Resource Library

This study explores specialized units established in 23 countries to investigate and prosecute serious international crimes.

Enforced disappearance and arbitrary detention devastate victims and all those who love them.

This study explores a transitional justice approach to the dilemma of foreign fighters in violent conflict.

The global COVID-19 pandemic forced many countries to impose emergency measures, such as curfews and community lockdowns, to stem the spread of the virus.

This study examines how transitional justice measures in Morocco have helped prevent state violence repression and social and economic exclusion.

This report summarizes the findings of an ICTJ research project on the contribution of transitional justice to prevention.

Because transitional justice processes are complex, politically contested, and not necessarily linear, they present unique theoretical and practical challenges for measuring their results.

Lebanon has long been afflicted by a combination of political deadlock and a lack of accountability that has resulted in ongoing human rights violations and overall systemic rot.

Invoking the principle of universal jurisdiction opens the door to the possibility of some accountability in circumstances where justice is not possible in countries where the crimes took place.

On March 2 and 3, 2020, transitional justice and anti-corruption policymakers, experts, and activists from the Gambia, Kenya, South Africa, Armenia, and Tunisia met in Tunis for a two-day conferen

In most cases, to be imprisoned in Syria is to disappear. Tens of thousands of people, if not more, have been unlawfully taken prisoner or held incommunicado in the context of the Syrian conflict.

Building on its work in Tunisia since 2012, ICTJ met with representatives of youth-led civil society organizations and social movements and state institutions involved in pursuing accountability f

This guide is designed to engage young people who are interested in or are working on transitional justice issues in their communities.

In February 2019, ICTJ hosted an international symposium on gender and transitional justice in Tunisia that brought together representatives from eight countries where ICTJ has been actively engag

This briefing paper presents findings from a study based on interviews with 121 Syrian refugees living in Jordan.

This report presents findings from a study based on interviews with 121 Syrian refugees living in Jordan.

This report aims to help practitioners in the transitional justice field to understand the experience of establishing and operating hybrid courts and to address some common assumptions about these

This report focuses on “indirect victims” of human rights violations in Tunisia, namely, the wives, sisters, and children of political prisoners in Tunisia, who suffered discrimination, social exc

This report examines attacks on schools in Syria from multiple angles: from the legal implications of such attacks to the everyday impact on students, teachers, families, and society at large.

By looking at the documentation efforts of Syrian civil society organizations, this paper challenges the notion that criminal prosecution is the sole avenue of justice available for alleged crimes

This briefing paper focuses on the role of victims of human rights violations in criminal proceedings.

Pursuing justice in a transitional context may take the form of multiple measures and goes beyond the pursuit of criminal prosecutions.

In some contexts, the global community has resorted to international tribunals to prosecute the most serious past crimes, such as war crimes, crimes against of humanity, and genocide. While these inte

Although youth are key political and social stakeholders who have much to contribute to—and gain from—transitional justice processes, they often remain marginalized from such processes or are given on

These are especially challenging times for those of us who work to assist societies in dealing with a legacy of atrocities and massive human rights violations.

As human rights advocates and state representatives increasingly acknowledge the necessity of involving children in truth-seeking processes, there is a growing need for practical tools that facilitate

In a number of countries around the world, governments have created state-administered reparations programs for victims and communities that were most affected by massive human rights violations.

Lebanon’s civil war continues to impact the Lebanese people, both those who lived through the war and those born after it.

The term reconciliation has long been associated with the field of transitional justice and is often presumed to be one of its goals.

Discussions about a future return of refugees and coexistence among groups currently at war in Syria must begin now, even in the face of ongoing violence and displacement.

This report presents the main findings of a multiyear research project conducted by the International Center for Transitional Justice on the challenges and opportunities of responding to serious and m

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?

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

In transitional contexts, reporting does not simply present the facts, but instead shapes the parameters for interpreting divisive political issues.

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?

As the refugee crisis deepens, does action on transitional justice issues have to wait for peace?

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. ...

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 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 di...

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 violat...

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, to...

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, narr...

This briefing paper focuses on establishing a credible approach to accountability and human rights in a post-conflict Syria.

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 viol...

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,

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 Ea...

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 refugees ...

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 is...

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 displac...

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 violation