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The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was a court-like restorative justice body assembled in South Africa in 1996 after the end of apartheid. Authorised by Nelson Mandela and chaired by Desmond Tutu, the commission invited witnesses who were identified as victims of gross human rights violations to give statements about their experiences, and selected some for public hearings. Perpetrators of violence could also give testimony and request amnesty from both civil and criminal prosecution.
The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) is an American federal institution tasked with promoting conflict resolution and prevention worldwide. It provides research, analysis, and training to individuals in diplomacy, mediation, and other peace-building measures.
A peace commission is an organization that operates at a local, regional, or national level within a country to reduce, counter, or prevent conflict. Typically, a peace commission will involve local communities and individuals in the peace building process. A Truth and reconciliation commission is a form of Peace Commission that discovers and reveals past wrongdoings in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is an example. A commission such as the Southern Sudan Peace Commission is less concerned with the past, and more with finding ways to prevent ongoing ethnic violence from escalating, but instead to move towards a more peaceful society.
A truth commission, also known as a truth and reconciliation commission or truth and justice commission, is an official body tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government, in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past. Truth commissions are, under various names, occasionally set up by states emerging from periods of internal unrest, civil war, or dictatorship marked by human rights abuses. In both their truth-seeking and reconciling functions, truth commissions have political implications: they "constantly make choices when they define such basic objectives as truth, reconciliation, justice, memory, reparation, and recognition, and decide how these objectives should be met and whose needs should be served".
Transitional justice is a process which responds to human rights violations through judicial redress, political reforms and cultural healing efforts in a region or country, and other measures in order to prevent the recurrence of human rights abuse. Transitional justice consists of judicial and non-judicial measures implemented in order to redress legacies of human rights abuses. Such mechanisms "include criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations programs, and various kinds of institutional reforms" as well as memorials, apologies, and various art forms. Transitional justice is instituted at a point of political transition classically from war to positive peace, or more broadly from violence and repression to societal stability and it is informed by a society's desire to rebuild social trust, reestablish what is right from what is wrong, repair a fractured justice system, and build a democratic system of governance. Given different contexts and implementation the ability to achieve these outcomes varies. The core value of transitional justice is the very notion of justice—which does not necessarily mean criminal justice. This notion and the political transformation, such as regime change or transition from conflict are thus linked to a more peaceful, certain, and democratic future.
Peacebuilding is an activity that aims to resolve injustice in nonviolent ways and to transform the cultural and structural conditions that generate deadly or destructive conflict. It revolves around developing constructive personal, group, and political relationships across ethnic, religious, class, national, and racial boundaries. The process includes violence prevention; conflict management, resolution, or transformation; and post-conflict reconciliation or trauma healing before, during, and after any given case of violence.
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Hrach Gregorian is an American political consultant, educator, and writer. His work in both the private and public sectors has been mainly focused in the field of international conflict management and post-conflict peacebuilding. Gregorian holds academic appointments in universities in the United States and Canada, and writes extensively on such subjects as terrorism, conflict management, peacebuilding, national security, and conflict hot spots throughout the world. His work as a consultant, conflict management specialist, and trainer has taken him to Angola, Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Ethiopia, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Singapore, Thailand, and Ukraine. Gregorian regularly provides professional skills training, seminars, and workshops for United Nations agency and mission staff, United States and Latin American military personnel, senior civilian officials, and academic and corporate leaders in the U.S. and throughout the world.
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Truth-seeking processes allow societies to examine and come to grips with past crimes and atrocities and prevent their future repetition. Truth-seeking often occurs in societies emerging from a period of prolonged conflict or authoritarian rule. The most famous example to date is the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, although many other examples also exist. Most commonly these are carried out by official truth and reconciliation commissions as a form of restorative justice, but there are other mechanisms as well.
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The Commission of Inquiry to Locate the Persons Disappeared during the Panchayat Period (1990–1991) is a truth commission established in Nepal in 1990 after the end of the autocratic Panchayat Regime by the first post-Panchayat Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattharai. The commission was set up to examine allegations of human rights violations and inquire about enforced disappearances during the Panchayat system from 1961 to 1990. A report was officially submitted to the government in 1991, but it was made public only in 1994. The commission identified 35 persons disappeared on about one hundred studied cases. However, no alleged perpetrators were judged.
The Truth and Reconciliation process in Cambodia refers to efforts to create other truth-seeking and reconciliation mechanisms in the country, in addition to the hybrid tribunals established by the Cambodian government and the United Nations in 2001.
The Sierra Leone's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a truth commission created as part of the Lomé Peace Accord, which ended the 11-year civil war conflict in Sierra Leone in July 1999.
Two years after German reunification, the Commission of Inquiry for the Assessment of History and Consequences of the SED Dictatorship in Germany, which was a truth commission that lasted from 1992 to 1994, was established by the German government with the objective of looking at the history and the consequences of the former East German communist government. It released its report in 1994, but some felt that more could be investigated. This resulted in the establishment of the Commission of Inquiry on Overcoming the Consequences of the SED Dictatorship in the Process of German Unity lasting from 1994to 1998, which had the same objective, but investigated more thoroughly.
Peace processes have taken place during several phases of the Afghanistan conflict, which has lasted since the 1978 Saur Revolution.
References
- ↑ United States Institute of Peace, Rule of Law Program, Strengthening the Rule of Law in Iraq "Transitional Justice in Iraq | United States Institute of Peace". Archived from the original on 2010-12-05. Retrieved 2010-11-23.
- ↑ CNN World Report, March 25, 2009 http://articles.cnn.com/2009-03-25/world/iraq.reconciliation_1_iraq-study-group-report-truth-commissions-all-iraqi?_s=PM:WORLD Archived 2010-09-18 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ USIP Progress PeaceBuilding, May 2010 Report, http://www.usip.org/files/resources/Iraq-%20Progress%20in%20Peacebuilding%202010%20(00006159).PDF
- ↑ United States Institute of Peace, Rule of Law Program, Transitional Justice in Nepal, http://www.usip.org/publications/transitional-justice-nepal-look-international-experience-truth-commissions
- ↑ United States Institute of Peace Peace Briefing "Global Legal Information Network". Archived from the original on 2012-03-14. Retrieved 2010-11-24.
- ↑ United States Institute of Peace, In the Field, Activities in Iraq, Sudan and beyond, http://www.usip.org/in-the-field/four-education-and-training-workshops-in-sudan
- ↑ Search for Common Ground Film Series at the United Nations, "Conflict resolution, prevention, and transformation: Search for Common Ground". Archived from the original on 2010-11-29. Retrieved 2010-11-23.
- ↑ Harvard University Program On Negotiation Film Series, http://www.pon.harvard.edu/events/pon-film-series-confronting-the-truth/
