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Tune in to a livestream of our ninth Emilio Mignone Lecture, which this year will focus on grappling with racial injustice in the United States. Do the concepts and strategies of transitional justice have a role to play? The discussion, hosted by ICTJ and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law, will feature  Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation, and Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. They will be joined in conversation by David Tolbert, ICTJ President. 

For many victims of human rights violations and international crimes around the world, the prospects of holding perpetrators to account, especially high-level individuals, have long seemed farfetched, given current political and legal hurdles and the limitations of international criminal justice mechanisms. For this reason, the multiple ongoing investigations into international crimes committed in Syria and court cases against suspected perpetrators based on the principle of universal jurisdiction across Europe have offered a ray of hope in an otherwise bleak justice landscape.

ICTJ and the Barcelona International Peace Resource Center (BIPRC) are pleased to announce the 5th Intensive Course on Truth Commissions, which will focus on a practical approach to addressing the challenges of designing and implementing a truth commission.

The AU–EU 2025 Experts’ Seminar on Transitional Justice convened African and European practitioners to advance reparations as a central pillar of transitional justice. Discussions highlighted legal obligations, victim-centered and transformative approaches, and persistent challenges in design, financing, and implementation. Drawing on comparative experiences, participants underscored the need for inclusive, community-led, and gender-responsive programs; innovative funding mechanisms; and strengthened AU–EU cooperation to deliver meaningful redress, accountability, and sustainable peace.

The United Nations has proclaimed December 10 as International Human Rights Day. The date commemorates the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which represented the reaction of the international community to the horrors of the Second World War. Today is a day for reflection more than celebration. A cursory scan of events from the last few weeks has thrown up examples that demonstrate that the belief in human rights for all - in treating all states the same - is more of a tissue-thin membrane than a robust bulwark.

ICTJ spoke with Pablo Parenti about the trial that just concluded which investigated human rights violations and crimes against humanity that occurred at the Naval Mechanics School (ESMA), used as a detention and torture center during the Argentine dictatorship.

Lebanon has yet to seriously address the issue of thousands of people who went missing or were forcibly disappeared during the country’s civil war. ICTJ spoke with Lebanese activists to discuss a recent initiative taken by the families of the missing and civil society organizations to create a draft law on the missing.

Five years ago, in August 2018, to mark his 100 days in office, Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan addressed a large rally in Yerevan’s Republic Square to officially announce his government’s intentions to incorporate transitional justice mechanisms into Armenian post-revolution reform agenda. Since then, Armenia has been pursuing a range of transitional justice initiatives alongside other democratic reforms, and it has made some limited headway, despite setbacks and major challenges including renewed conflict with Azerbaijan.

This paper makes explicit some of the connections between transitional justice and development, two sprawling fields characterized by fuzzy conceptual borders and by both internal and external dissent. Taking seriously the idea of connecting, however, also means preserving the integrity of that which is being linked. The paper is therefore also interested in drawing certain boundaries around each-not just for reasons of clarity, but in the belief that effective synergies depend upon sensible divisions of labor.