Resource Library

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.

This is the second of our Stories of Change series; in it, Tarek al-Massri, an 18-year-old from Homs now living in Germany, knows all too well the horrors of the Syrian conflict and its devastating impact on schools.

For many victims of human rights violations and international crimes around the world, the prospects of holding perpetrators to account, especially high-level individuals, have long seemed farfetched, given current political and legal hurdles and the limitations of international criminal justice mechanisms. For this reason, the multiple ongoing investigations into international crimes committed in Syria and court cases against suspected perpetrators based on the principle of universal jurisdiction across Europe have offered a ray of hope in an otherwise bleak justice landscape.

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.

Transitional justice practitioners and activists from 18 different countries gathered in Barcelona to attend the 6th Intensive Course on Truth Commissions, organized by the ICTJ and the Barcelona International Peace Resource Center on September 29 - October 3.

Dating back to the 1980s, when peace settlements were made across Latin America, truth commissions have become an important component of peace negotiations. In this opinion piece, ICTJ President David Tolbert calls for societies to give truth commissions a chance of fulfilling their potential by learning from their failures and success.

A new report on attacks on schools in Syria harnesses documentation to call attention to atrocities and advance storytelling, truth seeking, acknowledgment. It is the product of Save Syrian Schools, a collaborative project led by 10 Syrian civil society organizations and the ICTJ that demands an end to the killing of Syrian children and justice for the bombing of schools.

It may seem trivial for me to write about why those who continue to mark July 17 as "International Justice Day" should finally stop calling it that. Many human rights groups (including ICTJ), United Nations agencies, and governments have been publicly using that phrase since 2010. It is for victims of massive and systematic human rights violations, including abuses that amount to international crimes under the Rome Statute, that it is important to end the misconception that the phrase encourages.

As attested by the arrest on January 3, 2013 in the United Kingdom of Kumar Lama, a Nepali Army Colonel suspected of torture, the government of Nepal’s failure to pursue truth and accountability for conflict-era violations can have serious consequences. Rather than resisting UK efforts to implement its obligations under international law, the Nepali government should develop a full transitional justice programme and redouble its efforts to provide truth, justice and reparations inside the country.

Enforced disappearances are among the cruelest of crimes. To the kidnapping, torture, and in many cases, murder of the victim, perpetrators intentionally create fear and uncertainty about the fate of the missing person. Although men are predominantly targeted, the impact on women is severe and lasting.

On International Children’s Day, ICTJ reaffirms the importance of an active role of children and youth in transitional justice processes, such as truth-seeking, criminal accountability, and reparations programs. In the aftermath of societal upheaval, the voices of children and youth are often absent from peace negotiations and subsequent transitional processes. Though children and youth must be able to receive adequate care and necessary rehabilitation, they must not be regarded only as victims of massive human rights abuses: they are rights-bearing members of a society trying to confront the past, and active participants in the process of social change aiming for a new future. It is in the best interest of children and youth, as well as the societies in which they live, to participate in transitional justice processes, devised to reestablish rule of law and civic trust in the societies to which they belong.

Victims in Nepal have been calling on the government for public consultation to ensure wider discussion, a process that would allow them to share their expectations, help them to comprehend the dense language of the proposed amendments and its many gaps. They needed to understand the dubious phrasing especially on issues of criminal accountability that created suspicion, instead of trust and legitimacy in the process.

On September 15, ICTJ organized a side event on the missing and disappeared in Syria, sponsored by the governments of Luxembourg and Finland, during the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly. The event was a timely one, as it addressed a recent proposal for the creation of a new...

Five years since the end of Nepal's brutal civil war, victims are losing patience waiting for truth, justice, and reparation. Last year ICTJ completed a six month research project to analyze the effects of the the government's Interim Relief Program and determine the steps still required for Nepal to fulfill its obligation to provide reparations to victims. The findings have been published in a report titled “ From Relief to Reparations: Listening to the Voices of Victims.”

From Syria to Colombia and beyond, how do societies navigate the pursuit of justice in peace processes? That question animated ICTJ’s annual Intensive Course on Transitional Justice and Peace Processes, which this month gathered 31 participants from nearly 20 countries in Barcelona to discuss the place of justice in negotiations to end conflict. Go behind-the-scenes with our instructors and participants.

Can truth commissions help secure a just peace following a violent conflict in which massive human rights abuses are committed? In this special series of the ICTJ Forum, we present a series of conversations with some of the world’s top peace mediators and truth commission experts, whose collective experience include years on the front lines of critical peace agreements in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

As part of its ongoing efforts to support Syrian civil society organizations seeking to end enforced disappearances in Syria, ICTJ organized a visit to the United States for members of two prominent family associations: Families for Freedom and the Caesar Families Association. The trip, which was planned in coordination with longtime partner Dawlaty, comes at a time when Syrian civil society and victims’ groups have been intensifying their calls for an international mechanism to uncover the fate of those who have gone missing in Syria since the start of the uprising in March 2011.

In this edition of ICTJ's Program report, Kelli Muddell, director of ICTJ's Gender Justice program, reflects on ICTJ’s vision of gender justice, the challenges facing survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in times of transition, and how ICTJ is working to address inequality in countries like Colombia, Nepal, and Tunisia.

During Nepal's armed conflict, more than 13,000 people were killed and 1,300 forcibly disappeared. Today, a new government has voted to create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as a Commission of Inquiry on the Disappearance of Persons. Many victims have protested the flaws in the proposals; meanwhile, no comprehensive reparations have been provided for those left most vulnerable by conflict. In this interview with ICTJ's Santosh Sigdel, we discuss developments related to ICTJ's work in Nepal.

Reparations seek to recognize and address the harms suffered by victims of systematic human rights violations. ICTJ’s Reparative Justice program provides knowledge and comparative experience on reparations to victims' groups, civil society and policymakers worldwide. In this edition of the ICTJ Program Report, we look at ICTJ's work on reparations in dynamic transitional contexts such as Nepal, Colombia, Peru, DRC, and Uganda.

In this edition of the ICTJ Program Report, ICTJ Senior Associate Felix Reátegui discusses the principles behind the Truth and Memory program, and explains the imperatives of uncovering, acknowledging, and memorializing the past.

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.

Seven and a half years after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, Nepal's Parliament voted to establish the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and a Commission of Investigation on Disappeared Persons. In this op-ed, ICTJ's Eduardo González Cueva explains why many victims have rejected the bill.

Jaya Luintel was a radio reporter in Nepal during the country's civil war, covering the conflict's impact on women. Now, she's helping female victims produce and broadcast their own stories to a national audience. Discover how her organization, The Story Kitchen, empowers women in Nepal.

In the brutality of armed conflict or tyranny of a repressive regime, many who go missing are never found again: whether “disappeared” by agents of the state or abducted by an armed faction, the whereabouts of thousands are still unknown to this day. On this International Day of the Disappeared, ICTJ recognizes that enforced disappearances constitute crimes against humanity, and they affect women in ways unique from the impact on men.