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Making Connections. An interview with Pablo de Greiff, ICTJ Research Unit Director.

More Than Just the Court. An interview with Marieke Wierda, director of ICTJ’s Prosecutions Program.

In September 1985, ninemembers of Argentina’smilitary junta, whose successive regimes covered the period in Argentine history known as the “dirty war,” walked into a courtroom in downtown Buenos Aires.

Progress Is Unmistakable. An interview with Juan E. Méndez, President of ICTJ.

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 Soeharto’s New Order regime. The research concludes that senior government officials consistently and repeatedly failed to achieve truth, accountability, institutional reform and reparations for the most serious crimes.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: 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 Soeharto’s New Order regime. The research concludes that senior government officials consistently and repeatedly failed to achieve truth, accountability, institutional reform and reparations for the most serious crimes.

The allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the final phases of the conflict in Sri Lanka, made in the Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka released on April 25, must be thoroughly investigated. This is the first comprehensive UN report examining the events in the Vanni region between January and May of 2009 and it alleges that “tens of thousands of civilians” were killed. The Government of Sri Lanka, but also the relevant international bodies, cannot claim credibility if these findings are ignored.

As the number of victims of violence against demonstrators in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere in the region rises, a question emerges for the government of Bashar al-Assad of Syria, but also those of Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifah of Bahrain and the vacillating international community: Can impunity for such crimes be permitted in this day and age?

Some habits die hard. This is especially true of ways of thinking. Despite significant changes in national and international law and practice in the last thirty years—the period that corresponds with the emergence of transitional justice as a field—the recent upheaval in the Middle East and Northern Africa region has provoked proposals that hearken back to a period that we may have thought long gone.