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The Arabic word “Zyara” means “visit” in English. The Zyara documentary series takes an innovative, deeply personal approach to storytelling with a view to nurturing collective social and emotional healing. Through candid encounters, it paints poetic portraits of four Yemenis refugees living in Oman, including a human rights lawyer and activist, a restaurant worker, a martial arts champion, and a businessman. By telling their stories and celebrating the resilient spirit of the Yemeni people, the Zyara project seeks to raise awareness and preserve truth and memory.

Throughout 2023, ICTJ’s experts have offered their unique perspective on breaking news around the globe as part of the World Report. Their insightful commentaries have brought into focus the impact these events have on victims of human right violations as well as larger struggles for peace and justice. In this edition, we look back on the past year through the Expert’s Choice column.

Five years ago, in August 2018, to mark his 100 days in office, Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan addressed a large rally in Yerevan’s Republic Square to officially announce his government’s intentions to incorporate transitional justice mechanisms into Armenian post-revolution reform agenda. Since then, Armenia has been pursuing a range of transitional justice initiatives alongside other democratic reforms, and it has made some limited headway, despite setbacks and major challenges including renewed conflict with Azerbaijan.

More than 20 years after the end of the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, Kosovo is still contending with unresolved ethnic tensions. Formerly an autonomous region of Serbia within the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo declared independence in 2008. Ethnic tensions were a root cause of the violent conflicts, during which an estimated 140,000 died and numerous atrocities were committed. ICTJ recently sat down with ICTJ's Anna Myriam Roccatello and Kelli Muddell to learn more about ICTJ's work and the present challenges to truth and justice in the country.

In 2016, the Yemeni National Commission to Investigate Alleged Violations to Human Rights began documenting violations committed since the 2011 uprising and during the subsequent brutal civil war, which continues today. To date, the commission has documented more than 23,000 human rights abuses and referred over 2,000 cases to Yemen’s Public Prosecutor for prosecution. However, no verdict has been issued in any of these cases. To help the commissioners and members of Yemen’s judiciary advance accountability, ICTJ organized a workshop for them on transitional justice mechanisms. However, to deliver a justice that meets all the reparative needs of victims, these efforts must be an integral part of a broader, multifaceted transitional justice process.

In a fast-changing world, ICTJ regularly reexamines and adapts its methodology to develop innovative solutions to emerging problems, advance its mission, and achieve justice for victims of human rights violations. In that spirit, ICTJ recently launched an exciting new website and newsletter design. After over a year of research, planning, surveying stakeholders, designing, and testing, we unveiled a site that better aligns with what ICTJ and transitional justice are today.

Throughout 2022, ICTJ’s experts weighed in on breaking news in more than 10 countries, offering incisive analyses of the political dynamics behind the coverage and the implications for justice, peace, and the rights of victims. In this December edition of the World Report, we look back at the year that was through our Expert’s Choice commentaries, bringing you all of our team’s valuable insights together in one place.

Even as the parties to the war in Yemen fail to extend the UN-brokered ceasefire, field monitors of the National Commission to Investigate Alleged Violations to Human Rights (NCIAVHR) continue to document and investigate human rights violations despite enormous challenges and serious risks to their...

On October 31, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Sochi to discuss steps to normalize relations between Yerevan and Baku and a longer-term peace deal that would finally end the decades-long, on-and-off conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. This willingness on both sides to come to the negotiating table is without question welcome news. However, the two parties seem to want to talk about peace on different terms and without addressing core human rights issues in their respective countries in connection with the conflict.

Since Russian armed forces invaded Ukraine in late February 2022, the horrific nature of violence endured by Ukrainian civilians at the hands of Russian soldiers has shocked the world. At the time of this writing, there have been 16,000 reports of alleged war crimes , including forcible transfer...

In 2021, there were significant developments, some hopeful and some devastating, in the struggle for truth, accountability, and redress in countries around the world. ICTJ experts covered these events in commentaries and feature stories published on our website and in our newsletters. While 2022 is already underway and we at ICTJ are hard at work, we would like to pause a moment to take stock and reflect on the year that was.

While Armenia may rightfully seek acknowledgment from its neighbors of the genocide and other egregious violations, for its part, it must have the courage to reckon with its own recent past in the 30 years since achieving statehood, which includes war crimes, systematic corruption, and large-scale human rights abuses against its own citizens. Failing to do so ultimately threatens the young republic’s democracy.

The millions of Syrians displaced by the grinding decade-long war have sought out safety far and wide, in safe havens within the country, in neighboring countries in the region, and further afield. Those who managed to reach Europe often did so against the odds and often after experiencing displacement more than once. Now , one of these countries, Denmark , is taking away from Syrians living in its borders the protection they so desperately sought and still need and, with it, the tiny bit of hope that they have worked so hard to preserve.

This year marks ICTJ’s 20th anniversary. For the past two decades, the organization has engaged in more than 50 countries, providing technical assistance and other critical support to victims, civil society, governments, and other stakeholders. Since its beginnings, ICTJ has served as a meeting point for transitional justice experts and practitioners and a hub of knowledge, research, and analysis. As a think tank that does, it has been at the forefront of the field’s evolution.

2020 was a year of unforeseen hardships throughout the world. We may wish to write off last year as a loss and move forward. However, looking back on it as we do in this 2020 Year in Review, in which we highlight our most read content, we can find and take heart in important victories and apply lessons learned in 2021 and beyond.

As UN member states convene virtually this week for the annual General Assembly, they will likely focus on a narrow list of agenda items, topped by issues related to the deadly coronavirus pandemic and a global economic downturn. For this reason, ICTJ would like to recall the vital importance of justice for global peace, security, health, and development by sharing findings from an analysis of the open debate on transitional justice that the UN Security Council held on February 13, 2020, as part of its peacebuilding and sustaining peace agenda.

Sparing almost no corner of the world from its wrath, the COVID-19 pandemic has now spread to every country. In an effort to slow the contagion, governments in most countries have been taking drastic measures requiring all residents other than essential workers to confine themselves in their homes, and shutting down vast sectors of their economies. The impact has been crushing. COVID-19 has profoundly affected every country where ICTJ currently works: Armenia, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gambia, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Uganda. We recently caught up with ICTJ’s heads of country programs to learn more about the impact the pandemic is having on transitional justice and society more broadly.

Today, we are facing a global public health crisis of unprecedented proportions. Only time will tell the devastating toll that COVID-19 will exact on human life. The breakneck speed at which the virus is spreading does not give us reason for optimism in the near future. We at ICTJ fully grasp the gravity of the situation, and we take our responsibility for the health and safety of our staff, partners, and communities where we work seriously.

The United Nations Security Council has considered transitional justice on several occasions in the past and included many of its components in country-specific resolutions, and also stressed the links between transitional justice and the other items on its thematic agenda including women, peace and security, and children and armed conflict, and it has made explicit reference to transitional justice as a key part of efforts to sustain peace. Yet, on February 13, the Security Council held its first open debate focusing solely on transitional justice.

As subscribers, you enjoy timely commentary on what’s happening in transitional justice around the world written by one of our experts exclusively for our monthly World Report newsletter. In this month’s edition, we bid farewell to 2019 by looking back on the experts’ choices of the past year.

In countries emerging from violent conflict and repression around the world, prosecutors are facing significant challenges and pressures when seeking to investigate and prosecute serious crimes, such as torture, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearance. To reflect on these challenges, ICTJ together with the International Nuremberg Principles Academy, and with support from the governments of Australia and Sweden, convened a side event on December 6, 2019, during the 18th Assembly of State Parties of the International Criminal Court.

In designing transitional justice in Armenia, policymakers, civil society activists, and international actors should remember those who have not had justice for so long: the families of those killed or injured in March 2008, the victims of torture and political detention, the mothers in black seeking the truth about why their soldier sons were killed, the old pensioners who live in cold and hunger, farmers and rural communities who need access to social services, and students and young citizens who saw that their hope for a better future required a revolution.

ICTJ’s Gender Symposium, held on February 2 to 4, 2019, in Tunis, Tunisia, brought together fearless women leaders working in 8 countries to advance the needs of victims and to bring gender issues to the center of transitional justice processes. What was achieved? What experiences cut across these diverse contexts? Kelli Muddell and Sibley Hawkins reflect on these questions and more in this short podcast.

The internationally acclaimed documentary “The Silence of Others" about the forgotten victims of Franco's fascist dictatorship in Spain brings much-needed attention to the right to the truth.

From October 1 to October 5, 2018, ICTJ hosted its eleventh intensive course on transitional justice in collaboration with the International Peace Center for in Barcelona. Participants included leaders in their respective fields, including human rights law, community justice and legal services, peacebuilding, education, and humanitarian affairs.