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Michael Wolfgang Laurence Morris, Baron Naseby, is a British Conservative Party politician.
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 massive human rights violations through judicial redress, political reforms 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. 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.
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 she was election 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.
Hassan Bubacar Jallow is a Gambian judge who has served as Chief Justice of the Gambia since February 2017. He was the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) from 2003 to 2016, and Prosecutor of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) from 2012 to 2016, both at the rank of United Nations Under Secretary-General. He served as Minister of Justice and Attorney General from 1984 to 1994 under President Dawda Jawara.
Chris Mahony is a former rugby union player for the Auckland Air New Zealand Cup team, playing fullback centre or wing. He played for Oxford University where he has completed a Masters in African Studies and a DPhil in Politics.
Mullivaikal Hospital was a makeshift hospital located in the Safe Zone in northern Sri Lanka. An alleged series of shellings and aerial attacks began on 23 April 2009 when the Mullivaikal Hospital was hit by three artillery shells. It continued on 28 and 29 April when the Mullivaikkal Primary Health Center was hit multiple times over a two-day period with six killed and many injured including one medical staffer. On the 29th and the 30th the Mullivaikal Hospital was again hit multiple times with nine more killed and fifteen injured. There were two attacks against the Mullivaikal Hospital on 2 May, one at 9 a.m. and a second at 10.30 a.m. resulting in sixty-eight killed and eighty-seven wounded, including medical staffers. On the morning of 12 May 2009 it was hit by an artillery mortar, killing at least forty-nine patients and injuring more than fifty others. All of these attacks were allegedly by the Sri Lankan Army; however, the Sri Lankan Government denied the allegation stating there is no evidence.
William Anthony Schabas, OC is a Canadian academic specialising in international criminal and human rights law. He is professor of international law at Middlesex University in the United Kingdom, professor of international human law and human rights at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and an internationally respected expert on human rights law, genocide and the death penalty. Schabas has been described as "the world expert on the law of genocide and international law."
The war was waged for over a quarter of a century, with an estimated 70,000 killed by 2007. Immediately following the end of war, on 20 May 2009, the UN estimated a total of 80,000–100,000 deaths. However, in 2011, referring to the final phase of the war in 2009, the Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka stated, "A number of credible sources have estimated that there could have been as many as 40,000 civilian deaths." The large majority of these civilian deaths in the final phase of the war were said to have been caused by indiscriminate shelling by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces.
There were war crimes and crimes against humanity that were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the Sri Lankan Civil War, particularly during the final months of the Eelam War IV phase in 2009. The war crimes include attacks on civilians and civilian buildings by both sides; executions of combatants and prisoners by both sides; enforced disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary groups backed by them; sexual violence by the Sri Lankan military; the systematic denial of food, medicine, and clean water by the government to civilians trapped in the war zone; child recruitment, hostage taking, use of military equipment in the proximity of civilians and use of forced labor by the Tamil Tigers.
The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission was a commission of inquiry appointed by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in May 2010 after the 26-year-long civil war in Sri Lanka to function as a Truth and reconciliation commission. The commission was mandated to investigate the facts and circumstances which led to the failure of the ceasefire agreement made operational on 27 February 2002, the lessons that should be learnt from those events and the institutional, administrative and legislative measures which need to be taken in order to prevent any recurrence of such concerns in the future, and to promote further national unity and reconciliation among all communities. After an 18-month inquiry, the commission submitted its report to the President on 15 November 2011. The report was made public on 16 December 2011, after being tabled in the parliament.
Chandra Lekha Sriram (1971–2018) was Professor of Law at the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She has written and lectured widely on conflict prevention, post-conflict peacebuilding, human rights, international criminal law, and transitional justice. Her most recent monograph, Peace as governance: Power-sharing, armed groups, and contemporary peace negotiations (2008), offered a comparative critical examination of the use of power-sharing incentives in peace processes in Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Sudan. Previous monographs on transitional justice and international criminal accountability, Confronting past human rights violations: Justice versus peace in times of transition (2004) and Globalizing Justice for mass atrocities: A revolution in accountability (2005); examined transitional justice and internationalized and externalized criminal justice processes in or for Sierra Leone, Timor-Leste, El Salvador, Honduras, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and Argentina.
The Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka was a 2011 report produced by a panel of experts appointed by United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The report is referred to by some as the Darusman Report, after the name of the chairman of the panel.
Mohamed Chande Othman is a Tanzanian lawyer and a former Chief Justice of Tanzania.
Mullivaikkal massacre was the mass killing of tens of thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils in 2009 during the closing stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War ending in May 2009 in a tiny strip of land in Mullivaikkal, Mullaitivu. The Sri Lankan government designated a no fire zone in Mullivaikkal towards the end of the war. According to the UN, between 40,000–70,000 entrapped Tamil civilians were killed by the actions of Government Forces and LTTE, with the large majority of these civilian deaths being the result of indiscriminate shelling by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces.
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.
The Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (OSRSG-SVC) is an office of the United Nations Secretariat tasked with serving the United Nations' spokesperson and political advocate on conflict-related sexual violence, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (SRSG-SVC). The Special Representative holds the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and chairs the UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict. The mandate of the SRSG-SVC was established by Security Council Resolution 1888, introduced by Hillary Clinton, and the first Special Representative, Margot Wallström, took office in 2010. The current Special Representative is Pramila Patten of Mauritius, who was appointed by United Nations Secretary General António Guterres in April 2017. The work of the SRSG-SVC is supported by the United Nations Team of Experts on the Rule of Law/Sexual Violence in Conflict, co-led by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPO), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), also established under Security Council Resolution 1888.
Varatharajah Thurairajah is an Eelam Tamil physician and human rights activist. He was noted as one of the official witnesses for the United Nations investigations on war crimes and human rights violations in Sri Lanka. He is a first-hand witness of the events in the "No Fire Zone" in Mullivaikkal, Mullaitivu; and has revealed information to the world about the planned genocide of Tamils in 2009. He is currently engaged in activities related to creating awareness about the issue.
Ponnampalam Memorial hospital is located in Puthukudiyiruppu in Mullaitivu District.It was run by the LTTE in rebel controlled areas. It was bombed by the Sri Lankan airforce and the hospital was destroyed. Human Rights Watch accused the Sri Lankan military of shelling hospitals in the Safe Zone indiscriminately with artillery and attacking them aerially beginning with the Mullaitivu General Hospital in December 2008 and including at least eight other hospitals. Human Rights Watch stated that these attacks constitute war crimes. They've also said that the hospitals are clearly marked.Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka found that the allegations that the Sri Lankan military shelled hospitals were credible.Gotabaya Rajapakse claimed that "No hospital should operate outside the Safety Zone...everything beyond the safety is a legitimate target," and stating the attack was legitimate. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband jointly called on the warring parties in the island of Sri Lanka to "not to fire out of or into" the safe zone and in the "vicinity of Puthukkudiyiruppu (PTK) hospital or any other medical structure".
References
- ↑ "President of Human Rights Council appoints members of monitoring mission on South Sudan". Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights . Retrieved 18 November 2017.
- ↑ "Yasmin Louise Sooka" . Retrieved 18 November 2017.
- ↑ "Yasmin Sooka". International Committee of the Red Cross . Retrieved 18 November 2017.
- ↑ "Justice to Tamils impossible under 'Sri Lanka', but ITJP seeks 'reforms". Tamilnet. 7 January 2016. Retrieved 18 November 2017.
- ↑ Charles Villa-Vicencio; Fanie Du Toit (2006). Truth & Reconciliation in South Africa: 10 Years on. New Africa Books. pp. 17–. ISBN 978-1-86928-603-3 . Retrieved 18 November 2017.
- ↑ K. Ainley; R. Friedman; C. Mahony (16 February 2016). Evaluating Transitional Justice: Accountability and Peacebuilding in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone. Springer. pp. 51–. ISBN 978-1-137-46822-2 . Retrieved 18 November 2017.
- ↑ "Sri Lanka's Jagath Jayasuriya wanted for war crimes". BBC. 29 August 2017. Retrieved 18 November 2017.
- ↑ "Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Sri Lanka". United Nations . Retrieved 18 November 2017.
- ↑ "UN probe sought on torture by Sri Lankan security forces". The Indian Express. 14 November 2016. Retrieved 18 November 2017.
- ↑ "Yasmin Louise Sooka". School of Public Policy. Retrieved 19 November 2017.
- ↑ "ITJP About". /itjpsl.com. ITJP. Retrieved 27 September 2023.