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On February 8, ICTJ held an event in The Hague on the missing and disappeared in Syria, in partnership with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The event brought together activists, journalists, artists, and policymakers to reflect on the critical humanitarian needs of victims and their families and the role of the newly established international body on the missing in Syria, which is mandated in part to address these needs.

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.

On October 25, the African Union (AU) and European Union officially launched their joint Initiative for Transitional Justice in Africa (ITJA) in Addis Ababa. The project will take place over a three-year period and will promote national transitional justice processes in Africa, in line with the AU Transitional Justice Policy and its roadmap. The ITJA has several unique features that, if embraced and advanced by all actors, have the potential to trailblaze a new and inspiring path to peace, justice, and sustainable development on the African continent.

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.

The photography exhibition “All Our Tears” weaves together the stories of victims from the wars in the Western Balkan region in the 1990s. It consists of photographs taken by four photographers in various locations in Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia, and was part of a three-year project funded by the European Union that brought together civil society organizations and victims’ groups in Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia, along with the international organizations ICTJ and PAX to develop meaningful, victim-led peacebuilding and reconciliation initiatives in the region.

On May 12, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers agreed to create a mechanism to receive claims for damages caused by the Russian crime of aggression in Ukraine. The new registry is intended to receive information on claims of damage, loss, or injury caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine since February 24, 2022 and assess their eligibility for future adjudication or compensation. Many of the register’s chief proponents are hailing its creation as a key step toward accountability for the many violations of international law that Russia has committed in or against Ukraine. However, the register alone will not be sufficient to address the multitude of harms caused by the war.

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.

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.

The role of victim participation in international criminal proceedings, whether in international, hybrid, or national courts, has long been a matter of public deliberation among criminal justice practitioners and human rights activists. In the aftermath of mass atrocities and repression, the...

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 the latest round of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, the Turkish president called on both delegations to act responsibly and agree to a ceasefire. He reminded them of their historical mission to achieve a "just peace." While we may not know how and when this conflict will end, we already know some of what Ukrainian society will be grappling with in the near future. Significant portions of country’s civilian infrastructure have been destroyed. More than 4 million Ukrainians are now refugees; another 10 million are internally displaced; and a rising but still undetermined number have been killed, are missing, or are wounded. The real question is what does a just peace mean for Ukrainians.

On Thursday, January 13, 2022, the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz, Germany, convicted Anwar Raslan, a senior official in the Syrian government, for crimes against humanity. The landmark trial, the first ever to prosecute a member of Bashar al-Assad’s regime for such crimes, highlights a crucial component without which Raslan would never have been convicted: the role of victims in achieving justice.

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.

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.

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.

In the wake of the mass demonstrations in the United States, activists in European cities similarly took the streets to protest against racism and police violence. In Belgium, mostly young activists have defaced statues of King Leopold II with red paint, insisting public spaces be "decolonized" that commemorate the monarch who personally owned the Congo for more than two decades before relinquishing it to the Belgian government which then controlled it for half a century. Are Belgian and other societies in Europe ready to reckon with the truth of their colonial legacies?

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.