52 results

Gearing Up the Fight Against Impunity: Dedicated Investigative and Prosecutorial Capacities

This study explores specialized units established in 23 countries to investigate and prosecute serious international crimes. Notwithstanding the challenges faced by these units, the study concludes that countries with a specialized institutional approach are considerably more successf...

several judges dressed in black gowns sit on a judicial bench.
Report

Soft Vengeance: An Interview with South Africa’s Albie Sachs

ICTJ Vice President Paul Seils interviewed South African judge and human rights activist Albie Sachs.

05/03/24
Videos

The Movement of Latin American Hip Hop Expressions and ICTJ Cohost an International Hip Hop Festival on Truth, Memory, and Resistance

Bogotá, November 20, 2020— ICTJ and the Movement of Latin American Hip Hop Expressions have joined forces to cohost the third International Hip Hop Encounter, which will take place virtually this week from November 25 to November 28. The four-day online event will bring together artists and musicians from across Latin America and Africa along with activists, social leaders, and civil society representatives. The festival’s theme is the role of hip hop music and culture in uncovering truth, preserving memory, and resisting violence and oppression.

11/23/20
Press Releases

Special Report on COVID-19: Keeping Justice in Sight

Sparing almost no corner of the world from its wrath, the COVID-19 pandemic has now spread to every country. In an effort to slow the contagion, governments in most countries have been taking drastic measures requiring all residents other than essential workers to confine themselves in their homes, and shutting down vast sectors of their economies. The impact has been crushing. COVID-19 has profoundly affected every country where ICTJ currently works: Armenia, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gambia, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Uganda. We recently caught up with ICTJ’s heads of country programs to learn more about the impact the pandemic is having on transitional justice and society more broadly.

05/19/20
In Focus

A Historic Opportunity for Peace, Democracy, and Justice in Sudan

After decades of repressive rules, military coups, and conflicts in the country’s marginalized peripheries, the Sudanese people have come together and proven their resolve to break with the past and begin a new chapter of their nation’s history. Undeterred by a brutal crackdown, thousands of...

08/30/19

by

Fernando Travesí

World Report

UN Special Rapporteur on Transitional Justice Discusses New Mandate with ICTJ

ICTJ was pleased to host the newly elected United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparations, and guarantees of non-recurrence, Fabian Salvioli (Argentina), at its New York office, where he discussed his vision and priorities.

06/26/18
Press Releases

To Prevent Enforced Disappearances, Rethink the Justice and Security Equation

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.

08/30/17
In Focus

The Bumpy Road to Peace and Accountability: Transitional Justice in the African Great Lakes Region

In Africa's Great Lakes region, countries face common challenges like bad governance, inequitable distribution of natural resources, and ethnic divisions. As nations like Burundi, Central African Republic and South Sudan work towards peacebuilding and accountability, they should learn from what has worked and what has not in neighboring countries, writes Sarah Kihika Kasande, ICTJ's Head of Office in Uganda.

04/24/17
In Focus

Activists: Strong Civil Society is Key to Hopes of Stability in Africa’s Great Lakes

A new ICTJ report argues that in Africa's interconnected Great Lakes region, each country’s attempt to provide justice for past violations offers lessons for similar processes in others. We gathered civil society activists from across the region to discuss which strategies have worked for them, which have not, and opened up about the greatest challenges they face in securing justice.

03/29/17
In Focus

Victims Fighting Impunity Transitional Justice in the African Great Lakes Region

In many countries of the African Great Lakes region, state-led approaches to transitional justice have been created by wide-ranging agreements or policies that have been later forgotten or only partially implemented. Even when implemented, they are often subject to years of delay and/...

by

Aileen Thomson and Kasande Sarah Kihika

Report

AU Strategy for Collective Withdrawal from the ICC a Non-Starter

The Africa Union's resolution to collectively support a strategy to withdraw from the ICC looks more like a machination of those who have instrumentalized an argument against the court to protect themselves from the long arm of justice, write ICTJ's top experts on Africa.

02/16/17
In Focus

South Africa's Obligations to the ICC Persist

South African authorities apparently believe that once the country has officially withdrawn from the ICC, it will be free to invite the likes of Sudanese President al-Bashir to the country. That's not so, writes ICTJ's Howard Varney, who explains why the country's obligations would continue beyond its departure from the court.

12/12/16
In Focus

Contested Transitions: Dilemmas of Transitional Justice in Colombia and Comparative Experience

This volume examines the effects, risks, and potential of extending the field of transitional justice to cases that do not present a key moment of political transition to peace or democracy and instead are defined by political continuity and ongoing conflict. It begins with analyses o...

by

Amanda Lyons and Michael Reed

Unpacking the Nuances of Complementarity

The struggle against impunity remains as important –and precarious –as ever as we celebrate International Justice Day on July 17. ICTJ marks the occasion with a look at complementarity, a concept critical to understanding the role that the ICC and national courts play in this struggle.

07/12/16
In Focus

Survivors Speak: Book Launch and Workshop on Women and Girls in Conflict

Evelyn Amony tells the harrowing story of her years in captivity with the LRA, and experience of grinding poverty and stigma after returning home with two children, in her new memoir, I Am Evelyn Amony: Reclaiming my Life from the Lord's Resistance Army . The autobiography, which tells the difficult truths of women and girls in wartime as only a firsthand witness can, will be launched today in New York, at the Japan Society.

06/15/16
Press Releases

ICTJ Conference Explores Efforts at Redress, Accountability and Reform in African Great Lakes Region

Today, ICTJ opened a two-day conference in Kampala, Uganda, gathering activists and officials from the African Great Lakes Region to discuss efforts at redress and accountability for serious human rights violations committed in their countries.

05/17/16
Press Releases

ICTJ Partners Victims, Civil Society and Officials on Transitional Justice in Great Lakes Region

Civil society leaders, members of victims' groups and state officials throughout the Great Lakes region will convene in Kampala, Uganda next week at a conference hosted by ICTJ. Attendees will share their experiences working for redress in their communities and discuss what strategies have proven effective at the local level.

05/12/16
In Focus

ICTJ and Other Organizations Call Upon Uganda to Arrest ICC Fugitive Bashir As He Attends Inauguration

Human Rights Network-Uganda (HURINET-U), The Uganda Coalition on the International Criminal Court (UCICC), The International Center for Transitional Justice, Avocats San Frontiers and Atrocities Watch are dismayed to learn that Government of Uganda has extended an invitation to President Omar al...

05/12/16
Press Releases

ICTJ Welcomes the Historic Final Report from Brazil’s National Truth Commission

ICTJ welcomes the release of the final report of Brazil’s National Truth Commission after two and a half years of work to unveil the truth about serious human rights violations that took place in the country between 1946 and 1988, especially during the military dictatorship of 1964 to 1985. The final report is a historic contribution to truth and justice in a country where serious crimes have remained unaddressed for decades and calls on the Brazilian judiciary to disregard the Amnesty Law and act in cases of crimes against humanity.

12/10/14
Press Releases

On the Front Lines of Justice: The Struggle for Accountability in National Contexts

On International Criminal Justice Day, 2014, ICTJ joins the global celebrations marking the groundbreaking establishment of the Rome Statute in 1998, which created the International Criminal Court (ICC). To mark the day, we review five contexts where national systems proved it was possible to bring perpetrators to justice where it matters the most.

07/15/14
In Focus

Enforced Disappearances: Justice for the Disappeared Has a Woman’s Face

Enforced disappearances are among the cruelest of crimes. To the kidnapping, torture, and in many cases, murder of the victim, perpetrators intentionally create fear and uncertainty about the fate of the missing person. Although men are predominantly targeted, the impact on women is severe and lasting.

08/30/13
In Focus

New Online Archive Hosts Secrets of Brazil’s Dictatorship

Human rights organizations in Brazil have created an online platform Brasil Nunca Mais Digital to preserve evidence and other documents related to more than 7,000 political prisoners tried before Brazil’s Military Supreme Court, during that country’s military dictatorship.

08/13/13
In Focus

ICTJ Program Report: Reparative Justice

Reparations seek to recognize and address the harms suffered by victims of systematic human rights violations. ICTJ’s Reparative Justice program provides knowledge and comparative experience on reparations to victims' groups, civil society and policymakers worldwide. In this edition of the ICTJ Program Report, we look at ICTJ's work on reparations in dynamic transitional contexts such as Nepal, Colombia, Peru, DRC, and Uganda.

05/13/13
In Focus

As Brazil’s Amnesty Law is Challenged, Accountability for Crimes of the Past at Stake

In this episode of ICTJ’s podcast, São Paulo-based prosecutor Marlon Weichert provides an overview of how Brazil is dealing with the crimes of the past, through both criminal trials and a truth commission. [Download](/sites/default/files/ICTJ-Podcast-Brazil-Weichert-4-1-13.mp3) | Duration: 15:28 mins | File size: 10,870 KB

04/01/13
Podcasts

Building Democracies on a Foundation of Truth

This opinion piece by Eduardo González, director of the Truth and Memory program at ICTJ, asks: can you build a solid, legitimate democracy on the sands of silence, or does truth provide a more trustful foundation?

03/26/13
In Focus