Search

The Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence (CIPEV) was the outcome of the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation Accord of February 28, 2008, negotiated by Kofi Annan and the Panel of Eminent African Personalities, and its sister agreement of March 4, 2008, known as Agenda Item 4, which called for the establishment of a number of bodies of inquiry to address justice and accountability and longer-term issues of governance and the rule of law.

A range of transitional justice measures should be considered in addressing the Kenyan crisis, including holding key perpetrators to account in a court of law, providing reparations for victims of the recent violence, and vetting security forces in order to remove those involved in abuses. The intent of this statement is to present guidelines, based on internationally-accepted best practices and the experience of many previous truth commissions to date, that should serve as the minimal starting point for any official truth-seeking initiative.

This initiative aims to promote accountability within the media through independent monitoring of the performance of the media during the TRC process. While freedom of the press is essential to the cultivation of a democratic culture, it is only fair for the media to labor in overcoming obstacles to fair, independent, balanced and accurate presentation of news and information.

The transitional justice mechanisms the Mexican government put in place to investigate the grave human rights violations committed before the political transition of 2000 did not achieve their aims.

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 transitional justice field, and thus offers challenges and opportunities for ICTJ.

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.

A three-judge panel of Peru’s Supreme Court will announce a verdict before the end of this year in the trial of Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s president from 1990-2000, on charges of murder and kidnapping. Prosecutors hold him responsible for the deaths of 25 people at the hands of a death squad known as the Colina group, whose members were military intelligence officers.

States have the obligation to prevent human rights violations, investigate them, identify and punish their intellectual authors and accessories after the fact, and may not invoke existing provisions of domestic law to avoid complying with their obligations under international law.

South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique and Namibia have all experienced massive violations of human rights in the recent past. Apart from Zimbabwe, where a political crisis continues, all of these states have further seen the end of major conflicts within the last two decades. Only in South Africa have formal transitional justice mechanisms played a visible role, and even there, those mechanisms have left many issues unaddressed.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a proposal for a reparations program for Timor-Leste. Timor-Leste has experienced a number of mechanisms designed to provide justice for past wrongs. These have attempted to provide truth, criminal justice, and security sector reform. However to date there has not yet been a comprehensive attempt to provide reparations to victims of the human rights violations committed between 1974 and 1999.