Reparations

Reparations seek to recognize and address the harms suffered by victims of systematic human rights violations. ICTJ’s Reparative Justice program provides knowledge and comparative experience on reparations to victims' groups, civil society and policymakers worldwide.

Santiago, Chile - Memorial for the detained, disappeared and executed (Louis Bickford)

States have a legal duty to acknowledge and address widespread or systematic human rights violations, in cases where the state caused the violations or did not seriously try to prevent them.

Reparations initiatives seek to address the harms caused by these violations. They can take the form of compensating for the losses suffered, which helps overcome some of the consequences of abuse. They can also be future oriented—providing rehabilitation and a better life to victims—and help to change the underlying causes of abuse.

Reparations publicly affirm that victims are rights-holders entitled to redress.

Types of Reparations

Reparations initiatives can be designed in many ways. They may include financial compensation to individuals or groups; guarantees of non-repetition; social services such as healthcare or education; and symbolic measures such as formal apologies or public commemorations.

Some examples:

From 1996 to 2008, the Chilean government paid more than $1.6 billion in pensions to certain victims of the Pinochet regime, and established a specialized health care program for survivors of violations. These were accompanied by an official apology from the President.

The Moroccan government is currently implementing both individual and community-based reparations for over 50 years of widespread abuse. These include funding for projects proposed by communities that were previously deliberately excluded from development programs for political reasons.

In 2010, the President of Sierra Leone formally apologized to women victims of his country’s 10-year armed conflict. This apology forms part of ongoing efforts to distribute modest compensation, rehabilitation and other benefits to eligible victims.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia ordered symbolic and collective reparations in the court’s first conviction for crimes against humanity. The court ordered that the names of victims of a notorious prison be listed in the Court’s website, as well as the apologies issued by the convicted person.

If pursued without other justice measures, reparations initiatives have sometimes been criticized as attempting to buy victims’ silence.

ICTJ believes reparations initiatives that follow from meaningful consultation with victims have the best chance of being fair and effective. Linking reparations to other forms of recognition, justice and guarantees of non repetition—as recommended by the United Nations Basic Principles on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation—can also contribute to their effectiveness.

ICTJ’s Role

ICTJ plays a leading role in researching and advising reparations efforts.

ICTJ analyzes and evaluates past and ongoing reparations initiatives. We also research, analyze and report on factors related to victims’ needs, such as the impact of gender biases, poverty, displacement, corruption and ethnic tensions. Our 2009 briefing paper on The Right to Reparations in Situations of Poverty explores the challenges faced by reparations programs in post-conflict developing countries with widespread poverty.

We help truth-seeking bodies, courts and policymakers develop reparations policy and programs based on our knowledge of reparations initiatives worldwide. We have provided assistance to the International Criminal Court(ICC) and to the Trust Fund for Victims (TFV) on ways to design judicial reparations for victims. We also helped the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission engage with victim’s organizations when defining its reparations recommendations.

We work with victims’ groups and civil society organizations to help them define their needs and priorities. In Nepal, we produce Nepali language information kits on complex bills and government procedures. In Liberia, we advised survivors of massacres in their effort to organize victims’ groups.

We share knowledge of comparative experiences with our local partners, and help them build networks and share lessons with their counterparts. In 2009, ICTJ and the Moroccan Advisory Council on Human Rights held a conference on collective reparations attended by victim advocates and government representatives from seven countries implementing reparations measures.

Truth and Memory

Truth seeking initiatives can play a powerful role in documenting and acknowledging human rights violations. Memory initiatives also contribute to public understanding of past abuses. ICTJ’s Truth and Memory program seeks to advance the right to truth, and provides support and advice to truth and memory initiatives worldwide.

Photo of missing, Cambodia.

He's to have no funeral or lament,

but to be left unburied and unwept...

Sophocles, Antigone

Knowing the Truth is a Right

Societies and individuals are entitled to know the truth about mass human rights violations in the wake of armed conflict or repression. All cultures recognize the importance of proper mourning to achieve personal and communal healing.

International law clearly recognizes the right of victims and survivors to know about the circumstances of serious violations of their human rights and about who was responsible. International law continues to develop in this area and on the concept of a society’s right to the truth.

Truth-Seeking, including Truth Commissions

Repressive regimes deliberately rewrite history and deny atrocities to legitimize themselves. Truth-seeking contributes to the creation of a historical record that prevents this kind of manipulation. It can help victims find closure by learning more about the events they suffered, such as the fate of disappeared individuals, or why certain people were targeted for abuse.

Truth-seeking initiatives take many forms—including freedom of information legislation, declassification of archives, investigations into the missing and disappeared—and the establishment of non-judicial commissions of inquiry, including truth commissions.Building from origins in Latin America, independent and effective truth commissions have become an essential part of transitional justice efforts around the world. As of early 2011, some 40 official truth commissions have been created to provide an account of past abuses.

Truth commissions include a number of investigative steps—protecting evidence, compiling archives, interviewing victims and key political actors, opening and publishing state information, and producing reports and recommendations.

In some cases where national governments have not established truth commissions, other official institutions—such as municipalities or ombudspersons—have created more limited official inquiries. There are also many examples of important truth seeking initiatives launched by civil society, faith-based communities and victim associations.

Unofficial, local or case-specific initiatives can sometimes instigate more comprehensive national efforts. Beyond this, truth-seeking can also lead the way to other transitional justice approaches such as vetting, prosecutions, and reparations.

Memory and Memorials

Victims of human rights abuses cannot forget, and states have a duty to preserve the memory of such crimes.

Architectural memorials, museums and commemorative activities are indispensable educational initiatives to establish the record beyond denial, and prevent repetition. In many cases, by launching commemoration activities, civil society has been the catalyst for states to assume their duties.

Examples of commemoration include:

Museums and monuments educating the public about past abuse, such as the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile, dedicated to present the history of the military dictatorship and document its abuses.

Spaces transformed to mark the site of a violation—such as Constitution Hill in Johannesburg, a former prison that is now South Africa’s Constitutional Court.

Activities of remembrance, like the annual March 24 demonstrations in Argentina, which mark the beginning of the 1970s military dictatorship. In Peru, relatives of the disappeared have joined efforts to knit a gigantic “Scarf of Hope” in memory of victims.

ICTJ’s Role

ICTJ supports the work of truth commissions in 12 countries, working with governments, civil society, and the international community. We also facilitate and assist on several unofficial truth projects.

We work with memorialization efforts to maximize their potential to educate and transform. We provide advice on memorial design, commissioning and victim consultation.

Our research and case-specific training activities and materials distill best practice so that future truth and memory initiatives can benefit from past experience.

Examples include:

We advised the truth commission in Morocco, established to investigate human rights violations committed from 1956–1990. Based on best practices from other commissions worldwide, we recommended the use of public hearings for dissemination of the truth.

We provided advice to unofficial truth seeking initiatives, such as the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated the killings of union activists by the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis in North Carolina.

We assisted with case-specific truth-seeking initiatives in Colombia, and supported a Truth Commission set up by the Supreme Court to address the violent events surrounding the seizure

of the Palace of Justice in 1985. These events were featured in the documentary film “La Toma”, which premiered at the Cartagena International Film Festival in March 2011.

The reform of state institutions involved in human rights abuses can be an important transitional justice measure that promotes accountability and helps prevent the recurrence of violations. ICTJ provides expertise to ensure that institutional reforms—in societies recovering from atrocities and oppression—include a focus on justice for past abuses.

North Kivu, DRC - a UN peacekeeper takes stock of arms collected during the demobilization process. (UN Photo/Martine Perret)

Public institutions—such as the police, military, and judiciary—are often instruments of repression and systemic violations of human rights. When transitions to democratic government occur, reform of such institutions is vital.

Institutional reform is the process of reviewing and restructuring state institutions so that they respect human rights, preserve the rule of law, and are accountable to their constituents. By incorporating a transitional justice element, reform efforts can both provide accountability for individual perpetrators and disable the structures that allowed abuses to occur.

Institutional reform can include many justice-related measures, such as:

Vetting: examining personnel backgrounds during restructuring or recruitment to eliminate from public service or otherwise sanction abusive and corrupt officials.

Structural reform: restructuring institutions to promote integrity and legitimacy, by providing accountability, building independence, ensuring representation, and increasing responsiveness.

Oversight: creating publicly visible oversight bodies within state institutions to ensure accountability to civilian governance.

Transforming legal frameworks: reforming or creating new legal frameworks, such as adopting constitutional amendments or international human rights treaties to ensure protection and promotion of human rights.

Disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration: disbanding armed actors—such as paramilitary groups—and providing justice-sensitive processes and means by which ex-combatants can rejoin civil society.

Education: training programs for public officials and employees on applicable human rights and international humanitarian law standards.

Institutional reform as a transitional justice measure aims to acknowledge victims as citizens and rights holders and to build trust between all citizens and their public institutions. Measures to assist

this include promoting freedom of information, public information campaigns on citizen’s rights, and verbal or symbolic reform measures such as memorials or public apologies.

ICTJ’s Role

The effectiveness of justice-related institutional reform can be enhanced when integrated in a comprehensive transitional justice policy that includes criminal prosecutions, truth-seeking, and reparations to victims. ICTJ’s work focuses on the connections between institutional reform and other transitional justice approaches.

In DRC, we work to ensure that new legislation on the security system includes accountability principles.

In 2010 we produced guidelines for practitioners—in English and French—on post-conflict security sector reform, and earlier helped establish policy frameworks for the United Nations.

We have produced guidelines for vetting security sector institutions published by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and by the United Nations Development Programme -published also in Justice as Prevention.

We have worked in Burundi to help with the census and identification of security agents.

In Iraq we were a prominent source of expert criticism on De-Baathification initiatives. We have published research on the relationship between vetting and transitional justice, as well

as on disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration and transitional justice. RSS ICTJ on Facebook ICTJ on Twitter ICTJ on YouTube ICTJ podcast SUBSCRIBE

Transitional Justice Issues

Criminal Justice Reparations Truth and Memory Institutional Reform Gender Justice Children and Youth

News & Updates

No convictions of state agents for Northern Ireland killings since peace deal 1/29/2015

From Force to Service: Engaging Kenyans in Police Reform 1/29/2015

Nepal’s Constitutional Standoff Threatens Its Transition 1/25/2015

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Publications & Research

Navigating Paths to Justice in Myanmar's Transition 7/18/2014

Failing to Deal with the Past: What Cost to Lebanon? 1/30/2014

Towards a Transitional Justice Strategy for Syria 10/2/2013

A Bitter Legacy: Lessons of De-Baathification in Iraq 3/4/2013

Transitional Justice and Displacement 9/13/2012

  

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ICTJ’s gender justice program seeks to promote truth, justice and accountability for gender-based human rights violations committed in the context of large-scale or systematic abuse.

Women in the village of Svay Khleang, Cambodia, read a book about the ECCC's work. (Brendan Brady/IRIN)

Gender-based violence is often a common element of conflict and authoritarian regimes. In these contexts, impunity for violations against women is pervasive. At the same time, women are often absent or underrepresented in efforts to address such abuse.

Despite increased international attention to the gender dimensions of conflict, gender justice concerns have yet to be integrated in many transitional justice initiatives. Recent examples of truth commission mandates, judicial opinions, and reparations programs have shown little regard for the distinct and complex nature of gender-based violations.

Recent developments in international law on gender-based violations and resolutions (such as UN Security Council Resolution 1325, 1820, 1888 on women, peace and security) have strengthened the international community’s commitment to combating these crimes. However, despite these advances, there has been limited success in prosecuting crimes of gender violence at the domestic or international level.

What Role Can Transitional Justice Play?

Transitional justice mechanisms offer a means to pursue gender justice by revealing gendered patterns of abuse, enhancing access to justice, and building momentum for reform.

Transitional justice mechanisms can assist gender activists to challenge structural causes of gender inequality, by publicly acknowledging the factors that made such abuse possible. Recommendations made by truth commissions and reparations initiatives can challenge discriminatory practices that contribute to women’s vulnerability during repression and conflict.Transitional justice mechanisms also offer women opportunities to participate in and influence peace-building processes. This can be achieved by ensuring participation of women’s rights groups and victims in shaping and monitoring transitional justice processes.

ICTJ’s Role

ICTJ works to ensure that women’s voices infuse every aspect of transitional justice, and that women have the skills and knowledge they need to meaningfully participate in transitional justice initiatives.

Our research aims to provide new insights into how the gender dynamics of conflict can be addressed by transitional justice. For example, we have examined how sexual minorities are specifically targeted for human rights violations by state actors and armed groups, and how often these victims are invisible in transitional justice processes.

We give technical support to gender activists on the ground, and seek to strengthen their policy influence by linking them to a global transitional justice network.

We support local women’s groups to influence transitional justice processes. We provide them with the knowledge and tools they need to do their work. In 2011, we will run workshops on transitional justice for local women’s activists throughout the MENA region.

We bring activists together to learn, share ideas and strategies. In 2010, we connected women activists from across the African Great Lakes region at a workshop to discuss transitional justice opportunities and challenges in their countries. Activists used this opportunity to strategize on their engagement in the [ICC Review Conference] in Kampala.

We advise policymakers on implementing gender justice initiatives. In 2007, we worked with the Liberian Truth Commission to help draft their gender policy.

We share examples of transitional justice in other countries to help craft policies and procedures to address gender-based violence. For example, ICTJ has shared lessons learned from the Peru, Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste truth commission experiences with women’s groups and policymakers in Liberia and Nepal. This information was then used to help draft truth commission policies and legislation.

We research and analyze global processes to address gender justice. We have developed resource materials to share this expertise with others, including country case studies and an operational handbook on truth commissions.

RSS ICTJ on Facebook ICTJ on Twitter ICTJ on YouTube ICTJ podcast SUBSCRIBE

Transitional Justice Issues

Criminal Justice Reparations Truth and Memory Institutional Reform Gender Justice Children and Youth

News & Updates

Congo's women fight for the right to play a peacekeeping role 1/21/2015

Canada Needs to Respond to Violence Against Women in BC: Report 1/11/2015

ICC puts 'rape campaign' in CAR on trial 11/29/2014

MORE NEWS

Publications & Research

The Accountability Gap on Sexual Violence in Kenya: Reforms and Initiatives Since the Post-Election Crisis6/16/2014

Confronting Impunity and Engendering Transitional Justice Processes in Uganda 6/1/2014

Beyond Relief: Addressing the Rights and Needs of Nepal’s Wives of the Disappeared 8/28/2013

The Nexus between Displacement and Transitional Justice: A Gender-Justice Dimension 6/1/2013

Transitional Justice and Displacement 9/13/2012

  

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ICTJ Contact

Amrita Kapur Senior Associate, Gender Justice Program

Kelli Muddell Director, Gender Justice Program

Criminal Justice

Those who commit crimes on a large or systematic scale should be held accountable. ICTJ’s Criminal Justice program seeks to strengthen criminal justice initiatives worldwide by providing technical assistance to those engaged in complex investigations and prosecutions and by sharing lessons learned from our field programs and research.

Accused Industrialists at Nuremberg Trials—often seen as important precursors to transitional justice measures.

The investigation and prosecution of international crimes—including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes—is a fundamental component of transitional justice.

It has roots in international legal obligations that can be traced back to the Nuremberg trials, and continue with the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia(ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR).Investigations and trials of powerful leaders (whether political or military) help strengthen the rule of law and send a strong signal that such crimes will not be tolerated in a rights-respecting society.

Trials remain a key demand of victims. When conducted in ways that reflect victims’ needs and expectations, they can play a vital role in restoring their dignity and delivering justice.

But prosecutions cannot achieve justice in isolation. The large-scale nature of such crimes means that they often cannot be processed through the ordinary criminal justice system—generating an "impunity gap." Effective prosecution strategies for large-scale crimes often focus on the planners and organizers of crimes, rather than those of lower rank or responsibility.

Implementing prosecution strategies with other initiatives—such as reparations programs,institutional reform, and truth-seeking—can help fill the "impunity gap" by addressing crimes with large numbers of victims and perpetrators.

Domestic Prosecutions

Prosecutions for international crimes have more potential for impact when they are held domestically, within the society where the crimes occurred. However, societies emerging from

conflict or in transition may lack the political will to prosecute these crimes, and legal systems may be in disarray.

Even sophisticated legal systems—which mainly deal with ordinary crimes—may lack the capacity to effectively address such crimes.

These problems may require international assistance that draws on best practices from elsewhere—for instance through “hybrid” courts or tribunals, composed of international and domestic justice actors. Such courts have been created in Sierra Leone, Kosovo,Bosnia, Timor-Leste and Cambodia.

International Criminal Court

In 2002, the Rome Statute established the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC investigates and prosecutes individuals responsible for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed since July 1, 2002—in cases where countries are unwilling or unable to do so.Under the Rome Statute’s “complementarity” principle, domestic courts continue to have the duty to deliver justice—so that the ICC remains a court of last resort. In recent years, domestic courts have increasingly taken up this role.

ICTJ’s Role

We provide expert assistance, analysis and advice to governments, civil society, and justice actors or institutions. We share lessons learned and best practices from criminal justice initiatives worldwide.

We have particular expertise on how domestic legal systems can adapt to investigate and prosecute large-scale or systematic crimes such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

In Uganda, Kenya and DRC we analyze and recommend ways in which to strengthen domestic prosecutions.

In Colombia, we provide legal support to justice actors and victim representatives in criminal proceedings against former paramilitaries under the Justice and Peace Law (2005).

In Argentina, we provide technical advice to state prosecutors and local NGOs working on criminal prosecutions.

In Bangladesh, we analyze and provide input into the International Crimes Tribunal initiative to try widespread crimes that happened in 1971.

In Afghanistan, we assisted the Afghan Independent Human Rights Committee in documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity from 1978–2001.

We’ve analyzed and reported on, or provided amicus briefs in important domestic trials of former political leaders and their impact on the transitions, such as the trials of Saddam Hussein or Alberto Fujimori.

We’ve done comparative research on the political, legal and policy aspects of hybrid tribunals in Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Cambodia, Kosovo, East Timor and Lebanon.

We’ve prepared various policy tools, including briefs for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on domestic and hybrid prosecutions.