ICTJ in the News

November 9, 2006

ICTJ Launched Handbook of Reparations

One World

By Marija Sajkas

Based on the observation that in post-conflict countries the attention is usually paid to violations of human rights rather than to needs of victims, the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), a New York City based NGO committed to assisting countries where human rights are severely jeopardized, recently launched The Handbook of Reparations that has the unique approach to the question of justice.

The three-year collaboration between more than 27 authors from 14 countries has resulted in the first comprehensive Handbook of Reparations published by the Oxford University Press, which is expected to become an irreplaceable field guide and a standard university textbook.

The handbook is more than 1, 000 pages long and it is divided into three parts. The first part is dedicated to the case studies of nine different contexts, from Argentina and Chile and pending compensations in Germany, to reparations to families of victims of September 11 attacks.

The second part of the Handbook is focused on most frequent challenges in the design and implementation of reparation programs, while the third part is collection of the relevant documents on reparations.

ICTJ was focused on the region of the Balkans couple of times. The general conclusion of a separate study from 2004 was that in former Yugoslav republics there has not been significant or systematic work done in reparation of victims. The positive example is the collaboration on the investigation and documentation of war crimes between Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Center, Zagreb-based Center for Dealing with the Past -Documenta and the Humanitarian Law Center from Belgrade.

ICTJ will soon publish a major research project on completion strategy of International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia with aim to identify key lessons from the final phase. The part of the study is dedicated to Kosovo trail panels.