Truth and reconciliation commission
<templatestyles src="Module:Hatnote/styles.css"></templatestyles>
A truth commission or truth and reconciliation commission is a commission tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government (or, depending on the circumstances, non-state actors also), in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past. They are, under various names, occasionally set up by states emerging from periods of internal unrest, civil war, or dictatorship.
As government reports, they can provide proof against historical revisionism of state terrorism and other crimes and human rights abuses. Truth commissions are sometimes criticised for allowing crimes to go unpunished, and creating impunity for serious human rights abusers. Their roles and abilities in this respect depend on their mandates, which vary widely.
One of the difficult issues that has arisen over the role of truth commissions in transitional societies, has centered on what should be the relationship between truth commissions and criminal prosecutions.[1]
The first such commission was Argentina's National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, created by President of Argentina Raúl Alfonsín on 15 December 1983. It issued the Nunca Más (Never Again) report, which documented human rights violations under the military dictatorship known as the National Reorganization Process. The report was delivered to Alfonsín on 20 September 1984 and opened the door to the Trial of the Juntas, the first major trial held for war crimes since the Nuremberg trials in Germany following World War II and the first to be conducted by a civilian court.
See also
- List of truth and reconciliation commissions
- Human rights commission
- Transitional justice
- Truth-seeking
- The German policy of Vergangenheitsbewältigung is commonly compared to truth and reconciliation
- Institute for Justice and Reconciliation
- Transitional Justice Institute
References
- ↑ See Lyal S. Sunga "Ten Principles for Reconciling Truth Commissions and Criminal Prosecutions", in The Legal Regime of the ICC (Brill) (2009) 1075-1108.
Bibliography
- Priscilla B. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Facing Challenge of Truth Commissions. New York: Routledge, 2010.
- Arnaud Martin, La mémoire et le pardon. Les commissions de la vérité et de la réconciliation en Amérique latine, Paris, L'Harmattan, 2009.
- Robert Rotberg and Dennis Thompson, eds., Truth versus Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions. Princeton University Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0691050720
