Search

Five years since the government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement signed the Helsinki Memorandum of Understanding, key provisions for accountability for mass crimes have not yet been implemented. Attempts to avoid the difficult truths of Aceh’s recent history and to allow perpetrators of horrific crimes to remain free continue to weaken popular respect for national legal institutions and feed existing anger and divisions that could lead to a recurrence of violence.

Although transitional justice processes are intended to help heal and restore society after conflict or authoritarian rule, marginalized groups often struggle to make their voices heard. These groups include those who have been displaced by conflict and, within that category, those who have specifically faced gender-based violence and injustice within the trajectory of displacement. This paper explores the relationship between transitional justice and forced migration from a gendered perspective.

On February 4, 2021, the International Criminal Court issued its judgment in the case of the Prosecutor v Dominic Ongwen. The ICC found Ongwen guilty of 61 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Northern Uganda between July 1, 2002, and December 31, 2005. The verdict recognizes the enduring impact of the crimes on the victims, their families, and Ugandan society more generally.

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 framework, and provides expert recommendations on truth seeking, justice, reparations, institutional reform, and enforcing the rights of women victims. Based on more than 100 interviews carried out in 2011 in the districts of Sorong, Manokwari, Biak, and Paniai, the report reviews Papua’s recent history, including the Special Autonomy Law governing the relationship between the Papua province and Indonesia, within a transitional justice framework.

This joint report released today by the International Center for Transitional Justice (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 framework, and provides expert recommendations on truth seeking, justice, reparations, institutional reform, and enforcing the rights of women victims.

The role of police in society is to protect residents and enforce the rule of law. As a public institution, and particularly one whose function includes the state-sanctioned use of force, the effectiveness of the police depends on its integrity and legitimacy. When the police abuses its power, by brutalizing civilians and or engaging in corruption, it loses its credibility and the public’s trust. In Kenya, enforcement of measures to halt the spread of COVID-19 have been accompanied by acts of police brutality, of the kind that Kenyans have been through multiple times before.

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.

Authoritarian regimes frequently leave in their wake a series of negative legacies that have not received sufficient attention in the literature on transitions, and even less by transitional justice measures. This paper examines the political economy of transitions from authoritarianism. In particular, it looks at the economic legacies of authoritarianism-unproductive expenditures, undisciplined rent-seeking, and macroeconomic destabilization-and their implications for democratization and transitional justice.

The principle of complementarity is central to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). According to this principle, the ICC should assume jurisdiction only when states parties are unwilling or genuinely unable to carry out their own investigation or prosecution. This paper was written in the lead up to the Rome Statute Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda in May 2010.

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?