliation,”wrote Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chairof the South African Truth and Recon-ciliation Commission, in the panel’s finalreport. “Such justice focuses on theexperience of the victims.” 9

Sweeping goals aside, truth exercisesare not unlike the commissions of in-quiry common in Western democracies,such as the Warren Commission thatinvestigated the Kennedy assassinationor the 9/11 Commission. Like them,truth commissions are temporarybodies, official but independent,mandated to create an official recordof the past.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir defiantly holds a rally on April 7, 2009, shortly after hewas indicted for war crimes in Darfur by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Sudanesepresident responded to his ICC arrest warrant by evicting 13 Western aid agencies — fueling

criticism that internationally imposed justice can backfire, further harming the victims.

AFP/Getty Images/Ashraf Shazly


Truth commissions, however, focuson patterns of abuse over time, noton single events, and they usuallyare established during moments ofregime change, particularly during acountry’s transition to a democraticor open society. 10

In fact, it is during such fragiletransition periods that truth com-missions are most needed — and,some say, most effective. Indeed,creating a public record of secretstate crimes represents more than ahistorical exercise.

“In countries like Chile or Ar-gentina, commissions have success-fully made it impossible to deny thatthe crimes took place,” says EduardoGonzalez, director of the truth andmemory program at the InternationalCenter for Transitional Justice (ICTJ)in New York. Consequently, says Gon-zalez, a Peruvian who served on thestaff of his own country’s commission,“truth commissions have been funda-mental to cement allegiance todemocracy and the rule of law.”

But most truth commissions don’texist long enough to see that changeblossom. Some succumb to infightingor political pressure before their termsexpire. Others are followed by renewedviolence, like the 1993 commission inRwanda — where ethnic violenceamong Tutsis and Hutus erupted later,killing about 800,000 people.

And truth commissions face incred-ible financial and logistical hurdles. Thepanels need qualified commissioners— universally respected by all sides —to conduct the investigations. They alsoneed money to travel across the coun-try and take thousands of statementsfrom victims and perpetrators and sus-tained political will to weather fatigueand controversy. 11

Still, truth commissions can be apragmatic way for young states tohandle large numbers of perpetrators.They also are lauded for giving voiceto victims, which some say promotespsychosocial healing. 12

There are, predictably, spoilers inthe truth-telling process. Perpetratorsoften want to maintain their silence.In 1995, 46 percent of white SouthAfricans called the just-establishedtruth and reconciliation commission a“witch-hunt” designed to discredit theformer apartheid government. 13

In other countries, perpetrators oftenrefuse to apologize for their crimes.

“I sleep good,” said Prince John-son, one of Liberia’s most notoriouswarlords and now a senator, whenhe was investigated by Liberia’sTruth and Reconciliation Commission.“I snore.” 14 When the panel rec-ommended prosecuting him for warcrimes, Johnson threatened to returnto the bush and renew the country’scivil war. 15

Even victims themselves don’t uni-versally support truth-telling. Somedon’t believe that sharing their storieswill lessen their pain or nudge theircountrymen toward reconciliation.More than 90 percent of Rwandangenocide survivors thought the country’struth-telling mechanism would renewtrauma; more than half thought truth-telling would make it difficult to livewith the perpetrators. 16

Other countries worry that focus-ing on the past will open old wounds.Yet the other option — doing nothing— may be equally problematic, sayscholars and experts.

“People want acknowledgment.Before they can get on with their livesthey need that acknowledgment,” saysRichard Goldstone, a renowned for-mer South African judge and the for-mer chief prosecutor of the interna-tional criminal tribunals for bothRwanda and the former Yugoslavia. “Ifthey don’t get it, then you get calls forrevenge. That’s how cycles of violenceare born.”

As governments, victims andhuman rights advocates try to heal thewounds of the past, here are some ofthe questions they are debating:

Do truth commissions produceaccurate records of the past?

Truth commissions are designed toprovide countries and their people witha single, official version of a contro-versial past, based on thousands ofinterviews. But experts say getting anofficial version of the truth is not al-ways the same as getting an accuratepicture of the past.

“They should be called ‘fact and fic-tion commissions,’ or ‘some-of-the-truthcommissions,’ ” quipped a long-timeobserver of truth commissions. 17

There are limitations on what truthcommissions can discover. They givehigher priority to fairness and honestythan to culpability and thereby attemptto arrive at a definitive — but notnecessarily complete — picture of thepast. “Truth commissions are meant toprovide a national narrative of a con-flict, but they can be debated, dis-cussed, challenged and contested,” saysElizabeth Goodfriend, a program as-sociate at the International Center forTransitional Justice in Liberia. “There’sno one truth.”

When the South African Truthand Reconciliation Commission wasset up in 1995 to examine abusesby the former apartheid governments,it acknowledged four versions of thetruth: the forensic truth of numbersand facts; the narrative truth of per-sonal experience; the social truth ofpublicizing thousands of personalstories and the restorative truth ofacknowledging a dark history beforemoving forward. 18

Those truths can compete in anypublic process, and the South Africancommissioners didn’t say which truthshould trump others. 19 But even whenthere is no outright conflict amongthem, each version has its limits, andone version can sometimes requireanother in order to uncover the com-plete scope of what happened.

“Interviewing 8,000 people doesn’ttell you how many victims there wereover a 25-year period; it just tells you

TRUTH COMMISSIONS


the stories of those particular individ-uals,” says David Cohen, director ofthe War Crimes Studies Center at theUniversity of California-Berkeley. Whethera truth commission gets an accurate pic-ture of the past, he says, “depends onwhich truth you’re looking for.”

Truth commissions also risk record-ing untruths, especially if they en-courage witnesses to come forward byoffering them an incentive that looksa lot like immunity. South Africa of-fered outright amnesty if individualsconfessed fully and truthfully. In Liberia,the truth commission promised itwouldn’t recommend prosecution foranyone who offered a full confessionand genuine regret for crimes com-mitted during the 14-year civil war.

Such an incentive, critics say, maybe a temptation to lie. “If you tie upadmissions of guilt and expressions ofrepentance with provisions of amnesty,you of course have a recipe for pre-tending,” says Thomas Brudholm, aDanish scholar of transitional justiceand co-editor of the book ReligiousResponses to Mass Atrocities.

Whatever version of the truth emerges,it may be just a start. “It’s better tounderstand any of these transitionaldevices as contributing to a multi-generational struggle over truth, ratherthan any one of them producing a de-finitive truth,” says Harvard’s Minow.

The messy debates over recentBalkan history suggest a truth com-mission can be a healthy start to thatprocess. Although an international tri-bunal in The Hague is prosecutingBalkan war criminals, the region hasnever had a truth commission. Everygeneration of schoolchildren learns adifferent version of history, dependingon their ethnicity. “There should be arecorded history,” said a Bosnian civilsociety leader, when asked if a truthand reconciliation commission couldestablish a historical record of whathappened. “It is not good that differentpeople are hearing different histories. Itis bad for future generations.” 20

Criminal justice, meanwhile, is limit-ed. It requires hard, physical evidenceand a perpetrator who is present in thecourtroom. “There were thousands uponthousands of incidents the prosecutorwould never get to,” says Goldstone,the tribunal’s former chief prosecutor.Were there a truth commission, “theprospects for permanent peace wouldbe a lot better.”

Whether a truth commission canget an accurate record of the past, oreven the best record, may soon be-

come a secondary argument. A grow-ing movement seeks to establish the“right to truth” as a universal humanright that — like other rights — gov-ernments must protect and fulfill.

“The state has an obligation toexplore the truth to the best of itsabilities and to disclose it publicly,”Juan Méndez, an Argentinean whowas the first United Nations specialadvisor on the prevention of geno-

cide, has argued. “Whether we call ita right or not, the obligation of thestate very honestly to explore everydetail of human rights abuses is nowso well established that almost nobodydenies it anymore.” 21

Can truth commissions reconcileindividuals and societies?

Few people considered reconcilia-tion a component of truth-telling until1995, when South Africa mandatedcreation of a truth and reconciliation

commission. It has become the goldstandard of truth commissions for itsability to avoid violence and reuniteSouth Africans after the fall of apartheid.Today, many people — both insideand outside of conflict countries —expect truth commissions to producereconciliation.

However, there is no universallyaccepted definition of reconciliation.Priscilla Hayner, a co-founder of the

Former Liberian warlord Prince Johnson has refused to apologize for his role in Liberia’s longcivil war. When the country’s truth and reconciliation commission recommended prosecuting

Johnson for war crimes, he threatened to return to the bush and resume fighting.AFP/Getty Images/Zoom Dosso


ICTJ and an expert on truth com-missions, calls reconciliation a “hazyconcept” that can describe everythingfrom the cessation of hostilities to theco-existence of social groups to for-giveness between victims and theirperpetrators.

Others agree the conversation canbe confusing. Charles Griswold, au-thor of Forgiveness: A PhilosophicalExploration and a philosophy pro-fessor at Boston University, says,“You’ve really got three moving parts:forgiveness, truth and reconciliation,and the relation of the three of themis debated.”

Reconciliation is generally definedas a process that acknowledges thepast and repairs the relations it hasdestroyed. But there’s a debate aboutculture and context. 22

In Rwanda, where local courts func-tion as a kind of hybrid truth com-mission and trial chamber, forgive-ness plays a major role in the socialand political process of reconciliation,which is a national priority. “Thecommitted sins have to be repressedand punished, but also forgiven,”Rwandan President Paul Kagame hassaid. “I invite the perpetrators to showcourage and to confess, to repent andto ask forgiveness.” 23

In Latin America, on the otherhand, reconciliation was an unpalat-able goal, according to Gonzalez ofthe International Center for TransitionalJustice. After a decades-long officialsilence that covered up state crimes,reconciliation was seen as a coverthat allowed political elites to getaway with abuses.

Hayner and others doubt that truthcommissions can produce individualreconciliation, so they recommend thatcommissions and the societies they servedistinguish between individual and na-tional (political) reconciliation. 24

Forgiveness and reconciliation canbe especially difficult if the perpetra-tor’s identify is unknown. In Liberia,more than 80 percent of 85,000 vic-tims didn’t know who committed acrime against them. 25

“Forgiveness is really a relationbetween two individuals — a way ofrepairing that relation,” says Griswold.If the perpetrator’s identity is unknown,there is no relationship to restore.

And in the few instances wherevictims and perpetrators did crosspaths at Liberia’s Truth and Recon-ciliation Commission (TRC) hearings,it didn’t go well. “The perpetratorswere condescending,” says AaronWeah, a Liberian civil society advo-cate and co-author of the book Im-punity Under Attack — Evolutions andImperatives for the Liberian TRC. “Theywere very rude.”

Moreover, “To expect survivors toforgive is to heap yet another burdenon them,” wrote Harvard’s Minow inBetween Vengeance and Forgiveness:Facing History After Genocide and MassViolence. “The ability to dispense, butalso to withhold, forgiveness is an en-nobling capacity and part of the dig-nity to be reclaimed by those whosurvive the wrongdoing.” 26

Others find the notion of forgive-ness downright impossible. “If it is dif-ficult for some individuals to forgiveduring a family dispute, why would itbe easy for a victim of torture to rec-oncile with a perpetrator?” asks Gon-zalez. “No institution can be expectedto reconcile in a matter of a few yearsa society that has been divided byviolent conflict.”

Gonzalez faced that expectationhimself as a core staff member ofthe Peruvian Truth and Reconcilia-tion Commission, established in

TRUTH COMMISSIONS

Trials and Amnesties Are Used Most OftenSince the early 1990s, criminal trials have been used most often in seeking justice following human rights abuses, usually perpetrated by authoritarian governments. Amnesty laws, which absolve perpetrators, have been the second most popular option, followed by truth commissions. The use of all three approaches jumped dramatically in the early 1990s, with the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Since 1993, more than 90 countries have transitioned from authoritarian rule.

Source: Tricia D. Olsen, Leigh A. Payne and Andrew G. Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing EfÞcacy, United States Institute of Peace Press, forthcoming, Spring 2010

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2001 to investigate assassinations,disappearances and torture underprevious presidents. “We were giventhe mandate to reconcile,” says Gon-zalez, “but the question was, at whatlevel? We decided it would be im-possible — it would be too muchto ask of the victims — to push forindividual reconciliation betweenthem and their perpetrators.”

Instead, the commission tried to“reconcile the individual with the state,”the only relationship it felt a govern-ment body could repair, he says. Todo that, the commission analyzed thecauses of the violence and the break-down in citizen-state relations under-lying the violence. Proposals for gov-ernmental reform thus shared centerstage with collecting individual stories.

Moreover, truth commissions appearto be better at supporting peacefulcoexistence between individuals thanat full-fledged reconciliation. “You mightcease hostilities,” says Griswold, “butcontinue to hate each other. That’sperfectly possible.”

Peaceful coexistence can still suc-ceed, however, if the victims and theiraggressors mutually foreswear vengeanceor violence. “If reconciliation means whatI heard in South Africa — simply that‘When I’m walking down the street,and I see someone I know is part ofthe secret police and they see me, wejust keep walking’ — if that’s reconcil-iation, then I think a truth commissioncan be very helpful,” says Minow.

Forgiveness, on the other hand,seems far more unlikely. As one Rwan-dan genocide survivor told a Frenchjournalist, “A man may ask forgivenessif he had one Primus [beer] too manyand then beats his wife. But if he hasworked at killing for a whole month,even on Sundays, whatever can hehope to be forgiven for?” 27

Are truth commissions more effective than trials?

Human rights advocates often warnthat failing to hold perpetrators ac-

countable for their deeds perpetuates a“culture of impunity.” Unless we try warcriminals like Sudanese President Omaral-Bashir, the argument goes, futureheads of state won’t think twice aboutcommitting crimes against humanity.

As former U.S. Secretary of StateMadeleine Albright remarked, “AdolfHitler once defended his plan to killJews by asking the rhetorical question:‘Who, after all, remembers the Arme-nians?’ ” 28 He was referring to theallegation by Armenians that the Ot-toman Turks slaughtered hundredsof thousands of Armenians duringWorld War I. 29

Truth commissions and trials bothcounter impunity, but in differentways. In the Latin America of the1980s, where military dictators wrotetheir own immunity into the laws,“prosecution was pretty much off thetable,” says former South African JudgeGoldstone. “In that context, truth com-missions were the best one couldhope for. Since then, the world haschanged dramatically.”

Today, international law prohibitsamnesty for crimes against humanity,and the ICC is required to prosecutelarge-scale abuses in the 110 countriesthat have given it jurisdiction if theirown governments fail to pursue trialsor prosecution. That means truth com-missions have fewer options for of-fering amnesties to encourage coop-eration.

“I think South Africa just scraped bywith the amnesties,” says Goldstone. “Bytoday’s standards, I would find it diffi-cult to amnesty crimes against human-ity. In 1995, it was a little different.”

Truth commissions can seem, de-ceptively, like a simpler alternative tocourtroom justice. “There is often thissort of sentiment, ‘Let’s have a truthcommission, and let’s not really dealwith everything else.’ It does feel likethe easier route toward accountabil-ity, without really putting anyone injail,” says International Center for Tran-sitional Justice co-founder Hayner. “But

it doesn’t play out that way.” TheChilean truth commission’s files helpedindict former Chilean leader Gen. Au-gusto Pinochet, nearly 10 years later,despite an amnesty law. 30

In Sierra Leone, an internationalcriminal tribunal and a truth and rec-onciliation commission operated si-multaneously, with occasional cooper-ation and complications, according toWilliam Schabas, a professor of humanrights law at the National Universityof Ireland and a member of SierraLeone’s commission. A majority ofBurundians want both mechanisms forthe country’s 30-year ethnic conflict:Nearly 8 out of 10 support a truth andreconciliation commission and nearly7 in 10 want to see perpetrators triedand punished. 31

Méndez, the former U.N. special ad-visor on genocide, thinks countrieslike Burundi need, and can have, com-missions and courts. “Both aspects,truth-telling and prosecutions of per-petrators, are obligations of the statein transitional justice, and both haveto be conducted in good faith,” he hassaid. “What I reject is the notion thatthe state can say it will not prosecuteanyone but it will give the victims areport on what happened. That is atravesty, because it tries to exchangethe demands for justice for a truth-telling exercise.” 32

But good faith doesn’t help post-conflict countries solve a pressingpublic-policy dilemma: If justice, truthand reconciliation are all national pri-orities, which takes precedence? “Ifreconciliation is the goal, truth com-missions probably do a better job thancriminal prosecutions,” says Schabas.“In Sierra Leone, most of the peopledidn’t know who the perpetrators were,”he explains, making prosecution im-possible for all but the leaders of thewarring factions.

Even when individual perpetrators’identities are known, truth-telling has ad-vantages over trials. “Truth commissions

Continued on p. 11


TRUTH COMMISSIONS

Patrick Ball is used to being the odd guy out. When hewalks into the headquarters of most truth commissions,he finds himself surrounded by lawyers. As a statistician

and a self-professed data geek, Ball is there to crunch num-bers and “hack code,” as he puts it.

Ball heads the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG)at Benetech, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based non-profit technology con-sulting firm with a social justice focus. His team brings quantita-tive analysis to truth commissions, which otherwise rely on anec-dotes from victims, survivors and alleged perpetrators of war crimesand genocide. It’s an unusual application of technology — fewcollege students solving problem sets in statistics labs imaginethey’re learning skills useful in defending human rights. But whenthe challenge is to find patterns of violence amid conflicting claimsand denials, a statistician like Ball is an invaluable ally.

“Human rights violations don’t occur one at a time,” saysBall. His job is to help clarify whether violent incidents num-ber in the thousands or the tens of thousands.

The essence of Ball’s job is the ability to see ordinary materialas statistical data. “Everything is data to us,” he says. “A pile ofscrungy paper from border guards — 690 pages — that’s data.” Histeam finds it, codes it, analyzes it, interprets it. But statistics is aworld of careful hypotheses, not bold proclamations. Data, he says,“is what we’re able to observe. That’s not the same as what is true.”

Still, data that Ball and his team observe — and quantify— has changed our ideas about what’s true in places aroundthe globe. In Peru, for example, Ball’s team estimated that thenumber of dead or “disappeared” in that country’s 1980s waragainst terrorists was twice as high as the estimate by a humanrights commission in Lima. In Guatemala, the group helpedprove that genocide had been committed against the indige-nous Mayans. And in Kosovo, the data they collected and an-alyzed unraveled Slobodan Milosevic’s defense during his trialat an international tribunal.

In that case, Ball used hundreds of pages of border-crossingreports, analyzing who moved across the Kosovo-Albanian bor-der and when. The pattern that emerged from that data, com-bined with 11 other sources on civilian deaths in Kosovo, castdoubt on Milosevic’s claim that Kosovars were fleeing NATObombings, not Serb violence. Ball’s work helped prosecutorsmake a case that the deaths amounted to “ethnic cleansing.”

HRDAG grew out of Ball’s independent consultations withtruth commissions in South Africa, Haiti, Guatemala, Timor-Lesteand Peru. The group also has worked with commissions inGhana and Sierra Leone, as well as nongovernmental humanrights groups in Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Burma (also calledMyanmar) and with the International Criminal Tribunal for theFormer Yugoslavia.

Much of the work can be tedious, and some of the victo-ries minor. At times, though, Ball’s work surpasses even hismost ambitious expectations. For a truth commission in El Sal-

vador, for instance, he wrote software to aggregate and ana-lyze the human rights records of army officers; the results forceda quarter of the military leadership to retire. The issue was sopolitically sensitive, Ball remembers, “We figured they weregoing to blow our office up.” Instead, the officers sued thecommission — an unexpected recourse to the very rule-of-lawprinciples that truth commissions try to enshrine.

Today, Ball’s team is working on its most sensitive project yet:analyzing the 80-million-page archive of the Guatemalan NationalPolice. Human rights advocates have long blamed them for muchof the rampant kidnapping, torture and murder during the coun-try’s 36-year civil war, but there was no proof until four years ago.Then tons of police records — stacks upon stacks of musty, mold-ing paper — were found in an abandoned ammunitions depot.

Although the team has gone through only about 10 percentof the archive, a new picture already is emerging. There is “nodoubt that the police participated in the disappearances andassassinations,” says Carla Villagran, former adviser to the Pro-ject to Recover the Historic Archives of the National Police. 1

Changing the picture of a nation’s horrific experiences can helpgive atrocity victims’ suffering “meaning in some bigger story,” Ballsays. The science of numbers can help victims separate painfulhistories from destructive mythologies of violence.

Still, for all t he good that analyzing patterns can do, Ball knowsthat numbers and graphs don’t say everything about the bigger story.“Statistics define the limits of what’s plausible and what’s not plau-sible,” he says. “Statistics do not tell us how it felt to be there.” 2

1 Julian Smith, “A Human Rights Breakthrough in Guatemala; A chance dis-covery of police archives may reveal the fate of tens of thousands of peoplewho disappeared in Guatemala’s civil war,” Smithsonian, October 2009, www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Digs-Paper-Trail.html?c=y&page=1.2 See Jina Moore, “A human rights statistician finds truth in numbers,” TheChristian Science Monitor, Feb. 7, 2008.

Finding Out What Really HappenedStatistician separates fact from fiction for truth commissions.

Statistician Patrick Ball examines some of the 80 million pages ofthe Guatemalan National Police archives — discovered byaccident — that show the police participated in kidnapping,torture and murder during the country’s 36-year civil war.

Ann Harrison


often come up with a grand narrativethat is more plausible, or at leastmore visible, than an individual trial,which telescopes all the issues throughan individual defendant,” says Har-vard Law School dean Minow. “There,the grand narrative is often in thebackground.”

But some trials can create recordsthat rival, or even surpass, those oftruth commissions. The War CrimesStudies Center’s Cohen, an adviser tothe Timor-Leste commission, points tothe International Criminal Tribunal forthe Former Yugoslavia. “No truth com-mission could have possibly compiledall the documents they did, or exam-ined individual cases in the exhaus-tive manner the court did.”

Ultimately, trials and truth commis-sions are not mutually exclusive, andeach achieves advantages the othercan’t. “I see all of these things as toolsof transitional justice,” says JudgeGoldstone, “and you’ve got to use thebest tools for the situation.”

BACKGROUNDFrom Constantinople to The Hague

Truth commissions and their em-phasis on accountability have roots

in an earlier era of human rights in-novation.

Behind the bloody battlefields ofthe 20th century’s two world wars,genocide raged. The Armenians, a re-ligious and ethnic minority, allege thatthe Ottoman Empire committed geno-cide by killing hundreds of thousandsof Armenians during World War I. (TheTurks don’t deny the deaths occurred,but they vehemently deny it was geno-cide.) And more than 6 million Jews

and others considered “undesirable”by the Nazi regime were put to deathduring World War II. 33

Immediately after World War I twocommissions began investigating theArmenian deaths, though both panelswere largely thought marred by cor-ruption and politics. In British-ruledConstantinople in 1919, the British in-sisted that the Turkish political elitebe tried for crimes against the Arme-nians. The British were eager to pun-ish the Turks for the suffering of boththe Armenians and British prisoners ofwar. The effort faltered after Britishpoliticians demanded the Turks re-lease the British prisoners, claimingdue-process violations. A year after itwas established, the Constantinoplecourt crumbled. 34

That legacy helped to shape thefuture of international human rightslaw, while the Constantinople pro-ceedings set the stage for the post-World War II war crimes trials in Nurem-berg. In the capital of German historyand culture, 22 senior Nazi officialswere tried in 1945 for “crimes againsthumanity” — language borne out of theArmenian experience 25 years before.Nuremberg marked the first time suchcrimes ever reached a courtroom. 35

Yet the Nuremberg trials were farfrom perfect. Run by the wartime Alliedpowers, the trials were criticized asretaliatory victors’ justice. Twelve ofthe 19 men convicted at Nurembergwere executed; two of those indictedcommitted suicide in their cells. 36

Crimes of war weren’t new, buttrials for crimes against humanity —against civilians — were, and retroac-tively applying these new charges raisedconcerns. Halfway around the world,the Tokyo tribunals, where the Unit-ed States tried 28 Japanese militaryleaders for war crimes and humanrights atrocities, raised similar critiques,according to Minow. 37

Today, the Nuremberg trials are re-membered as a watershed event forhuman rights and international justice.

And yet, the judicial precedents theyestablished lay untouched for decades,while the Pol Pot regime in Cambo-dia murdered nearly 2 million peoplein the mid-1970s, the Guatemalan gov-ernment killed nearly 200,000 Mayansduring a 36-year internal conflict thatbegan in 1960 and Saddam Husseinslaughtered 50,000 Kurds in 1988. 38

“There was Nuremberg and Tokyo,and then there’s nothing for 60 years,”says the Leitner Center’s Flaherty.

But when the U.N.-run internationalcriminal tribunals for the former Yu-goslavia (ICTY) and for Rwanda(ICTR) were established in the early1990s they followed the Nurembergprecedents. Launched in 1993, the ICTYwas directed to investigate war crimescommitted after 1990 in the Balkansduring the dissolution of the republic,where a genocidal campaign, mostlyagainst Muslims, gave the world theterm “ethnic cleansing.”

Two years later, the ICTR was es-tablished to try the masterminds ofthe 100-day-long Rwandan genocide,in which more than 800,000 people,mostly Tutsis, were killed. 39 Althoughslow and fraught with political andbureaucratic difficulties, the tribunalsfor Rwanda and Yugoslavia havecompleted the trials of 170 people(and indicted nearly 70 others) andestablished important human rightslaw precedents that paved the wayfor similar tribunals in Sierra Leoneand Cambodia. 40

But at the beginning of the 21stcentury, policy makers decided in-ternational justice needed a morepermanent solution. The Interna-tional Criminal Court (ICC) was cre-ated in 2002 by adoption of the so-called Rome Statute. The ICCprosecutes those responsible for mas-sive human rights violations com-mitted in countries that are unableor unwilling to prosecute such crimesthemselves. So far, the ICC has filedcases against Congolese and Ugan-dan rebels and Sudanese government

Continued from p. 9


officials — including the president— and rebels.

Normally, the ICC can only try in-dividuals for crimes committed in the110 countries that have ratified the2002 Rome Statute. When abuseshappen in non-ratifying countries —such as Sudan — an investigation canbegin only if the U.N. Security Coun-cil refers the case to the ICC. That’swhen international justice gets com-plicated by world politics: The Unit-ed States and China — veto-wieldingmembers of the Security Council —have refused to ratify the Rome Statute.When it came to a vote, the ICC wor-ried the two powers would opposea referral, blocking the court from in-vestigating crimes in Darfur. Theydidn’t, and the court’s investigationsled to indictments against SudanesePresident al-Bashir.

Truth vs. Justice

For all the progress made by mod-ern war crimes tribunals, some re-

main vulnerable to a poignant, long-standing criticism.

“There is a critique of Nurembergand Tokyo for not giving enough airtime to the victims and survivors,” saysHarvard Law School’s Minow. “It says,‘Why is all this attention being paid tothe banality of evil? What about thepeople who died, or who survived?’ ”

Beginning in 1980s Latin America,citizens began experimenting with truthcommissions as they threw off thechains of military dictatorships andgroped towards democracy. “Justicewas just impossible because the armywas so powerful,” says Cohen, of theWar Crimes Studies Center in Berkeley.“They were saying, ‘We’re not goingto be able to get justice, so let’s getas much truth as possible.’ ”

The Argentinian commission’s handswere tied when it came to recom-mending punishment of particular in-dividuals, primarily because of the

junta’s self-awarded immunity. The pro-tection was later repealed, mostly be-cause of the commission’s report. 41

The 1990 Chilean commission alsoinherited amnesty laws passed byand for the previous government.Nonetheless, Gen. Pinochet was ar-rested in Europe almost 10 yearslater, when a Spanish judge, BaltasarGarzón, insisted he had universaljurisdiction to try anyone from any-where who committed crimes againsthumanity, thereby overriding Chile’samnesty law. 42

South Africa’s TRC is perhaps themost well-known example of tradingamnesty for truth. The commissionagreed to take applications foramnesty from perpetrators, providedthey fully confessed their crimes andthe crimes were politically motivated.Those who confessed to “gross viola-tions of human rights” had to answerquestions in public. More than 7,000witnesses asked for amnesty, but fewerthan 10 percent received it. 43

Truth commission expert Haynersays the idea that justice must take aback seat to truth may be an outdatedconcept. “Ten years ago that tensionwas very present,” she says. “Now, that’schanged.” Most human rights lawyerstoday say it’s legally impossible to offeramnesty for testimony, thanks tochanges in international law.

Yet the carrot of amnesty may becritical to truth commissions. In oneof the most sweeping empirical com-parisons of truth commissions, politi-cal scientists Jack Snyder and LeslieVinjamuri say that on the rare occa-sions when truth commissions havebeen successful, they have been ac-companied by amnesties. 44

El Salvador, on the other hand, isa cautionary example of how theprocess can unravel. In 1993, a truthcommission report on the country’sdecade-long civil war named high-levelmilitary and government officials ashuman rights abusers. Five days later,after threats of a coup, the legislature

granted general amnesty for all crimescommitted during the conflict. 45

“Justice on the Grass”

Virtually every day for the last fouryears, a community somewhere in

Rwanda has gathered to confront thenation’s 1994 genocide. Survivors offertestimony, and the accused — oftenwearing pink prison uniforms — re-spond. Often, they deny having par-ticipated; sometimes they confess.Nine inyangamugayo, or “persons ofintegrity,” preside over the process.They interrogate defendants and wit-nesses alike, ultimately determiningguilt or innocence. There is copioustruth-telling here, but this is also acourt, and the guilty go to jail. 46

The process — called gacaca, or“justice on the grass” — is a mod-ern adaptation of a conflict resolu-tion ritual the government says stretch-es back to Rwanda’s precolonial days.While celebrated as a “traditional” ap-proach to Rwanda’s atrocities, gaca-ca is also expedient: By turning tri-als over to local communities, it hasbrought justice to nearly a milliongenocide suspects, according toDenis Bikesha, director of training,sensitization and mobilization servicesat the National Service of GacacaCourts in Kigali, Rwanda.

But Human Rights Watch argues thatgacaca trials violate defendants’ dueprocess rights and exclude crimes com-mitted during and after the genocideby the military — which at the timewas led by current Rwandan PresidentPaul Kagame. A Spanish court, invok-ing universal jurisdiction for crimesagainst humanity, in 2008 indicted 40former Rwandan army officers in 1994and said it would have indictedKagame, except that as a head of statehe has immunity. 47

But those shortcomings may reflectthe same violence gacaca investigates.

TRUTH COMMISSIONS

Continued on p. 14


Chronology1910s-1940sAfter atrocities in two worldwars, “crimes against humanity”becomes a legal precedent.

1915The term “crimes against humanity”is coined by a Russian minister ina declaration by World War I alliesvowing to hold Turkey accountablefor the Ottoman Empire’s massacreof hundreds of thousands of Armenians.

1918Two Ottoman fact-finding commis-sions look into malfeasance duringthe war, including the Armenianmassacres.

1919-1920Setting precedents for the laterNuremberg trials, the Ottoman Em-pire holds a court-martial and aninternational tribunal to investigateTurkish officials’ behavior duringWorld War I, including the order-ing of the Armenian massacres.

1945World War II allies, led by theUnited States, launch war crimestrials in Nuremberg, Germany,against 22 former Nazi officials.Twelve were executed; some com-mitted suicide in their cells.

1946International tribunal begins in Tokyofor Japanese military and governmentofficials charged with atrocities dur-ing World War II. Together withNuremberg, the trials set precedentfor future international justice.

•

1980s-1990sTruth commissions emerge as anew method of transitional jus-

tice, while ad hoc war crimestribunals carry on the legacyof Nuremberg.

1982Bolivia opens Latin America’s firsttruth commission; it disbands be-fore completing its work, but thecountry later tries former officialsand paramilitary officials for civil-ian murders and “disappearances.”

1984Argentina publishes Nunca Más(“Never Again”) — a landmarktruth commission report that docu-mented nearly 9,000 reports of the“disappeared,” ordinary citizenskidnapped, tortured and murderedby the military junta. Report be-comes instant best seller.

1993U.N. creates International CriminalTribunal for the Former Yugoslaviato try Balkan officials for warcrimes.

1995South Africa opens its Truth andReconciliation Commission, thefirst to include reconciliation in itsmandate. . . . U.N. empowers In-ternational Criminal Tribunal forRwanda to try leaders of the 1994Rwandan genocide. . . . Sri Lankaopens Asia’s first truth commission.

1997Guatemala opens a truth commis-sion to investigate 36 years ofstate repression and violence, in-cluding the genocide of more than150,000 indigenous Mayans.

•

2000s InternationalCriminal Court (ICC) is estab-lished, creating a new legaloption for post-conflict justice.

2002Rome Statute establishes the Inter-national Criminal Court (ICC).

2003U.N.-sponsored Special Court forSierra Leone begins trials of thoseresponsible for atrocities duringthat country’s long civil war.

2005ICC indicts Joseph Kony andother leaders of the Lord’s Resis-tance Army, a Ugandan rebelgroup. Kony demands immunityfrom prosecution in exchange forsurrender. Local leaders suggestusing traditional reconciliationrituals instead, but the issue re-mains stalemated.

2008The Extraordinary Chambers in theCourts of Cambodia is given aU.N. mandate to try five KhmerRouge leaders for genocide from1974 to 1979.

2009ICC indicts its first sitting head ofstate, Sudanese President Omaral-Bashir, for war crimes; he retali-ates by evicting aid groups fromthe country. . . . ICC opens itsfirst trial, of Congolese warlordThomas Lubanga, accused of usingchild soldiers. . . . Liberia’s Truthand Reconciliation Commissionrecommends banning PresidentEllen Johnson Sirleaf from publicoffice for 30 years for her pastsupport of former warlord andindicted President Charles Taylor.. . . Kenya sets up a truth com-mission to examine violence afterits 2007 elections; ICC asks forpermission to conduct preliminaryinvestigation of the ethnicallytinged Kenyan election violence.. . . First Khmer Rouge trial endsin Cambodia in November withverdict expected in 2010.


After genocide, the Rwandan govern-ment thought, Western justice wasn’tnecessarily the best answer, saysStephen Kinzer, author of ThousandHills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the ManWho Dreamed It. “Gacaca tries tocombine the two necessities [Rwan-dans] see in the reconciliation process.One is justice, that is, the punish-ment of the guilty, and the other isreconciliation.”

As thousands of prisoners tradetruth for jail time, survivors are fi-nally learning where their familieswere killed and have been able to

retrieve their remains. Every April 7,on the anniversary of the beginningof the genocide, families rebury thebones at the national memorial,“with dignity and honor,” in the wordsof one survivor.

If Rwanda is an example of a so-ciety choosing to remember, Mozam-bique has chosen to forget. Nearly amillion people died in Mozambique’s16-year war that ended in 1992. Tendays after a peace agreement wassigned, the parliament passed a gen-eral amnesty. But unlike Latin Ameri-ca, where survivors rallied for justice,Mozambique has never had a truth

commission, and it’s difficult to findanyone there who wants one.

“Today, if we opened up the idea ofthe past, it would be to restart the hate,”said Brazao Mazula, who once headedthe country’s electoral commission.” 48

Others share his preference forofficial silence, but for a differentreason. “I don’t believe in truth com-missions,” a Mozambiquan journal-ist has said. “People need the rightto their own interpretations of thepast. I don’t want to reconcile my-self with the horrendous crimesagainst the people.” 49

There may be a bias among human

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Continued from p. 12

Is transitional justice working? So far, experts say they can’ttell for sure. Too few researchers have studied the impactof truth commissions and related human rights tools, and

almost no one can say for certain where and when reconcili-ation actually has occurred in post-conflict countries.

“There have been a lot of claims about whether truth com-missions can provide — fill in the blank — human rights,democracy, reconciliation, the list goes on,” says Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, a senior researcher at the International Human RightsLaw Institute at DePaul University and author of the new bookTruth Commissions and Transitional Justice: The Impact onHuman Rights and Democracy. “The broader research com-munity is really only beginning to scratch the surface in termsof coming up with compelling, empirically based evidence tosupport any of those contentions.”

The complexity of the social science underpinning suchstudies makes them especially difficult, and often too little timehas passed since the end of the war or conflict. But a pictureis beginning to emerge about how trials and truth commissionshelp secure human rights and encourage democracy.

The picture is surprisingly bleak. Most studies produce noevidence that truth commissions make much difference, accordingto James Ron, an associate professor at the Norman PatersonSchool of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa,Canada, who co-authored a paper on transitional justice. 1 Andone study found that truth commissions can exacerbate the verytensions they seek to quell. 2

Leigh Ann Payne, a professor of political science at the Uni-versity of Wisconsin at Madison, has just completed a forth-coming comprehensive study on the effectiveness of truth com-missions. She and her two co-researchers found that the

commissions by themselves are actually bad for human rightsand democracy. However, when combined with trials andamnesties, truth commissions are likely to improve democracyand human rights. 3

Payne says it’s too early to say, with empirical confidence,why the combination of approaches works. “It’s probablynot that amnesties work because of the threat of trials,” shesays. In fact, most of the amnesties they examined werefollowed by trials. “Our hunch is that amnesties provide away for fragile democracies to get through that very vul-nerable moment.”

Payne says many of the potential benefits of truth commis-sions can’t be captured by even the most rigorous research.“The measures that are standard in social sciences tend to lookat institutional changes. They may not pick up on some of thesocietal changes taking place,” says Payne.

But it’s the desire for precisely those societal changes —namely, democracy — that spurs truth commissions. “Truth com-missions do a whole lot of other things, particularly giving voiceto the victims and acknowledging the violent past, that maynot show up” in the variables analysts look at, says Payne.

1 Oskar N. T. Thomas, James Ron and Roland Paris, “The Effects of Transi-tional Justice Mechanisms,” working paper, University of Ottawa Centre forInternational Policy Studies, April 2008, www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?ord588=grp1&ots591=0C54E3B3-1E9C-BE1E-2C24-A6A8C7060233&lng=en&id=103597.2 Jack Snyder and Leslie Vinjamuri, “Trials and Errors: Principle and Prag-matism in Strategies of International Justice,” International Security, winter2003/04, p. 20.3 Tricia D. Olsen, Leigh A. Payne and Andrew G. Reiter, Transitional Justicein Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy, United States Institute ofPeace Press, forthcoming, spring 2010.

Do Truth Commissions Work?The jury is still out, experts say.


rights activists for more truth telling,but some say the option to forget mustbe given due consideration. “You haveto put on the table, as well, doingnothing,” says Harvard’s Minow, whonotes that Cambodia managed its tran-sition successfully without formal tran-sitional justice mechanisms. Today, thecountry is stable and moving steadilytoward economic prosperity.

Others are not so sure. Survivorsof the Khmer Rouge’s killing fields haverarely talked about the past; when theydo, Cambodian youths — who makeup more than half of the country —don’t believe them. 50 A U.N.-sponsorednational/international trial of five KhmerRouge leaders began in 2008 — 35years after the Cambodian genocidetook nearly 2 million lives and a decadeafter Pol Pot died.

So far, it’s unclear whether thepower of truth is opening morewounds in Cambodia than it’s heal-ing — and whether it’s worth pass-ing the trauma on to a generationthat doesn’t know it. “It reminds meof my experiences then, how my par-ents were killed,” survivor Yim Som-lok told a U.N. agency. “It’s good toshow everyone, but it’s also difficultfor me to see the children watchingsuch terrible things.” 51

A high-level Cambodian diplomat saidCambodia just needs a little more timeto process its painful past. Perhaps thecountry’s best hope, he said, is that thegeneration traumatized by the KhmerRouge — both its perpetrators and itsvictims —“die off and with themgone, the country might start overagain, afresh.” 52

Compensation

Together with justice and reconcil-iation comes an urge for restitu-

tion. Rwanda forces perpetrators ofgenocide to build roads or terrace hill-sides, and in dozens of villages theyhave volunteered to build homes for

genocide survivors. 53 Other govern-ments, on the basis of truth commis-sion recommendations, have compen-sated victims.

Chile offered a free college edu-cation to the children of the “disap-peared,” and family members receivea monthly pension check; Argentinagave each survivor $220,000 instate bonds. 54

Most truth commissions recommendmonetary reparation as both a literaland symbolic restitution. But gettingthe money isn’t easy. Once a com-mission’s final report is published, thepanel is disbanded, and the govern-ment may have no interest in or bud-get for even symbolic payments.

Sierra Leonean human rights activistJohn Caulker, for instance, spent near-ly 10 years lobbying the governmentto make good on the truth commis-sion’s recommendation, and the gov-ernment’s subsequent promise, to pro-vide financial redress for victims of thecountry’s decade-long war. 55

Not making reparations can be morethan a matter of simple political inac-tion. South Africa’s truth commissionrecommended a “wealth tax” on thosewho benefited from apartheid as a wayto address the poverty of those whosuffered in the segregated system. Butthe government did not institute a for-mal reparations program, leading tocynicism about the supposed successof a commission that offered some per-petrators amnesty, while victims gotonly rhetoric. 56 “Reparations,” suggestsan expert on South Africa’s truth com-mission, “can perhaps correct foramnesty” by making the scales of truthand justice feel more balanced. 57

But exchanging cash for sufferingis equally complicated. Internationallaw demands that governments pro-vide restitution for wrongs committedby states, but from whose pocket shouldthe money come?

“The irony is you’d be having theNelson Mandela regime literally pay-ing for the misdeeds of Bothe,” the

last president of the apartheid regime,says Flaherty of the Leitner Center forInternational Law and Justice.

And the compensation should not betoo small, says Gonzalez at the Interna-tional Center for Transitional Justice, whoworked on the Peruvian commission.“Reparations need to have an elementof magnanimity,” he says. “It’s nice tohave recognition, but if the governmentsays, ‘The life of your husband is worth$50,’ that’s a slap in the face.”

CURRENTSITUATIONPublicizing Results

E ven in the midst of a global com-munications revolution, truth

commissions have trouble publicizingtheir work. While they may generateattention in capital cities, the details— including the conclusions — don’talways reach the rural areas, especiallyin undeveloped countries.

Indeed, it’s a safe bet that few peo-ple read truth commissions’ voluminousfinal reports.

“The report we wrote was ninevolumes long,” says Gonzalez. “Whoreads a report of 4,000 pages?”

Schabas, of the Sierra Leone TRC,admits, “There is a tradition with thepublished reports of truth commis-sions of ‘mine is longer than yours,’ ”which can make their findings all butinaccessible.

But even the shorter reports don’talways reach rural areas, where manypeople can’t read, in part due to theyears of education lost during the veryconflicts the reports cover.

Some groups have used multimediatechniques to spread the word. Peru’scommission hosted a photography


TRUTH COMMISSIONS

exhibition. In Sierra Leone, the UnitedNations Children’s Fund commissioneda children’s version of the report, andWITNESS, a video-oriented humanrights organization, produced a com-panion video version of the commis-sion’s final document. But even withthese innovations, says Schabas,“there are limits to how far you cango in a country like that because ofthe level of literacy and education.You’re not going to get very muchprofound thinking and concern aboutdeep issues of governance.”

Still, spreading the word can pro-duce concrete results. The Peruviancommission’s “very expensive recom-mendations on reparations” unex-pectedly created “an interesting al-liance between victims and one localgovernment,” who realized they coulduse reparations funds to force nationalleaders to help their impoverishedprovince, Gonzalez says.

Traditional vs. International Justice

The hillsides of northern Uganda areslowly emerging from 30 years of vi-

olence, but today there’s a new battleraging. This time, the fight is over peace.

The International Criminal Court in2005 indicted the three top leadersof the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)— a rebel group that has fought ageneration-long insurgency in Uganda— for some of its brutal crimes. Amongother things, the group kidnappedhundreds of children, often after forc-ing them to murder their own par-ents, and then impressed them intoservice as child soldiers. 58

But LRA founder Joseph Kony andhis two deputies are hiding in theDemocratic Republic of the Congo(DRC), where they are terrorizingcivilians already traumatized by along-running civil war. Some localleaders in Uganda are willing togive Kony the amnesty he wants,

if he submits to mato oput —“drinking the bitter herb” — a con-flict resolution ritual of the Acholipeople, the ethnic group primarilytargeted by the LRA. The ritual re-quires offenders to provide detailsabout their crimes, victims to forgiveand both parties to share a drink ofthe herb. 59 Both Uganda’s presidentand the Ugandan Amnesty Act, whichrecognizes traditional mechanisms aslegitimate forms of justice, supportthe use of such rituals. 60

The two processes aren’t necessar-ily mutually exclusive, but local lead-ers say a choice must be made aboutwhich should come first.

“At the international level they say,‘There is no justice without peace, thereis no peace without justice,’ an argu-ment that is a bit ridiculous to me asan international lawyer,” says FabiusOkumu-Alya, director of the Institutefor Peace and Strategy Studies at GuluUniversity in northern Uganda. “Atleast one of the two comes first. TheAcholi are not saying we don’t wantKony to be prosecuted. They are notsupporting impunity. But what theywant is prioritization.” 61

The LRA indictments have thusproduced a stand-off in Uganda. ICCindictments in the DRC and Sudanhave created similar tensions. WhenChief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo indicted al-Bashir for geno-cide in Darfur, the Sudanese presi-dent responded by evicting 13international aid agencies, includingthose offering food aid and assis-tance for rape survivors. 62

In the DRC, on the other hand, theindictments of three rebels on chargesincluding recruitment of child soldiers,have been viewed as an unfair ges-ture of accountability. One ex-child sol-dier, after watching a video of the trialof Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga,wondered how he ended up in thedock in The Hague when “others whodid the same thing are working withinthe government?” 63

Moreno-Ocampo, the Argentinianlawyer who was named ICC prosecu-tor in 2003, insists his hands are tied.“I can’t make allowances for politics,”he has said. “I have to apply and im-plement the law.” 64

But American lawyer Adam Smith,author of the 2009 book After Geno-cide: Bringing the Devil to Justice, saysthe court should incorporate the ex-pertise of more than just lawyers.“The decision to indict people in theLRA is a decision made in The Hagueby international lawyers, but otherpeople should be involved, such asanthropologists or sociologists orpsychologists, people who are bet-ter able than I am or Ocampo is” todetermine the wisdom of prosecu-tion, Smith says.

“Everything is embedded,” he con-tinues. “If you don’t see where it’scoming from, where it’s going andwhat’s around it,” he continues, you’renot going to have resonance on theground [and prosecution] won’t havea sustainable benefit.”

Future TRCs?

The International Institute for the Ruleof Law, backed by the Washington-

based U.S. Institute of Peace, is court-ing public support for a truth com-mission on the atrocities committedby the former Saddam Hussein regimein Iraq. 65

Some ground for a truth com-mission has been laid by the IraqHistory Project, a three-year col-laboration between the Iraqi Min-istry of Human Rights and DePaulUniversity’s International HumanRights Law Institute. Though not aformal truth commission, the pro-gram — which has recorded morethan 7,000 stories from both victimsand perpetrators — was designedto pave the way for an official truth-telling process. 66

Continued on p. 18

no


At Issue:Can the International Criminal Court bring justice to Darfur?yes

yesPAMELA YATESDOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER“THE RECKONING: THE BATTLE FOR THEINTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT”

WRITTEN FOR CQ GLOBAL RESEARCHER, JANUARY 2010

n othing has caught the attention of Sudan’s PresidentOmar al-Bashir more than the arrest warrant issued forhim by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on

charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. TheICC warrant — the first ever issued against a sitting head of state— caused al-Bashir to curtail his travel to regional and globalsummits and raised questions about the legitimacy of a nationalleader with a war crimes indictment hanging over his head.

Since the crisis in Darfur began, Darfuris have pleaded withthe world to stop the murders, rapes and forced dislocationsand to bring the perpetrators to account. Despite harrowingphotos, filmed evidence, survivor testimonies, copious hand-wringing and speech-making on the part of the internationalcommunity and claims of a peace process by the Sudanesegovernment, the Darfuris continue to be victimized by thesemassive crimes. Only after the U.N. Security Council referredthe case to the ICC in 2005 did a serious criminal investiga-tion into the alleged crimes begin.

The meticulous ICC investigation involved 17 countries,and the evidence led back to President al-Bashir. The ICC’sdecision to issue an arrest warrant was not made without alook at Sudan’s own institutions; the ICC found that therewere no credible prospects for justice in Sudan, despite thegovernment setting up courts that purportedly investigatedcrimes in Darfur.

Halima Bashir, a young Sudanese woman who has been avictim of and witness to numerous barbaric acts in Darfur, hasspoken out against the government in Khartoum with a hard-hitting book about the tragedy: “I can’t explain how happy Iam for the ICC case,” she said. “It is now more than fiveyears this has been going on, and very little has been done.It’s as if we’ve been talking to deaf people. For me this is astep for justice.”

Darfuri refugees and the international diaspora overwhelm-ingly supported the International Criminal Court. In fact, morethan 100 babies born this year to Darfuris in Sudan havebeen named Ocambo — in honor of ICC prosecutor LuisMoreno-Ocampo.

Now it is time for the international community, in particularthe Security Council, to support bringing al-Bashir to face jus-tice in The Hague. Otherwise, our work to create the Interna-tional Criminal Court — and raise awareness about Darfur —will be for naught.no

ADAM M. SMITHINTERNATIONAL LAWYER AND AUTHORAFTER GENOCIDE: BRINGING THE DEVILTO JUSTICE

WRITTEN FOR CQ GLOBAL RESEARCHER, JANUARY 2010

i CC prosecutions are unlikely to provide real, enduring jus-tice, consistent with the peace Darfuris deserve.The roots of the present crisis stretch far beyond the

recent violence. The ICC’s mandate, however, is restricted —temporally, to the last seven years; geographically, to the “situ-ation in Darfur”; personally, to those whom it deems “most re-sponsible” and, punitively, to the courtroom.

Nonetheless, the court dominates and limits justice discoursethroughout Sudan, reducing prospects for more comprehensivesolutions and disempowering the real stakeholders: the Su-danese. Bosnian and Rwandan experiences demonstrate thatnarrow top-down justice cannot quell longstanding inter-ethnicconflict, nor build institutions needed for sustainable peace.

Given Khartoum’s lack of political will, it may appear fancifulto argue that justice for Darfur must come from Sudan itself.Yet this is no more unlikely than Khartoum extraditing itsICC-indicted president to The Hague. Both international anddomestic justice require Sudan to investigate Darfur crimes,and absent such a choice, neither can be pursued.

The African Union’s Panel on Darfur recommends a hybridcourt. Operating alongside nonprosecutorial tools like truthcommissions, homegrown approaches have greater chances ofcoming into being, imparting justice and establishing the con-ditions required for security and meaningful reconciliation.

The ICC may yet compel Sudan to address Darfur, but atwhat cost? The court has already distorted political debate (withunknown risks), and pursuit of ICC justice imperiled millionswhen President al-Bashir criminally (but predictably) respondedto his indictment by evicting aid agencies from Darfur.

More concerted international action — from the U.N. SecurityCouncil or otherwise — could have similarly cajoled Khartoum,without the negative consequences of an indictment. As we haveseen in Uganda, where the possibility of ICC prosecution keepsindictee Joseph Kony in the bush, threats of Hague justice maylimit leaders’ willingness and ability to guarantee peace.

Many Darfuris dream of an al-Bashir trial. Many also rightlyworry that such proceedings will radicalize his supporters, un-leash more crimes and catalyze violence surrounding the 2010elections and 2011 referendum, which will likely approve thecontentious secession of the oil-rich South.

There need not be debate about “peace versus justice.”Sudan needs both. If ICC action leads to more violence, orimpedes genuine security, neither will emerge.


“People here . . . have been throughso much: the Iraq-Iran war, 35 yearsunder Saddam, civil war in Kurdis-tan,” said Kurda, a 26-year-old Iraqiwho ran the project’s local office inIraq. “So people sometimes forget theyare human.” 67

But observers warn the time maynot yet be right for a truth commis-sion in Iraq. “One of the require-ments [of a commission] is that itlooks at past abuses with a newregime,” says Kevin Avruch, a pro-fessor of conflict resolution and an-thropology at George Mason Uni-versity in Fairfax, Va. “The Sunni andShia and the Kurds are still workingthings out, so to speak.”

Many say the same is true inAfghanistan, where the war betweencoalition forces and the Taliban isstill raging. “At the moment, there’snot the political will” for a truthcommission, “neither by the Afghangovernment nor by the internation-al community,” says Huma Saeed, anAfghan human rights activist. “Themodel in South Africa came fromwithin parliament; in El Salvador, itcame with a U.N. mandate. We haveneither of these.”

Even if there were local or inter-national support for a commission, it’sunclear how much truth it would un-cover. In 2007, Afghan President HamidKarzai signed a bill, passed by bothhouses of parliament, granting blan-ket amnesty to anyone who fought inthe 25 years of violence that preced-ed U.S. operations in 2002. 68 Humanrights lawyers challenge the law’s va-lidity, arguing that under internationallaw there can be no amnesty for warcrimes. But local human rights activistssay the damage is done.

“Even if the amnesty bill legallyhas not taken this right from us, so-cially and politically it has createdproblems in the mind of people,” anactivist says. 69

OUTLOOKJurisdictional Battles

I nternational courts, truth commis-sions and local processes will con-

tinue to compete for attention amongthe options available in the transitionaljustice system, say experts in interna-tional justice.

Last fall, Kenya approved a truth,justice and reconciliation commissionto examine the violence that eruptedafter the 2007 elections. But the gov-ernment also has promised to prose-cute those responsible, and the ICCprosecutor is pushing for indictments,which could land current senior offi-cials in The Hague. 70

But it’s simplistic to view the fric-tion between the judicial tools as aturf war. After all, the 110-signatoryRome Statute of 2002 gives the ICCthe jurisdiction — indeed, the obliga-tion — to investigate crimes againsthumanity in states that are unwillingor unable to prosecute.

“The question is, does a domesticprocedure that is a truth commission,or for that matter a traditional process,count as an adequate domestic re-sponse that deprives the ICC of juris-diction?” says Harvard’s Minow.

The answer can be complicated.Rwanda’s gacaca system highlights theproblem: Hailed by some as an ef-fective and efficient adaptation of tra-dition to deal with crimes on a mas-sive scale, critics say it violates the dueprocess rights of the accused.

At the same time, political realitiescomplicate the post-conflict picture inways no one yet understands. Asidefrom social reconciliation, difficult mat-ters of statecraft must be considered.For instance: Are truth commissionsgood for state building, or are tribunalsbetter? Do either prevent the recur-rence of violence?

“We don’t know,” says Minow.Today’s justice scales are weighted

in favor of the ICC. The court hasnear-universal jurisdiction and moreresources than most truth commissions.But its real strength is in its foundingstatute: States that ratified the statute,and thereby gave the court its power,must now adopt its terms into theirnational laws. They cannot offer evenlimited amnesties, which have beenthe underlying incentive truth com-missions have held out to would-bewitnesses.

“I fear that the ICC’s internation-al justice is perverting the situationon the ground,” says internationallawyer Smith. “If the ICC continuesthis way, it will further infuse theimportance of prosecutions, whichwill in turn make it difficult to useother tools.”

While nothing technically makes anICC trial and a local truth commissionincompatible, trials and commissionshave not exhibited a stellar trackrecord when it comes to collabora-tion. Smith prefers that the ICC du-plicate a different model — bolsteringlocal judicial systems’ capacities to in-vestigate and make domestic prose-cutorial decisions. Two years ago, forexample, ICC staff members helpedSenegal prepare to try exiled Chadianpresident Hissine Habre, accused oftorture and crimes against humanity. 71

In a historic action, the African Unionhad referred the case from Chad toSenegal.

The possibility of collaborationaddresses a common critique amongAfricans of international justice: thattribunals and truth commissions are“white man’s justice” imposed onthe developing world. “The whiteman will come and take over ourleaders and do whatever they wantwith them,” says Sarrfo Amoakohene,a small business operator in Ghana.

“To the extent that we say theseissues apply just to [those in devel-oping countries], that’s the end,”

TRUTH COMMISSIONS

Continued from p. 16


warns James A. Goldston, executivedirector of the Open Society Institute’sJustice Initiative, a global law reformprogram with offices in five worldcapitals and New York City. “Theseideas are very much applicable to thedeveloped world.”

Among developed countries, Cana-da is learning just how complicatedtransitional justice can be. It estab-lished a truth commission in 2008after Prime Minister Stephen Harperapologized to Canada’s First Nationsfor more than 100 years of “residen-tial education” — a program thatforcibly removed more than 100,000aboriginal children from their homesand put them in often abusive board-ing schools. 72 After some controversyand political battles, the commissionbegan its work in December.

And in the United States, Sen. PatrickLeahy, D.-Vt., chairman of the Judi-ciary Committee, has called for a truthcommission to investigate alleged abus-es during the George W. Bush ad-ministration, including the use of co-ercive interrogation techniquesgenerally considered to be torture. Theproposal is seen as a compromise be-tween critics demanding criminal pros-ecutions of those involved in autho-rizing so-called enhanced interrogationtechniques and others, who want tomove on. 73 Because the United Stateshas not signed the Rome Statute, theICC has no jurisdiction over thecase. But an Italian court in Novem-ber convicted in absentia 22 CentralIntelligence Agency operatives for akidnapping that led to the “extraordi-nary rendition” of an Italian citizen. 74

And the same Spanish judge who in-dicted former Chilean leader Pinochetopened a criminal investigation intoalleged Bush administration involve-ment in the torture of five Spanishcitizens or residents. 75

President Barack Obama has saidhe is “more interested in looking for-ward than in looking back.” But Leahyinsists, “It’s a lot easier to look for-

ward if you know what happened inthe past.” 76

The debate echoes those in dozensof other countries, where the pushfor peace collides with the need foracknowledgement and accountabilityfor past abuses.

Notes

1 “We Will Kill You If You Cry: SexualViolence in the Sierra Leone Conflict,”Human Rights Watch, Jan. 16, 2003, p. 25;“Sierra Leone: Getting Away with Murder,Mutilation and Rape,” Human Rights Watch,July 1999.2 “Statistical Appendix to the Report of the Truthand Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone,”Human Rights Data Analysis Group, Oct. 5,2004, www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/06/11/pm-statement.html.3 Jina Moore, “Sierra Leoneans look for peacethrough full truth about war crime,” TheChristian Science Monitor, July 8, 2009.

4 Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Facingthe Challenge of Truth Commissions (2002),pp. 33-34.5 Ibid.6 Seth Mydans, “Moving Beyond Khmer Rouge’sGhosts,” The New York Times, Nov. 30, 2009,p. A8, www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/world/asia/30cambodia.html.

7 See Jared Ferrie, “New genocide charge inCambodian Khmer Rouge trial,” Reuters,Dec. 18, 2009.8 Several countries have had more than onetruth commission. For a list, see “Truth Com-missions Digital Collection,” U.S Institute ofPeace Margarita S. Studemeister Digital Col-lections in International Conflict Management,International Center for Transitional Justice.9 “South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Com-mission Final Report,” Vol. 1, p. 9.10 Mark Freeman and Priscilla B. Hayner,“Truth-Telling,” in Reconciliation After ViolentConflict: A Handbook (2002), p. 125.11 Hayner, op. cit., p. 222.12 Martha Minow, Between Vengeance andForgiveness: Facing history after genocide andmass atrocity (1999), pp. 61-62.

Post-election violence ravages Kibera, a slum in Nairobi, Kenya, in December 2007, leavingmore than 1,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands of people homeless. Although theKenyan government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission — set up in 2008 to investigate

human rights violations during the rampage — has yet to release its final report, the International Criminal Court has expressed interest in

conducting its own independent investigation of the violence.

AFP/Getty Images/Roberto Schmidt


13 Nahla Valiji, “Race and Reconciliation in Post-TRC South Africa,” paper presented at the con-ference, “Ten Years of Democracy in SouthernAfrica,” Queens University (Canada), May 2004.14 Glenna Gordon, “An Interview with Sena-tor Prince Johnson of Liberia,” ForeignPolicy.com,July 7, 2009, www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/07/07/you_cant_look_back.15 “Prince Johnson’s Threat Worries America,”Liberian Observer, July 6, 2009, http://orgtema.org/July_2009/Prince%20Johnson’s%20Threat%20Worries%20America.htm.16 “Opinion survey on gacaca and national rec-onciliation,” National Unity and ReconciliationCommission of Rwanda, Kigali, January 2003,p. 92.17 Hayner, op. cit., p. 222.18 Don Foster, “Evaluating the Truth and Rec-onciliation Commission of South Africa,” SocialJustice Research, vol. 19, no. 4, December 2006,p. 533.19 Ibid.20 Kristen Cibelli and Tamy Guberek, “JusticeUnknown, Justice Unsatisfied? Bosnian NGOsSpeak about the International Criminal Tribunalfor the Former Yugoslavia,” Education and Pub-lic Inquiry and International Citizenship Program,Tufts University, undated, p. 20, www.hrdag.org/resources/publications/justicereport.pdf.21 “Human Rights and the Future: AdvancingHuman Rights in a Dangerous World,” Re-marks at the American Bar Association’s an-nual meeting, Sept. 17, 2008, www.ictj.org/en/news/features/1982.html. For background, seeAlan Greenblatt, “Rewriting History,” CQ GlobalResearcher, December 2009.22 Karen Fogg, preface to Reconciliation afterViolent Conflict: A Handbook, op. cit., p. i.23 Quoted in Thomas Brudholm and ValerieRosoux, “The Unforgiving: Reflections on the re-sistance to forgiveness after mass atrocity,” Lawand Contemporary Problems, spring 2009, p. 41.24 Hayner, op. cit., p. 155.

25 Kristen Cibelli, Amelia Hoover and JuleKruger, “Descriptive Statistics from Statements tothe Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commis-sion,” Human Rights Data Analysis Group, 2009,p. 40, www.trcofliberia.org/reports/final/final-report/descriptive-statistics-from-statements-to-the-liberian-trc-benetech.26 Minow, op. cit., p. 17.27 Jean Hatzfeld, Into the Quick of Life: TheRwandan Genocide — The Survivors Speak,(2005), p. 26 in Thomas Brudholm, Resent-ment’s Virtue: Jean Amery and the refusal toforgive (2008).28 “Address to the Symposium on HumanRights and the Lessons of the Holocaust,”Oct. 17, 1995, http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/democracy/releases_statements/951017.html.29 For background, see Greenblatt, op. cit.30 USIP Studemeister Digital Collection, op. cit.31 “Ready to talk about the past: A survey ofknowledge and attitudes toward transitionaljustice in Burundi,” BBC World Service andSearch for Common Ground, December 2008.32 Interview with Juan Méndez, in “Justicefor a Lawless World: Rights and reconcilia-tion in a new era of international law,” IRINNews, June 2006, Part II, p. 9.33 “Armenians remember 1915 killings,” BBC,April 24, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8017316.stm; United States HolocaustMemorial Museum.34 Gary Bass, Stay the Hand of Vengeance (2000),pp. 106-127.35 M. Cherif Bassiouni, “Crimes Against Humanity,”in Crimes of War Project: A-Z Guide, undated.36 “International Military Tribunal at Nurem-burg,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, United StatesHolocaust Memorial Museum, www.ushmm.org/.37 Richard Overy, “Making Justice at Nurem-berg,” BBC online, www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/war_crimes_trials_01.shtml.38 An exception is the Israeli trial of AdolphEichmann, the “architect” of the Holocaust, whose

1961 hearing was largely considered a politicalshow trial. Also see “Cambodia: Coming toterms with a violent past,” IRIN, Nov. 11, 2009;Human Rights Data Analysis Group’s GuatemalaProject, www.hrdag.org/about/guatemala.shtml;and Edward Wong, “Saddam charged withgenocide of the Kurds,” The New York Times,April 5, 2006, www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/world/05iht-saddam.html.39 Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis (1997),p. 265.40 ICTR Status of Cases, www.ictr.org/default.htm;ICTY “Key Figures” fact sheet, Nov. 12, 2009,www.icty.org/sid/24.41 Hayner, op. cit., p. 222.42 “Strategic Choices in Designing Truth Com-missions,” Search for Common Ground, Pro-gram on Negotiation at Harvard Universityand the European Centre for Common Ground,www.truthcommission.org.43 Hayner, op. cit., pp. 43-45.44 Jack Snyder and Leslie Vinjamuri, “Trials andErrors: Principle and Pragmatism in Strategiesof International Justice,” International Security,winter 2003/04, p. 20.45 United States Institute of Peace, digitalarchive; the amnesty has been challenged bythe Inter-American Commission on HumanRights as a violation of international law.46 Jina Moore, “Rwandans: A re-education inhow to live together,” The Christian ScienceMonitor, April 8, 2009.47 “Rwanda gacaca criticized as unfair for geno-cide trials,” Voice of America News, April 9,2009; ibid.; also see Tracy Wilkinson, “Spain in-dicts 40 Rwandan officers; Jurist charges officialsin massacres after 1994 genocide. PresidentKagame is accused, but he has immunity,” LosAngeles Times, Feb. 7, 2008, p. A6.48 Hayner, op. cit., p. 190.49 Ibid., p. 195.50 Adam Saltsman, “Hate to Remember andRemember to Hate,” report for the InternationalCenter for Conciliation, January 2007, www.centerforconciliation.org/ReadingRoom/HatetoRememberJan07.htm; “New Year Baby,” a doc-umentary film by Socheata Poeuv.51 “Coming to terms with a violent past,” IRIN,Nov. 11, 2009, www.IRINnews.org/report.aspx?Reportid=86980.52 Michael Paterniti, “Never Forget,” GQ, July 2009,www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/200907/cambodia-khmer-rouge-michael-paterniti.53 “As We Forgive,” a documentary film by LauraWaters Hinson, www.asweforgivemovie.com.54 Hayner, op. cit., pp. 328-331.

TRUTH COMMISSIONS

About the Author

Jina Moore is a multimedia journalist who covers science,human rights and foreign affairs from the United Statesand Africa. Her work has appeared in The Christian ScienceMonitor, Newsweek, The Boston Globe, Foreign Policy andBest American Science Writing, among others. She was a2009 Ochberg Fellow with the Dart Society for Journalismand Trauma and blogs at www.jinamoore.com.


55 Jina Moore, “Fambul Tok Heals Scars of War,”The Christian Science Monitor, July 7, 2008.56 Hayner, op. cit., p. 330.57 James Gibson, Overcoming Apartheid (2004),p. 262.58 For background, see John Felton, “ChildSoldiers,” CQ Global Researcher, July 2008,pp. 183-211.59 “Traditional drink unites Ugandans,” BBC,Sept. 29, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5382816.stm; and “Forgiveness for ex-Ugandan rebel starts on an egg,” Reuters,Sept. 28, 2008, www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE48R26P20080928.60 Ibid.61 Fabius Okumu-Alya, “Why mato oput sys-tem should come before ICC,” New Vision,Dec. 4, 2006.62 Rebecca Hamilton, “Left Behind: Why aid forDarfur’s rape survivors has all but disappeared,”The New Republic, Oct. 14, 2009.63 Adam Hochschild, “The Trial of ThomasLubanga,” The Atlantic, December 2009, p. 80.64 Thomas Darnstaedt, “A Dangerous Luxury:The International Criminal Court’s Dream ofGlobal Justice,” Der Spiegel, Jan. 14, 2009,www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,601258-3,00.html.65 “In Iraq, truth commission idea gains traction,”CNN, March 25, 2009, http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/03/25/iraq.reconciliation/index.html.66 Louis Bickford, “Informal truth telling,”Human Rights Quarterly 29 (2007), p. 1004.67 “Iraqi Daily Lives: Kurda,” BBC News,Nov. 20, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/6151460.stm.68 “War crime immunity law gets green light,”IRIN, March 11, 2007, www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=70637.69 Unpublished work of Huma Saeed, Afghanhuman rights activist.70 USIP Studemeister Digital Collection, op. cit.;David McKenzie, “ICC prosecutor: Suspects inKenya violence will be tried,” CNN, Nov. 5, 2009,http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/11/05/kenya.icc.trials/index.html.71 “Former Chadian president will be tried inSenegal, says ICC registrar,” Hirondelle NewsAgency, Feb. 27, 2008, www.hirondellenews.com/content/view/10683/180/.72 “Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Statementof Apology” and “Indian Residential Schools:An FAQ,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,May 15 and June 11, 2008, www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/06/11/pm-statement.html;

and www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/05/16/f-faqs-residential-schools.html.73 For background, see Seth Stern, “Torture,” CQGlobal Researcher, September 2007, pp. 211-236.74 Annie Lowry, “Italian court convicts CIAagents in abstentia,” Foreign Policy, Nov. 4, 2009,http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/04/italian_court_convicts_cia_agents_in_absentia.

75 “Spain considers prosecuting U.S. officialsfor torture,” Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2009,http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/06/opinion/oe-miller6.76 Bobby Ghosh, “Leahy’s Plan to ProbeBush-Era Wrongdoings,” Time, Feb. 17, 2009,www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1879810,00.html#ixzz0YM6vqfPN.

FOR MORE INFORMATIONAcholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, P.O. Box 200, Gulu, Uganda; (256)471-32-484; www.km-net.org.uk/about/partners/arig/intro.htm. Religious and com-munity conflict-resolution leaders work to end the war in northern Uganda.

Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation; P.O. Box 30778,Braamfontein, Johannesburg, South Africa; +27 (11) 403-5650; www.csvr.org.za.A research and advocacy organization devoted to peace and reconciliation inSouth Africa and beyond.

Fambul Tok International; Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Portland, Maine.www.fambultok.org. A West African organization focused on identifying traditionalrituals for post-conflict healing across Africa.

Human Rights Data Analysis Group; Benetech HRDAG, 480 S. California Ave.,Suite 201, Palo Alto, CA 94306-1609; (650) 644-3400; www.hrdag.org. A consultinggroup that designs scientific research and analysis methods for human rights projects.

Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, 10 Brodie Road, Wynberg, Capetown7800, South Africa; (21) 763-7128, www.ijr.org.za. A research institute that examinesthe lessons of South Africa’s TRC and looks at how to apply them across Africa.

International Center for Transitional Justice; offices worldwide and New YorkHeadquarters, 5 Hanover Street, Floor 24; New York, NY 10004; (917) 637-3800;www.ictj.org. A research and consulting group offering help to countries transi-tioning from eras of human rights abuse.

Institute for Historical Justice and Reconcilation, Laan van Meerdervoort 70,The Hague, 2517AN Netherlands; +31 (0) 70 361 5530; www.historyandreconciliation.org. Organization that brings together local historians and other stakeholdersto work through disputes about historical truth.

Leitner Center for International Law and Justice, Fordham University, 33 West60th St., New York, NY 10023; (212) 636-6862; [email protected]. Anearly pioneer of law and human rights studies; sponsors hundreds of programs ayear open to the public.

Open Society Institute; worldwide offices and headquarters at 400 West 59th St.,New York, NY 10019; (212) 548-0600; www.soros.org. Oversees programs on tran-sitional justice, rule of law and open societies in the Americas, Asia, Eastern Europeand Africa.

United Nations Peacebuilding Commission, United Nations Plaza, New York,NY; www.un.org/peace/peacebuilding/pbso.shtml. An intergovernmental advisorybody that supports holistic approaches to peace in post-conflict countries, includingproviding consultations on truth commissions.

FOR MORE INFORMATION


Books

Bass, Gary J., Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politicsof War Crimes Tribunals, Princeton University Press, 2000.A Princeton professor draws connections between the Ar-

menian trials and the Rwandan and Yugoslavian tribunals.

Hatzfeld, Jean, and Linda Coverdale, The Antelope’sStrategy: Living in Rwanda after the Genocide, Farar,Strauss and Giroux, 2009.A French journalist spends nearly a decade in Rwanda talking

to genocide survivors and perpetrators.

Hayner, Priscilla, Unspeakable Truths: Facing the Challengeof Truth Commissions, Routledge, 2002.This comprehensive overview of truth commissions around

the world, by the co-founder of the International Center forTransitional Justice, is being updated in 2010.

Nettelfield, Lara J., Courting Democracy in Bosnia andHerzegovina: The Hague Tribunal’s Impact in a Post-war State, Cambridge University Press, 2010.A Balkans scholar examines the effect of international justice

on regions with some of the worst battlefields of the 1990s.

Rice, Andrew, The Teeth May Smile But the Heart WillNot Forget, Metropolitan Books, 2009.A journalist traces one family’s efforts to find justice for a

father’s murder during Idi Amin’s reign of terror in Uganda.

Roht-Arriaza, Naomi, and Javier Mariezcurrena, Transi-tional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: BeyondTruth versus Justice, Cambridge University Press, 2006.Expert authors look at the second generation of truth com-

missions and how they provide both truth and justice.

Tutu, Desmond, No Future without Forgiveness, Image,Doubleday, 1999.The chairman of South Africa’s truth and reconciliation com-

mission explains why forgiveness is necessary.

Wiebelhaus-Brahm, Eric, Truth Commissions and Tran-sitional Justice: The Impact on Human Rights andDemocracy, Routledge, 2009.A senior human rights researcher from DePaul University

examines data to see if truth commissions work.

Articles

Gourevitch, Philip, “The Life After,” The New Yorker,May 4, 2009.A reporter who has written about Rwanda’s genocidal ram-

page returns to the country 15 years later.

Hochschild, Adam, “The Trial of Thomas Lubanga,” TheAtlantic, December 2009.The author of King Leopold’s Ghost returns to the Democratic

Republic of the Congo to ask whether justice can be achievedin the violence-ridden country.

Moore, Jina, “Forgive and Forget?” The Christian ScienceMonitor, July 7-9, 2008.A Sierra Leonean human rights activist brings traditional

reconciliation rituals back to rural communities, after a truthand reconciliation commission disappoints villagers victimizedby the nation’s wrenching civil war.

Paterniti, Michael, “Never Forget,”GQ Magazine, July 2009.As aging Khmer Rouge leaders go on trial, Cambodia finally

faces its past.

Reports and Studies

Ball, Patrick, “Policy or Panic? The Flight of Ethnic Albani-ans from Kosovo, March-May 1999,” American Associationfor the Advancement of Science, 2000.The world’s foremost human rights statistician provides an

analysis on migration patterns in the Balkans, used to help pros-ecute Serb president and accused warlord Slobodan Milosevic.

Carranza, Ruben, “The Right to Reparations in Situa-tions of Poverty,” International Center for TransitionalJustice, September 2009.A former Philippine defense ministry official involved in the

United Nations takeover of East Timor argues for the importanceof reparations and examines their use in impoverished countries.

Greiff, Pablo de and Roger Duthie, Transitional Justiceand Development: Making Connections, Social ScienceResearch Council, June 2009.The editors build a thorough look at the relationship be-

tween justice and development, two fields that often operatein isolation.

Olsen, Tricia D., Leigh A. Payne and Andrew G. Reiter,“Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing processes,weighing efficacy,” U.S. Institute of Peace, 2010.Researchers provide a cross-national analysis of the effective-

ness of transitional justice mechanisms in every post-conflictcountry since 1970.

Thomas, Oskar N. T., James Ron and Roland Paris, “The Ef-fects of Transitional Justice,” working paper, Center for In-ternational Policy Studies, University of Ottawa, April 2008.The researchers distill current social science research on

truth commissions, concluding that there’s not yet enoughresearch to determine whether truth commissions work.

Selected Sources

Bibliography


Effectiveness

“Indonesian Activists Push for Truth Commission inAceh,” Thai Press Reports, Dec. 13, 2007.Human rights activists want a truth commission to inves-

tigate atrocities in Indonesia’s Aceh province.

Dong-choon, Kim, “Reconciliation Commission Seeks toBuild International Alliance,”Korea Times (South Korea),Oct. 13, 2008.An investigation into human rights abuses during South

Korea’s democratization will help prosecutors by providingevidence during trials.

Thornton, Chris, “Ulster Truth Commission Demanded,”Belfast Telegraph (Northern Ireland), Jan. 14, 2008.Prosecutorial and judicial arrangements offer no hope of

providing truth for bereaved families suffering from theconflict between Britain and Ireland.

Iraq and Afghanistan

“Obama ‘Not Enthusiastic’ About Truth Commission onIraq,” Al-Sharq al-Awsat (U.K.), Feb. 11, 2009.President Obama prefers judicial prosecution instead of a

truth commission on the war in Iraq.

“U.S. to Release Pictures of Prisoner Abuse in Iraq andAfghanistan,”Guardian Unlimited (U.K.), April 24, 2009.Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — unlike Speaker of

the House Nancy Pelosi — says he will not back a truthcommission to investigate prisoner abuse during the Iraqand Afghanistan wars.

Kristof, Nicholas D., “The Truth Commission,” The NewYork Times, July 6, 2008, p. A12.A retired major general who investigated war crimes in Iraq

says a truth commission is essential.

Reconciliation

“Truth Commission Begins Journey Towards EternalPeace in Solomon Islands,” Pacific Island News (Fiji),April 30, 2009.The Solomon Islands’ prime minister says a truth commission

will bring reconciliation to communities divided by violenceduring five years of civil unrest.

Anyangu, Susan, and Lucianne Limo, “Legislate Truth andReconciliation Body,”The East African Standard (Kenya),Feb. 16, 2008.Many Kenyan politicians say a truth commission to inves-

tigate violence that erupted after the Dec. 27, 2007, electioncould lead to reconciliation.

David, Alloycious, “Reparation Before Amnesty, ExpertRecommends to TRC,” The News (Liberia), Oct. 24, 2008.Many activists say truth commissions can be soft on per-

petrators and hard on the victims.

Mugonyi, David, “Truth Commission — Healing or Bruis-ing the Nation?” The Nation (Kenya), July 13, 2008.A truth commission cannot repair the fault lines between

those involved in Kenya’s post-election violence.

Truthful Record

“Truth Commission Constituted to Deal With Clemency forGraft Suspects,” United News of Bangladesh, July 30, 2008.Justices say a truth commission to examine financial cor-

ruption will be successful.

Clark, Jennifer, and DanKeenan, “Victim Lobby Wants TruthForum to Be Foreign-Led,” The Irish Times, Jan. 15, 2008.Private hearings and immunity certificates — which allow

for evidence given in a truth commission to be immune fromcriminal proceedings — encourage people to be honest.

Okanya, Andante, “UPC Calls for Truth Commission,”New Vision (Uganda), May 28, 2009.The Uganda Peoples Congress says a truth commission is

the only way to distinguish between truth and propaganda.

Onoyume, Jimitota, “Truth Commission Not for Witch-Hunt— Rivers Government,”Vanguard (Nigeria), June 20, 2008.The former governor of Rivers, Nigeria, argues a truth com-

mission to investigate violence in the state turned into awitch-hunt for certain people.

The Next Step:Additional Articles from Current Periodicals

CITING CQ GLOBAL RESEARCHER

Sample formats for citing these reports in a bibliography

include the ones listed below. Preferred styles and formats

vary, so please check with your instructor or professor.

MLA STYLEFlamini, Roland. “Nuclear Proliferation.” CQ Global Re-

searcher 1 Apr. 2007: 1-24.

APA STYLEFlamini, R. (2007, April 1). Nuclear proliferation. CQ Global

Researcher, 1, 1-24.

CHICAGO STYLEFlamini, Roland. “Nuclear Proliferation.” CQ Global Researcher,

April 1, 2007, 1-24.

Voices From Abroad:

AHN BYUNG-OOKPresident, Truth and

Reconciliation CommissionSouth Korea

Apologies necessary“To move on, our soci-

ety needs to offer a sincereapology to those victims sothat they can accept it andforgive what the past regimesdid to them.”

Korea Times (South Korea),April 2009

MUTULA KILONZOJustice Minister, Kenya

Tribunals unnecessary“The future of Kenya lies

in truth, justice and recon-ciliation. Judicial process,whether at The Hague orin the High Court or in aspecial tribunal, will neverreconcile Kenya.”

Capital FM (Kenya), July 2009

PRINCE Y. JOHNSONFormer Leader, Indepen-dent National PatrioticFront of Liberia

Moving forward“We remain unfailingly

committed to the pursuit ofpeace, reconciliation, secu-rity and stability of ourcountry. We who fought forand died on the battlefieldshave agreed to lay downour weapons in exchangefor peace, healing, forgive-ness and reconciliation. Wewho witnessed and experi-enced the deaths by bulletsand rockets, by hunger andstarvation of our loved oneshave overwhelmingly agreed

to bury the past in favor ofa better future.”

The Analyst (Liberia), July 2009

HUGH ROBERTSFormer Director,

North Africa Program, International Crisis Group

They want to know why“It is a positive discourse,

but there is a negative ele-ment as well that says, in ef-fect, ‘We should turn the pageand not seek explanations ofwhat happened and why.’ Butthe [Algerian] families of thosewho lost someone . . . wantto know the truth.”

The Christian Science Monitor,April 2009

MARCO CACERESCo-Founder,

ProjectHonduras.com

People must now listen“[Hondurans] who have

traditionally done most ofthe talking will now be askedto listen without interrup-tion so that they can fullyunderstand why the major-ity of Hondurans are angry,fearful or lacking in hope.This is a good way to beginto heal Honduras. . . .”

ProjectHonduras.com, August 2009

PAUL MUITEHuman Rights Activist,

Kenya

Kenya not ready“You can not have a

generally effective TJRCwhen there is no transition. Th

e Washington Exam

iner/Nate Beeler

KNUT OSTBYResident Coordinator,

U.N. Development ProgramSolomon Islands

Reconciliation a toppriority

“Reconciliation is thenumber one priority of thegovernment, as it affects theability of thousands ofSolomon Islanders to par-ticipate fully in social, cul-tural and economic life.”

States News Service, April 2009

MULBAH K. MORLU JR.Founder, Forum for theEstablishment of a WarCrimes Court, Liberia

Delaying justice encour-ages war

“Every time you postponethe mechanism of justice,there is a successive crisis.We said we are fed up withwar now, but . . . we havea consistent record of goingback to war.”

The Washington Times, January 2009

It is premature. And really,it is just going to be usedto sanitize the perpetratorsof land grabbing, corrup-tion, political assassinations,rather than establishing thetruth and getting reparationsfor the victims. That is myview: Kenya is not readyfor the TJRC.”

Voice of America, August 2009

GILBERT TANDIAHuman Rights Activist,Democratic Republic of

the Congo

People need reconciliation“[I]n the absence of a

Truth Commission, onemust set up a mechanism[that] will help people toexpress themselves, givingtruth its proper place. Itwould help people to freelydiscuss, as though in afamily, those events inwhich they were the per-petrators or the victims, thuscreating an atmosphere forreconciliation.”

Inter Press Service (South Africa),May 2009

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