Resource Library

Transitions focuses on unrest in Middle East and North Africa.. Hanny Megally, ICTJ Vice President for Programs, talks about demonstrations and upheaval in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere.

In August 2006 the United Nations Security Council mandated the establishment of the Serious Crimes Investigation Team (SCIT) as an extension of the previous “serious crimes” process, under the UN Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT). Early in 2008, the team began assisting the c...

Providing the Minister for Social Solidarity with the unfettered discretion to dismiss and appoint members of the institute’s Governing Board renders the institute vulnerable to politicization and undermines the institute’s ‘technical, administrative and financial autonomy.

Timor-Leste has implemented a number of transitional justice mechanisms to address the legacy of human rights violations that occurred in relation to the 1975 Timorese civil war and 24-year Indonesian occupation.These mechanisms have failed to provide victims with meaningful reparatio...

The Documentation Affinity Group (DAG) was established in 2005 by ICTJ and five partner organizations as a peer-to-peer network with a primary focus on human rights documentation. Documenting Truth collects the best practices derived from the work of the DAG organizations in Cambodia,...

A wide array of international donors are working with Timor-Leste to help support reform in the security sector. While many of these programmes have had a positive impact, donor-driven security reform agendas have been under-coordinated. Fortunately, this is beginning to change, as ...

This update covers the first, complainant phase of the Anfal trial, which lasted for twenty-three sessions from August 21 to November 27, 2006. Seventy-six complainants presented testimony regarding their experiences during the Anfal campaign. Information is taken directly from obser...

As the first truth commission in the region, Morocco’s Equity and Reconciliation Commission sought to address the legacy of more than 40 years of repression and human rights violations known as the “Years of Lead.” The commission was part of a gradual process of dealing with the past,...

While not seen as sufficient in and of themselves as a means of reparation, the concept of “collective reparations” has been one of the ways in which reparation advocates have respond to practical challenges and to the overall complexity of responding to massive violations of human...

In July 2008 the Timorese-Indonesian Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF) submitted its final report on atrocities committed in East Timor in 1999. Previously the CTF had been criticized by human rights groups, especially in relation to its power to recommend amnesties and its con...

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon is an internationalized court that will sit in the Netherlands and seek accountability for a specific set of crimes in Lebanon. It remains to be seen whether or how the Tribunal might contribute toward accountability in Lebanon, but it is clear from ex...

Indonesia and Timor-Leste created the Commission for Truth and Friendship (CTF) bilaterally in 2005. The commission has not yet delivered substantive transitional-justice benefits, and its public hearings have seriously compromised the goals of truth and resconciliation. This report i...

On January 12, 2008, the Iraqi parliament passed the “Law of the Supreme National Commission for Accountability and Justice.” The new law replaces the earlier framework governing Iraq’s De-Ba’athification policies. This document is intended to provide a short summary and preliminary a...

In August 2006 the Security Council created the UN Serious Crimes Investigation Team, as an extension of the previous investigation under the UN Integrated Mission Timor-Leste.

This report is based on data obtained from extensive interviews and focus group discussions conducted in July and August 2003 with representatives from a broad cross-section of the Iraqi population. The report’s conclusions and recommendations are divided into seven main areas: past h...

ICTJ’s Middle East and North Africa Program, in partnership with the Arab Institute for Human Rights, the Tunisian League for Human Rights, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, convened an international conference entitled “Addressing the Past, Building the Future...

This paper evaluates the Dujail trial, the first of fourteen trials in Iraq against persons accused of crimes against humanity. Although the trial was potentially a new attempt at Iraqi justice, it fell short in many ways. Ultimately, it was rendered ineffective due to political inter...

This report provides an update on the developments in the Anfal trial before the Iraqi High Tribunal, including the trial of Saddam Hussein, his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, and five other co-defendants. This update focuses on the prosecution witness and documentary evidence phases of ...

This article examines and evaluates the Iraq Tribunal's Dujail Trial. The trial marks the beginning of a longer accountability process in the country and can potentially make a lasting contribution to transitional justice. This study assesses the fairness and effectiveness of the tria...

This update series summarizes developments in the Anfal trial of Saddam Hussein, his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, and five other co-defendants before the Iraqi High Tribunal. It covers the trial's defense and closing phases. Five of the six defendants were sentenced to either multiple ...

This paper summarizes the basic facts about the Dujail trial, the first trial before the Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT) against Saddam Hussein and seven others. It also summarizes facts about the IHT in general. It considers both what the Iraqis wanted out of the trial, what such prosecuti...

This paper discusses the significance of the trials of Saddam Hussein and his close associates held by the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal. It examines the challenges faced by the Tribunal - including concerns that the process was dominated by the U.S. government (hence undermining t...

This report traces the human rights abuses under King Hassan II—including arbitrary arrest, torture, and disappearance—that led to the development of the Moroccan Equity and Reconciliation Commission (Instance Équité et Réconciliation (IER)). It provides both a historical reference an...

This paper considers the UN-sponsored regime established to respond to the crimes committed in East Timor during the Indonesian occupation between 1975 and 1999. The story of the quest for justice in East Timor perhaps can be summed up as one involving good intentions that were not ba...

This report examines community expectations and experiences of Timor-Leste’s unique transition from occupation to independence. It documents the results of focus group discussions on an array topcis including violence and conflict, truth recovery, justice, accountability, reconciliat...

This paper analyzes the serious crimes process the UN established in Timor-Leste to try serious violations of human rights perpetrated in 1999. The main difficulty facing this process is that the vast majority of suspects are in Indonesia, and the Timorese government has not been able...

This report describes the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal. It discusses the court's establishment and organization, jurisdiction, individual criminal responsibility, rules of procedure and evidence, and general principles of criminal law. It examines, in depth, the guidelines and fram...

This paper analyzes the Maubuti case in Timor-Leste, the third serious crimes case to be brought to trial after the closure of the UN-supported Serious Crimes Unit in 2005. Maubuti was indicted for crimes against humanity including murder, attempted murder, and rape. The decision and ...

Established in 2004, Morocco’s Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER: l’Instance équité et réconciliation) was one of the first attempts made in the Arab world to address human rights violations perpetrated in the post-independence period. It also aimed to include female victims o...

In collaboration with the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement, ICTJ’s Research Unit examined how transitional justice can be used to address the range of injustices associated with displacement and thereby serve as part of a comprehensive approach to the resolution of displ...

In 2006, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) launched an unprecedented effort to document the violations of international humanitarian law in Afghanistan between 1978 and 2001. Though it has not yet been made public, the 1000-page AIHRC Conflict Mapping Report ...

The 2006 crisis in Timor-Leste saw close to 15 percent of the population displaced from their homes, threatening to sink the country into protracted instability and violence. Remarkably, five years later the country was back on track, with the internal displacement issue largely reso...

This paper considers the efforts of Timor-Leste’s Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation to address the forced displacement that occurred during the period of Indonesian occupation and in the post-Popular Consultation violence of 1999. It examines linkages between the wor...

The protracted displacement of Palestinian refugees presents a complex set of challenges for the international refugee, humanitarian, and transitional justice fields. For the most part, these global movements have treated the Palestinian situation as a case apart: Palestinian refugee...

Based on significant field research and interviews with the Higher National de-Baathification Commission, this report focuses on Iraq’s purge of members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, which is the most well-known example of large-scale and politically based dismissals in the Middle ...

This publication provides an overview of the essential best practices guiding the main aspects of a truth commission, answering basic questions relating to its goals, powers, operations, framework, protections for commissioners and witnesses, and reporting. Its intention is to provide...

This report compiles information on hundreds of incidents of serious human rights violations that occurred in Lebanon from 1975 to 2008, including mass killings, enforced disappearances, assassinations, forced displacement, and the shelling of civilian areas. It reveals patterns of vi...

This briefing paper focuses on establishing a credible approach to accountability and human rights in a post-conflict Syria. Looking ahead to an eventual resolution to the war, it recognizes that Syrian authorities and civil society, as well as the international community, will have t...

This report examines the situation of impunity in Lebanon that has persisted since the 1975-1990 war through the lenses of core elements of transitional justice. It analyzes Lebanon’s past experience of ineffective transitional justice measures -- including limited domestic trials, na...

This report presents qualitative data collected by ICTJ on how individuals in Greater Beirut talk about the Lebanon wars and the need for truth, justice, and an end to violence in their country. For the study, 15 focus group discussions were held in 5 neighborhoods in Greater Beirut, ...

This document presents wide-ranging recommendations for political and social reforms in Lebanon developed by a consortium of Lebanese civil society actors, as part of an ICTJ project. Directed at Lebanese authorities, the recommendations address the well-documented and widespread viol...

This report examines the impact on women of enforced disappearances committed during Lebanon’s civil war, focusing in particular on the effects on wives of the missing or disappeared—and their children. The research is based on interviews conducted by ICTJ with 23 wives of missing or ...

This briefing paper details and analyzes the progress made so far in Tunisia to implement its historic Transitional Justice Law, with a particular focus on the Truth and Dignity Commission, created one year ago.

This study provides expert financial and operational analysis and information to help facilitate the establishment of an Independent National Commission for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared in Lebanon, as envisaged in a draft consolidated bill now before the Lebanese Parliament. ...

As the refugee crisis deepens, does action on transitional justice issues have to wait for peace? A new paper explores what sort of consultation and documentation work can be done now, while conflict is ongoing, to shape outcomes moving forward.

Where should justice for some of the world’s worst crimes be done? In national courts or at the International Criminal Court in The Hague? Our Handbook on Complementarity explores those questions, laying out the interconnected relationship between the ICC and national court systems in...

In transitional contexts, reporting does not simply present the facts, but instead shapes the parameters for interpreting divisive political issues. Coverage in such polarized contexts can mitigate or obscure the substance of transitional justice efforts to establish what happened, wh...

Sexual violence against men and boys in times of conflict or repression is alarmingly common— and takes a markedly consistent form across contexts in terms of how it affects victims and societies as a human rights violation that is taboo to talk about. It has been committed in all cul...

What hope is there for justice for victims of atrocities in profoundly fractured societies, where systems of government have broken down and social and political divisions run deep? What is the role of transitional justice in forging peace in countries like Colombia, after decades of ...