For ICTJ, meaningful acknowledgment is at the very heart of what transitional justice is about. We have found in country after country that meaningful acknowledgment is the indispensable ingredient to sustainably rebuilding trust in societies, restoring belief in the dignity of individuals, and sometimes sowing the seeds of reconciliation. It can take various forms: truth commissions, commissions of inquiry, and forms of apology, especially in memorialization. Reparations offer a direct form of acknowledgment as well as compensation in some cases. Truth commissions, if done well, can present a hugely important attempt to provide the kind of acknowledgment we are talking about.

In 2004 ICTJ played a pivotal role in helping to shape Timor-Leste’s Truth, Reception and Reconciliation Commission. The commission showed that sometimes acknowledgment is more important than discovery. Most victims knew what had happened and who was responsible but a formal, authoritative accounting and recognition was important for their sense of dignity.

In Peru, ICTJ provided technical advice and support to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from its inception until it issued its final report. One of the commission’s most significant achievements was providing the victims, mostly from the rural areas of the country, with a public platform where they were heard and their suffering acknowledged before the public of the entire country, which has previously largely ignored their plight.

And in Tunisia, the Truth and Dignity Commission, with which ICTJ has been working since its inception, recently held its first public hearings, giving a public platform to victims of the dictatorship to speak before the commission and vast television and digital audiences, in Tunisia and beyond. As mothers of young men killed during the protests against the former dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, political prisoners tortured in detention, and families of forcibly disappeared activists reclaimed their voice before audiences of millions, usually reserved for the powerful strongmen and elites, the discourse about the past and the future in Tunisia shifted. The immediate impact is obvious in public debate in the media and on social media, where thousands are engaging in a discussion about the need to right the wrongs of the past to build a stronger society based on the rights and dignity for all. The commission has now become an inspiration to which many in the Arab world, from Yemen to Algeria, are looking to for how a country can uncover the truth about a painful past.