Resource Library

As part of its mandate, Colombia's Commission for the Clarification of Truth carried out 68 processes of acknowledgment led or supported by a specialized team. These processes sought to acknowledge victims and the harms they suffered, as well as individual or collective responsibiliti...

What does the obligation to provide reparations mean when serious human rights violations are at issue? This report explores the evolving interpretation of the right to reparation in international law and jurisprudence and how domestic courts have provided judicial reparations at the ...

This comparative study examines strategies used by local actors to help operationalize reparations for victims of widespread human rights violations, while highlighting the synergies between these efforts and sustainable development. It is based on the fieldwork of ICTJ and its partne...

This study presents reflections on the peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia between 2003 and 2006. It seeks to contribute to strategies for negotiating with or subduing illegal armed groups, as well as for the general pursu...

This report presents the findings from research on the needs and expectations of women survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Nepal. Based on in-depth interviews, it explores what happened to these survivors during the country’s decade-long war (1996-2006), what they need no...

ICTJ is more than two decades old. At the time it was established, many of those who contributed to transitions in Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, South Africa, and the former Yugoslavia saw the value of a specialized organization that could draw from diverse national experiences to prov...

George Floyd’s death reignited existing anger over American society’s deep and festering racial wounds. His death triggered significant social uprisings that have challenged the methods of policing that have emerged over the course of several decades. With a growing awareness of polic...

At a time when truth-seeking and reparations initiatives are taking hold across the United States, this report offers reflections from various civil society-led truth-seeking processes. Drawing on case studies from the United States, Colombia, Scotland, and West Papua, the report iden...

This study explores a transitional justice approach to the dilemma of foreign fighters in violent conflict. Such an approach can help center human rights in comprehensive responses to foreign fighters, and shift the current focus from security and punishment to justice and long-term p...

This report examines the contribution of transitional justice to prevention in the Philippines, as well as the limits of this contribution due to the failure to comprehensively address and learn from the past and undertake structural changes. While reparations, truth telling, and inst...

This report examines the preventive impact of transitional justice mechanisms in Colombia before the 2016 peace agreement. It finds that these measures have contributed to prevention by strengthening institutional responses to rights violations, shaping the public agenda, developing a...

This report summarizes the findings of an ICTJ research project on the contribution of transitional justice to prevention. Drawing from five country case studies, it contends that addressing the past can help to prevent the recurrence not only of human rights violations but also viole...

Because transitional justice processes are complex, politically contested, and not necessarily linear, they present unique theoretical and practical challenges for measuring their results. This report seeks to improve monitoring and evaluation practices and support evidence-based proc...

Colombia's Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP) aims to achieve criminal accountability through a mixed system of restorative and retributive justice. Generally speaking, the SJP envisions large-scale restorative justice measures involving public acknowledgments of responsibility, as ...

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 entities. To do so, it looks at hybrid or mixed courts in practice, drawing on experienc...

This report aims to help local governments, victims’ groups, and other stakeholders in Nepal to understand the scope of and potential inherent in local governmental powers and to identify what local governments can do to design and implement initiatives that support victims of conflic...

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. Violent armed conflicts have increased in number, duration, and ferocity around the globe. Immense displacement and waves of ...

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. The success of these programs, which often involve thousands of individuals, depends in p...

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 massive human rights violations in different contexts. The project commissioned 21 stu...

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...

This manual was created as part of the Framework Cooperation Agreement between the International Center for Transitional Justice and the Attorney General’s Office, with the aim of providing technical assistance to the National Unit for Analysis and Context (UNAC) and supporting the de...

This report examines Colombia’s Victims and Land Restitution Law (2011), which provides comprehensive reparations to conflict victims and restitution to victims of forced displacement who rely on land for their livelihoods – and assesses the challenges of implementing the law under cu...

Annex to the publication, "'To Walk Freely with a Wide Heart' -A Study of the Needs and Aspirations for Reparative Justice of Victims of Conflict-Related Abuses in Nepal." (Nepali)

Annex to the publication, "'To Walk Freely with a Wide Heart' -A Study of the Needs and Aspirations for Reparative Justice of Victims of Conflict-Related Abuses in Nepal."

This report presents the findings of an in-depth survey of more than 400 conflict victims in 10 districts of Nepal, researching their immediate and long-term needs and aspirations. Participants included those who had received benefits through the government’s Interim Relief Program an...

This report asserts that dealing with past abuses in Myanmar is essential to achieving genuine progress on peacebuilding and economic development in the country. Conflict and high levels of political repression have racked Myanmar for more than half a century. Both President Thein Sei...

More than fifty years of conflict in Colombia have left hundreds of thousands of victims of multiple forms of violence, such as forced disappearance, murder, extra-judicial executions, kidnappings, torture and various forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including rape.

This joint report by ICTJ and the Kofi Annan Foundation explores common assumptions about why truth commissions are created in the wake of armed conflict and what factors make them more likely to succeed – or fail. It arises from a high-level symposium hosted by the two organizations ...

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...

The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with support from the Governments of Denmark and South Africa, and in close consultation with the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute (ASP), held a...

The report examines the measures taken in Nepal to redress victims following the 2006 peace agreement, which formally ended the ten-year civil war between the government and Maoist rebels. It looks closely at the Interim Relief Program (IRP) — a compensation scheme instituted in 2008 ...

This joint report by ICTJ and the Institute for Human Rights Study and Advocacy (ELSHAM-Papua) provides important insight into the ongoing debate on steps required to achieve a sustainable peace in Papua. The report reviews Papua's recent history within a transitional justice framewor...

Indigenous peoples are among those most affected by contemporary conflict. The resource-rich territories they occupy are coveted by powerful, often violent groups. Their identity is perceived with mistrust, sometimes with hate. Indigenous communities live at a precarious intersection ...

“We women of Papua have been bruised, cornered, besieged from all directions. We are not safe at home, and even less so outside the home. The burden we bear to feed our children is too heavy. The history of the Papuan people is covered in blood, and women are no exception as victims o...

“Through a New Lens: A Child-Sensitive Approach to Transitional Justice” analyzes experiences of four countries—Liberia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Colombia and Nepal—and identifies some key lessons on children’s participation in transitional justice measures. Authored by Céc...

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 outlines Indonesia's international law obligations to provide remedies to the "1965 victims" of General Soeharto's persecution and stigmatization of those affiliated with the Indonesia Communist Party. It traces the history of this persecution, provides an overview of curr...

This article focuses on the results of an ICTJ nation-wide survey: Colombian Perceptions and Opinions on Justice, Truth, Reparations, and Reconciliation. Colombians expressed a strong demand for accountability and reparations and low support for lenient sentences. ICTJ demands the Co...

A joint report released by the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) and KontraS (the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence) examines the variety of state-sponsored initiatives to address mass violations of human rights in Indonesia since the fall of So...

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.

The survey sought to ascertain the opinions and expectations of the victims and their families in Nepal on a range of transitional justice issues, such as human rights violations, truth-seeking, justice, accountability, reparations, and reconciliation.

This report arises out of a perceived opening or window of opportunity for transitional justice intervention around the specific gross human rights violation of enforced disappearances and abductions in Nepal. This issue connects powerfully to several dominant concerns within the tran...

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...

Despite considerable progress, rising tensions between and among various actors have illuminated the need to evaluate peace-building efforts from a transitional justice perspective. This report, based on research conducted by ICTJ and Acehnese civil society, aims to provide such an ev...

To date there has been limited judicial accountability for crimes committed by the Indonesian military forces in Aceh despite compelling evidence of their involvement in mass crimes. Commitments that were part of the 2005 Helsinki Memorandum of Understanding, to establish a truth and ...

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 military rulers of Burma (also known as Myanmar) convened a National Convention to draft a new constitution. After many delays, the convention completed the draft on September 3, 2007. An analysis of the constitution’s provisions suggests that instead of being a true catalyst for ...

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 ...

In April 2008 historic elections to Nepal’s Constituent Assembly led to a political watershed: former Maoist guerrillas surprised everyone by coming out ahead, suggesting that a new era had come to Nepal. In its first sitting, the Constituent Assembly declared Nepal a republic and bro...

Indonesia’s history is littered with episodes of mass violence, whether state-sponsored, communally driven or separatist in nature. But in recent times the Indonesian government has successfully negotiated several peace agreements and brought about an end to mass human rights violatio...