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As Tunisia concludes its final deliberations on the new constitution, transitional justice issues such as reparations for victims, truth about the past and the rights of women have been central to the legislative debates. Over the past month, ICTJ’s leading experts have been engaged with stakeholders on the ground on a variety of issues under deliberation, including truth-seeking, reparations, gender justice, and the role of children and youth.

On International Justice Day, July 17th, ICTJ looks at the legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone through the voices of those to whom its work was most important: the citizens of Sierra Leone. Our new multimedia project, “Seeds of Justice: Sierra Leone,” presents five portraits of Sierra Leoneans whose lives were impacted by this court.

This paper examines the crime of forced displacement from the perspective of both international and national legal frameworks. The crime of forced displacement is a notion that comes from international law. Indeed, an international legal framework has developed with the instruments and jurisprudence to criminally prosecute forced displacement as a war crime or a crime against humanity, whether the displacement in question is internal or across international borders. When it constitutes a serious crime under international law, forced displacement should be prosecuted for the same reasons as other serious crimes.

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.

Humanitarians, development agencies, human rights organizations, and peacebuilding actors are commonly drawn to the same flash points of conflict, human rights violations, and states in need of rebuilding. Operating in common country contexts leads to increased interactions between these actors, creating tensions as well as opportunities for collaboration and cooperation. This paper focuses on the specific concerns of humanitarian actors regarding transitional justice in contexts of displacement, and offers some suggestions for bridging the apparent divide between humanitarian and transitional justice actors.

While contemporary understandings of restitution have been shaped by international responses to displacement and are primarily humanitarian in nature, restitution has its conceptual roots in traditional rules governing remedies for breaches of international law and is related to transitional justice measures involving reparations for victims of human rights abuses.

Transitional justice has for the most part not prioritized issues related to displaced persons. Transitional justice measures do, however, have a bearing on displaced persons’ interests and on efforts to resolve displacement, in particular with regard to durable solutions, which include return and reintegration in one’s place of origin, local integration in one’s place of refuge, and resettlement elsewhere. This paper explores the contribution that transitional justice can make to achieving durable solutions, focusing specifically on some of the ways in which justice measures can facilitate the integration or reintegration of displaced persons into communities and societies.

This paper explores the intersection between displacement and one particular mechanism of transitional justice—justice-sensitive security sector reform (JSSR). It aims to identify various ways in which JSSR can contribute to the protection of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), and how applying the principles of JSSR can improve the prospects of developing durable solutions to displacement—that is, of meeting the long-term safety, security, and justice needs of the displaced.

Refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) have often been directly affected by the crimes truth commissions seek to expose, and have a major stake in the success of transitional justice processes, which can shape the stability of post-conflict communities as well as the prospects for safe, dignified, and durable solutions to displacement. However, in many cases displaced persons have not been recognized as critical stakeholders in truth-telling processes, and truth commissions have often failed to substantively address forced migration as a human rights violation. This paper examines the importance of—and obstacles to—including issues of forced displacement in truth-seeking processes.

The International Center for Transitional Justice publishes a selection of excerpts from the Supreme Court's rulings and judgments regarding the Justice and Peace process.