Resource Library

This research report offers guidance on the application of a restorative justice framework in contexts of massive human rights violations, including its advantages and challenges. Based on the experiences of Colombia, Sierra Leone, Tunisia, and the Philippines, the study examines how ...

This comparative study examines strategies used by local actors to help operationalize reparations for victims of widespread human rights violations, while highlighting the synergies between these efforts and sustainable development. It is based on the fieldwork of ICTJ and its partne...

This briefing paper examines the various actions that Ukrainian officials and members of the international community have launched to investigate and prosecute war crimes and other human rights violations committed in Ukraine since Russia invaded the country in February 2022. It explo...

ICTJ is more than two decades old. At the time it was established, many of those who contributed to transitions in Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, South Africa, and the former Yugoslavia saw the value of a specialized organization that could draw from diverse national experiences to prov...

George Floyd’s death reignited existing anger over American society’s deep and festering racial wounds. His death triggered significant social uprisings that have challenged the methods of policing that have emerged over the course of several decades. With a growing awareness of polic...

At a time when truth-seeking and reparations initiatives are taking hold across the United States, this report offers reflections from various civil society-led truth-seeking processes. Drawing on case studies from the United States, Colombia, Scotland, and West Papua, the report iden...

This study explores specialized units established in 23 countries to investigate and prosecute serious international crimes. Notwithstanding the challenges faced by these units, the study concludes that countries with a specialized institutional approach are considerably more successf...

This study explores a transitional justice approach to the dilemma of foreign fighters in violent conflict. Such an approach can help center human rights in comprehensive responses to foreign fighters, and shift the current focus from security and punishment to justice and long-term p...

The global COVID-19 pandemic forced many countries to impose emergency measures, such as curfews and community lockdowns, to stem the spread of the virus. To enforce these measures, some societies have given regular police forces increased power to enforce the measures, while others h...

This report examines the preventive impact of transitional justice mechanisms in Colombia before the 2016 peace agreement. It finds that these measures have contributed to prevention by strengthening institutional responses to rights violations, shaping the public agenda, developing a...

This report summarizes the findings of an ICTJ research project on the contribution of transitional justice to prevention. Drawing from five country case studies, it contends that addressing the past can help to prevent the recurrence not only of human rights violations but also viole...

Because transitional justice processes are complex, politically contested, and not necessarily linear, they present unique theoretical and practical challenges for measuring their results. This report seeks to improve monitoring and evaluation practices and support evidence-based proc...

Invoking the principle of universal jurisdiction opens the door to the possibility of some accountability in circumstances where justice is not possible in countries where the crimes took place. This study considers the challenges facing the exercise of universal jurisdiction and asse...

On March 2 and 3, 2020, transitional justice and anti-corruption policymakers, experts, and activists from the Gambia, Kenya, South Africa, Armenia, and Tunisia met in Tunis for a two-day conference to share solutions to a common problem: How can countries emerging from dictatorship, ...

Colombia's Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP) aims to achieve criminal accountability through a mixed system of restorative and retributive justice. Generally speaking, the SJP envisions large-scale restorative justice measures involving public acknowledgments of responsibility, as ...

This report aims to help practitioners in the transitional justice field to understand the experience of establishing and operating hybrid courts and to address some common assumptions about these entities. To do so, it looks at hybrid or mixed courts in practice, drawing on experienc...

These are especially challenging times for those of us who work to assist societies in dealing with a legacy of atrocities and massive human rights violations. Violent armed conflicts have increased in number, duration, and ferocity around the globe. Immense displacement and waves of ...

When the Syrian people took to the streets in March 2011, nobody could have predicted that the ensuing crisis would become the largest international calamity in recent history. Syrians’ calls for freedom and justice, which rode the wave of revolutions in neighboring countries, have be...

Discussions about a future return of refugees and coexistence among groups currently at war in Syria must begin now, even in the face of ongoing violence and displacement. This report, based on interviews with refugees, makes it clear that the restoration of dignity will be important ...

This report presents the main findings of a multiyear research project conducted by the International Center for Transitional Justice on the challenges and opportunities of responding to serious and massive human rights violations in different contexts. The project commissioned 21 stu...

What hope is there for justice for victims of atrocities in profoundly fractured societies, where systems of government have broken down and social and political divisions run deep? What is the role of transitional justice in forging peace in countries like Colombia, after decades of ...

Where should justice for some of the world’s worst crimes be done? In national courts or at the International Criminal Court in The Hague? Our Handbook on Complementarity explores those questions, laying out the interconnected relationship between the ICC and national court systems in...

In this briefing paper ICTJ addresses one of the crucial points of the peace negotiations between the Government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP): the possibility of providing recourse to the broadest amnesty possible and pardons as pa...

This manual was created as part of the Framework Cooperation Agreement between the International Center for Transitional Justice and the Attorney General’s Office, with the aim of providing technical assistance to the National Unit for Analysis and Context (UNAC) and supporting the de...

This paper weighs the possible modes and competing policy objectives of punishing FARC members for serious crimes in the context of Colombia’s ongoing peace negotiations. It argues that punishment has to occur in a way that does not damage one of the underlying objectives of the peace...

The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with support from the Governments of Denmark and South Africa, and in close consultation with the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute (ASP), held a...

This paper is concerned with the relationship between criminal justice and displacement that has taken place as a result of serious violations of international humanitarian law, and considers these issues within the context of justice efforts in the former Yugoslavia. It argues that ...

The crime of forced displacement has been a widespread practice in Colombia’s internal armed conflict for several decades. However, forced displacement cannot be reduced to an inherent or unintended effect of the conflict. The armed actors in the Colombian armed conflict—the army an...

In collaboration with the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement, ICTJ’s Research Unit examined how transitional justice can be used to address the range of injustices associated with displacement and thereby serve as part of a comprehensive approach to the resolution of displ...

This case study reviews and analyzes the deployment of international judges and prosecutors in Kosovo. It is part of a series providing information on hybrid courts' policy and practical issues. Although the Kosovo system of international judges and prosecutors has made significant st...

This report examines the effectiveness of war crimes prosecutions in Serbia. While the War Crimes Chamber (WCC) and the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor (OWCP) have had some success, significant concerns exist - such as opposition from ethnic nationalists. Despite shortcomings, the...

This is a compilation of cases from the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Colombia.

Bosnians have a range of expectations of the ICTY—or as it is known in the region, “the Hague Tribunal” or simply “The Hague”—comparing their hopes to the goals enunciated by the Security Council when it created the Tribunal and by the ICTY itself.

In Colombia, international crimes can be tried under the ordinary national jurisdiction as well as a limited number of cases under the Justice and Peace Law of 2005 (JPL). Neither jurisdiction has served to highlight the widespread or systematic nature of state-sponsored violence. ...