Resource Library

The trend of missing and disappeared persons due to conflict remains more prevalent than ever today. Many governments around the world have remained undeterred in their abuse of power to invade a home or community and remove persons deemed to be a threat. This intractable problem has received global attention largely due to the efforts of family members who often risk their lives in pursuit of the right to know and ‍‍to bury their loved ones.

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.

We sat down with Roger Duthie, ICTJ’s senior research expert, to reflect on the findings from the new report, An Uncertain Homecoming: Views of Syrian Refugees in Jordan on Return, Justice, and Coexistence, and the prospects for Syrian refugees if and when the conflict ends.

From February 22 to March 1, ICTJ held its annual retreat in Litchfield Hills, Connecticut. Staff members convened at the Wisdom House—an interfaith conference center that seeks to provide an environment conducive to introspection and teambuilding.

Ever since the armed conflict in Lebanon broke out in the mid-1970s, the main demand of the families of the missing and disappeared has been to secure the right to know the truth and the right to an effective investigation, verification of facts, and public disclosure of what happened. These families persisted in their demands over the decades, against the odds and despite social, political, and cultural forces pushing for collective amnesia. Their perseverance, along with civil society’s invaluable efforts, shined a continuous light on the issue of the disappeared, igniting a public debate that parliamentarians could no longer ignore. Last month, they voted in favor of the Law for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared Persons in Lebanon.

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.

Life continues to stand still for the many families of the missing and disappeared in Lebanon. The Lebanese War ended 28 years ago, but for these families the war rages on. A recent legislative breakthrough, however, might finally pave the way for Lebanon to confront this legacy.

Nepal’s new local government structure – comprised of districts, municipalities, sub-municipalities, and wards formed within the new federal system under the 2015 Constitution – offers the possibility of some individualized redress for victims at the community-level. This article by Elena Naughton was published in the Kathmandu Post on May 6, 2018.

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.

With enforced disappearances on the rise, ICTJ President David Tolbert says the path to prevention is clear: the international community must reorder its priorities and change its approach. The disproportionate attention on counterterrorism takes us further away from accountability and prevention, Tolbert writes. He urges the international community to lead the way in unequivocally censoring governments that use enforced disappearance as a political tactic — and ensuring there can be no impunity for this crime.