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The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was a court-like restorative justice body assembled in South Africa after the end of apartheid. Witnesses who were identified as victims of gross human rights violations were invited to give statements about their experiences, and some were selected 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.
In 1994 Guatemala's Commission for Historical Clarification - La Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH) - was created as a response to the thousands of atrocities and human rights violations committed during the decades long civil war that began in 1962 and ended in the late 1990s with United Nations-facilitated peace accords. The commission operated under a two-year mandate, from 1997 to 1999, and employed three commissioners: one Guatemalan man, one male non-national, and one Mayan woman. The mandate of the commission was not to judge but to clarify the past with "objectivity, equity and impartiality."
A truth commission or truth and reconciliation commission is a commission 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. 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 consists of judicial and non-judicial measures implemented in order to redress legacies of human rights abuses. Such measures "include criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations programs, and various kinds of institutional reforms". Transitional justice is enacted at a point of political transition from violence and repression to societal stability and it is informed by a society’s desire to rebuild social trust, repair a fractured justice system, and build a democratic system of governance. 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 toward a more peaceful, certain, and democratic future.
Peacebuilding is an activity that aims to resolve injustice in nonviolent ways and to transform the cultural & 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. This process includes violence prevention; conflict management, resolution, or transformation; and post-conflict reconciliation or trauma healing, i.e., before, during, and after any given case of violence.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1593, adopted on 31 March 2005, after receiving a report by the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, the Council referred the situation in the Darfur region of Sudan to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and required Sudan to co-operate fully. It marked the first time the Council had referred a situation to the Court, and also compelled a country to co-operate with it.
The Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is a Parliament-enacted organization created in May 2005 under the Transitional Government. The Commission worked throughout the first mandate of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf after her election as President of Liberia in November 2005. The Liberian TRC came to a conclusion in 2010, filing a final report and recommending relevant actions by national authorities to ensure responsibility and reparations.
The Darfur Peace Agreement may refer to one of two Darfur Peace Agreements that were signed by the Government of Sudan and Darfur-based rebel groups in 2006 and 2011 with the intention of ending the Darfur Conflict.
The Solomon Islands Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is a commission officially established by the government of Solomon Islands in September 2008. It has been formed to investigate the causes of the ethnic violence that gripped Solomon Islands between 1997 and 2003. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is the first of its kind in the Pacific Islands region.
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.
Confronting the Truth is a documentary film by Steve York about truth and reconciliation commissions and how they work. The film focuses on the past commissions in South Africa, Peru, East Timor, and Morocco. The film was produced for the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) and includes interviews with a number of people involved in transitional justice, the process of fairly confronting the legacy of past crimes committed during armed conflict, including Nobel Peace Prize winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Jose Ramos Horta.
The Southern Sudan Peace Commission (SSPC) was established in 2006. The purpose of the Peace Commission is promote peace among the people of South Sudan and to help consolidate the results of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in January 2005 between the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the Government of Sudan.
The Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission of Kenya (TJRC) was established in 2008. Kenya’s modern history has been marked not only by liberation struggles but also by ethnic conflicts, semi-despotic regimes, marginalization and political violence, including the coup d'état of 1982, the Shifta War, and the 2007 Post-election violence.
Tecla Namachanja Wanjala is a conflict resolution, post-conflict rehabilitation, and development worker from Kenya. She was the Acting Chair of The Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission of Kenya. She has five children
Saferworld is an international non-governmental organisation with conflict prevention and peacebuilding programmes in over 20 countries and territories in the Horn of Africa, the African Great Lakes region, Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus. It was founded in Bristol, UK in 1989 and now has its main office in London.
The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created as part of the Lomé Peace Accord, signed on July 7, 1999, which ended the 11 year civil war conflict in Sierra Leone. This accord was signed by then President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, and the leader of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) Foday Sankoh. The aims of the Commission were to establish "an impartial historical record of violations and abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law related to the armed conflict in Sierra Leone from the beginning of the Conflict in 1991 to the signing of the Lomé Peace Agreement; to address impunity, to respond to the needs of the victims, to promote healing and reconciliation and to prevent a repetition of the violations and abuses suffered." The Commission was chaired by Bishop Joseph Christian Humper. It operated from 2002-2004, with a final report being presented to the United Nations Security Council on October 5, 2004.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a truth commission which ran from July 2003 - February 2007 to investigate and promote national unity as a response to the atrocities committed in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo between the Congolese army, Congolese rebels, and foreign insurgents.
Reconciliation theology or the theology of reconciliation raises crucial theological questions about how reconciliation can be brought into regions of political conflict. The term differs from the conventional theological understanding of reconciliation, but likewise emphasises themes of justice, truth, forgiveness and repentance.
References
- ↑ "Peace Commissions". Archived from the original on 2008-07-23. Retrieved 2011-07-15.
- ↑ "Welcome to the official Truth and Reconciliation Commission Website". Government of South Africa. Retrieved 2011-07-15.
- ↑ "SSPC/Pact Sudan People to People Peace Building". Pact Sudan. Archived from the original on 2011-09-29. Retrieved 2011-07-15.