Resource Library

The latest episode of ICTJ Forum features ICTJ's Marcie Mersky, who joins host and Communications Director Refik Hodzic for an in-depth analysis of news in Guatemala and Nepal, and looks ahead to the next year of transitional justice developments around the world.

In times of transition, reparations can make a tangible impact on the everyday lives of victims. As part of a larger process of social change, reparations programs should be part of an integrated approach to addressing the fundamental rights of victims, not just their immediate needs. In this way, reparations programs have the potential to be transformative. It was this potential that was considered at a recent international seminar, "Transformative Reparation for Women Victims of Armed Conflict," held in Colombia, on November 16, 2012.

Where states commit widespread and systematic crimes against their citizens, or fail to seriously try to prevent them, they have a legal obligation to acknowledge and address the suffering of victims. Reparations, both symbolic and material, publicly affirm that victims are entitled to redress. Through video and three photogalleries, ICTJ’s multimedia project Voices of Dignity tells the story of two courageous women from Colombia, and their struggle for acknowledgement and redress in a country where more than four million people have been affected by decades of civil war.

An end could be in sight for the longest-running armed conflict in the Western Hemisphere. Peace negotiations between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels have begun on 17 October in Oslo, Norway, and will continue in Havana, Cuba.

Six years after a peace agreement formally ended the conflict in Nepal, the slow, painstaking process of building the country’s new democracy has yet to provide comprehensive reparation to victims. To fully acknowledge the experience of victims of the conflict, Nepal’s government should not mistake the issuance of relief through material benefits for the implementation of a comprehensive reparation program. This is one of the central recommendations of "Relief, Reparations, and the Root Causes of Conflict in Nepal," a major new report from ICTJ, and authored by Ruben Carranza.

The latest ICTJ Program Report explores transitional justice issues in Colombia and charts our work in the country with the longest running armed conflict in the world. In this interview, head of ICTJ's Colombia office Maria Camila Moreno answers questions on the ongoing transitional justice mechanisms in the country, and describes ICTJ's work with the government and civil society groups on issues of criminal justice, reparations and memory. She provides a look ahead to the new peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC, and identifies key transitional justice issues at stake for the talks.

As the world marks August 30, the International Day of the Disappeared, we are reminded that forced disappearances and transitional justice share a common history. Indeed, processes working in concert that came to form the field of transitional justice were born from the search for truth and justice about the disappeared.

As Colombia marked International Justice Day, the importance of accountability for violations committed during the decades of conflict was underscored in the number of victims awaiting justice—376,000 registered in the Attorney General’s Office, more than 4 million in total. And while July 17 is celebrated as the date of adoption of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, it is clear that in countries like Colombia accountability extends beyond criminal trials.