Resource Library

The Special Court for Sierra Leone-which began with the hope that it would be accessible to millions of Sierra Leoneans- has fallen short of its domestic goals. The decision to try Taylor in The Hague, rather than in Freetown, and the lack of adequate outreach activities made the cour...

This paper compares and contrasts peace negotiations in Sierra Leone and Liberia. It delineates lessons in peacemaking that emerge from this comparison. These include: considering all policy options, taking a nation's recent history into account, reinterpreting and challenging questio...

This paper discusses the challenges encountered during efforts to pursue justice in a number of sub-Saharan African countries in transition, including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and South Africa. It presents a background and geneal...

This paper explores practical issues regarding the relationship between the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and Special Court (SC) in Sierra Leone. It looks at: 1) the legal relationship of the Commission and the Court; 2) the question of whether the TRC information should b...

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.

The term reconciliation has long been associated with the field of transitional justice and is often presumed to be one of its goals. At the same time, reconciliation has been both controversial and vague as a concept, giving rise to different understandings and approaches. This paper...

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 only a limited and predetermined space in which to engage. In recent years, the peacebu...

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 international efforts contributed significantly to international justice, they were resou...

Pursuing justice in a transitional context may take the form of multiple measures and goes beyond the pursuit of criminal prosecutions. Tunisia’s Basic Law on Transitional Law, adopted in December 2013, is a case in point. Despite its flaws, the the law introduced a fairly comprehensi...

This briefing paper focuses on the role of victims of human rights violations in criminal proceedings. This paper will provide examples of recent developments in the advancement of victim participation in criminal proceedings in international criminal law and domestic jurisdictions.  ...