Search

After periods of conflict and authoritarianism, education institutions often need to be reformed or rebuilt. But in settings where education has been used to support repressive policies and human rights violations, or where conflict and abuses have resulted in lost educational opportunities, legacies of injustice may pose significant challenges to effective reform. Peacebuilding and development perspectives, which normally drive the reconstruction agenda, pay little attention to the violent past.

Transitional justice processes have a fundamental public dimension: their impact depends in part on the social support they receive. Beyond outreach programs, other initiatives, such as media and cultural interventions, can strengthen—or in some cases undermine—the public resonance of transitional justice. How can media and art be used to engage society in discussions around accountability? How do media influence social perceptions and attitudes toward the legacy of the past?

There is widespread misunderstanding of transitional justice in Nepal, and relevant policy is often motivated by the interests of political leaders and other powerful actors, like the Nepal Army, with little regard for the rights and needs of victims. This report, a collaboration between ICTJ and the Nepali NGO Martin Chautari, aims to broaden the understanding and awareness of what truth in transitional justice in Nepal actually means for diverse sets of stakeholders.

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, based on interviews with refugees, makes it clear that the restoration of dignity will be important to creating the necessary conditions for return and peaceful coexistence — and building a stable post-war Syria one day.

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 presents possible understandings of the concept of reconciliation as well as its relationship to the field of transitional justice.

This paper explores the power of a transitional justice approach to education reconstruction in post-conflict settings. Its central question is how the aims of transitional justice can guide educational reform processes after conflict or periods of massive human rights violations, with the final goal of helping to promote guarantees of nonrepetition. How does a transitional justice approach specifi cally contribute to peacebuilding through education?

Education, as a critically important institution that is widely considered to be both formative and transformative, is something that transitional justice cannot afford to overlook. Transitional justice in its early years did not directly engage with education, but today this has changed. The field has moved from discursively recognizing the importance of education (though placing it beyond the ambit of transitional justice practice temporally and philosophically) to trying to find models for active engagement with it.

Lebanon’s civil war continues to impact the Lebanese people, both those who lived through the war and those born after it. While the widespread harms it caused are still visible today, the official denial of both the war and its lasting consequences has left a hole in Lebanon’s historical record and in many cases prevented people from fully understanding their country’s past. This is particularly true for Lebanese young people.

Haiti is currently confronting several challenges regarding stability, the rule of law, and corruption. The establishment of the United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH) in April 2017 is aimed at contributing to state and civil society efforts to effectively address those challenges.

For decades, Kenyans have yearned for a police service that is accountable to the people and adheres to national laws and international human rights standards. The police stand accused of regularly meting out violence on the public, extra-judicial killings, and other human rights violations which are very rarely investigated or the perpetrators brought to account. The police further stand accused of abetting corruption, resulting in a debilitating impact on public trust.