Programs

Middle East and North Africa Program

The ICTJ's focused transitional justice program in the Middle East and North Africa promotes efforts to end the culture of impunity and bring democratic change in the region. The program provides legal and technical assistance, comparative analysis, and policy advice to governments and civil society actors. Working with local partners, the program conducts training programs in the region that formulate transitional justice strategies in anticipation of further shifts toward democracy. The program also works closely with local human rights organizations; reaches out to key policymakers to provide information on transitional justice issues; produces analytical and descriptive publications; and builds and disseminates its collection of Arabic-language documents.

Learn more about our Middle East and North Africa work

Research Unit

The field of transitional justice covers a range of disciplines, including law, public policy, forensics, economics, history, psychology, and the arts. The Research Unit works to develop a rich understanding of the field as a whole, and to identify issues that merit more in-depth research and analysis. Collaborating with colleagues in transitional societies and often commissioning outside studies, the unit researches the complex issues confronting policymakers and activists. Identifying and addressing the most important gaps in scholarship, it provides comparative analysis to ICTJ staff and to practitioners worldwide.

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Policymakers and Civil Society Unit

The Policymakers and Civil Society Unit (PCSU) supports transitional justice capacity building, reciprocal exchange, and networking for actors at all levels of engagement, from regional civil society groups to senior intergovernmental and national policymakers. PCSU programs strengthen and empower key regional actors to confront the legacy of past human rights abuse. Methods include building global information-sharing networks, disseminating multimedia modules, and creating original training sessions and seminars to aid the design and implementation of transitional justice programs. The Unit also generates and preserves "ground-up" institutional knowledge with its Internship and Visiting Fellows programs. The Transitional Justice Fellowship Program, a series of intensive training courses, aims to nurture a diverse pool of promising human rights advocates.

The PCSU-housed International Policymakers Program (IPP) works on the "top-down" end of the spectrum, seeking to engage and inform senior policymakers in intergovernmental institutions and national governments on a wide range of transitional justice issues. The end goal of every IPP project is to inform policy developments based on a cross-regional, holistic and critical analysis of international best practices. IPP offerings include briefings, seminars, intensive high-level retreats, conferences, and strategic guidance on specific policy developments.