Featured Dialogue: Truth and Reconciliation Processes: Aiding Community Healing through Addressing Impunity March 26 – April 1
Table of Contents
The following table of contents was developed to make the dialogue easier to navigate. Important themes and different discussions have been highlighted for archival purposes and for new users. The preferred method of viewing the comments is with "Thread list - expanded" option, which is explained here. Resources mentioned in the Dialogue can be found on this page.
Intro
New Tactics in Human Rights’ featured online discussion for March will focus on ways in which Truth and Reconciliation processes have and are being implemented to aid community healing.
Some fundamental concepts behind Truth and Reconcilation (TRC) processes include: 1) future reconciliation is necessary for there to be a peaceful co-existence in a country or community; 2) that reconciliation and peaceful coexistence rest upon knowing as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human rights that have been committed; and 3) there must be public recognition of the truth that had been hidden for so long by a multitude of falsehoods.
This dialogue seeks to share experiences transitional justice processes known as Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, instituted with the aim of exploring the truth hidden behind pasts characterized by gross abuses of human rights. The conflicts experienced in the countries and contexts of our resource people have unique and particular characteristics. However, we believe that the sharing of these experiences and those of the broader New Tactics community who take part in this dialogue will yield useful lessons for other contexts considering the use of TRC process. Because the effects that violence has on people are always devastating - rippling from the individual to the family to the community to the nation; they demand a treatment that is not only individual, but collective.
There are many questions of importance for our dialogue and we look forward to the many questions that will be raised by the participants. A foundational, and often contentious, question is "What do we mean by ‘truth’?" and as a result, "How do TRC processes deal with the unraveling of differing histories, truths and memories?"
Join our featured resource people and share your own experiences, insights and questions. (Click here for help on how to participate in the dialogue)
Our featured resource people include:
|
Row1 L-R: Galuh Wandita, Jose Caetano Guterres, and Patrick Burgess (East Timor TRC); Jennifer Prestholdt, Ahmed K. Sirleaf II, and Laura Young (Liberia Diaspora Project Team) Row2 L-R: Sofia Macher (Peru TRC); Greensboro TRC process team; Glenda Wildschut, and Paul Haupt (South Africa TRC); Neneh Barry (Sierra Leone TRC) |
Bookmark/Search this post with:
transtioning a TRC: from report to action
From CAVR's experience, I think we did such a good participatory process and wrote a lengthy [and often praised] extra-ordinary report documenting atrocities, using victims voices, that we collapsed in a heap after submitting the report to the President. [It did not help that a few months after there was a new crisis from which TL is still trying to recuperate from.] But I think, if I could go back in time, I would write the TRC law in a way that the work with victims (accompanying them, referring them to services, provide them with support) could transition seamlessly into a on-going social service program. As the healing of victims was one of the most important functions of the CAVR, we should have made sure that the law establishing the CAVR could have ensured continuity, inspite of any political problems around the reception of the CAVR report.
So to answer your question, we did not over come fatigue and trauma...and in retrospect, what I would do (if I could turn back the time) would be to create a fresh team just to do networking and strateging around the report's recommendations (either within the commission itself, or perhaps better yet a joint working group with NGOs, stakeholdres and former CAVR personnel).
There is now a "technical post-CAVR" secretariat given the task for dissemination (under the President's office), but I think it would have been better to also have an independent engine working on this (and preparing for the launch of the report) before the commission was disbanded.
Galuh Wandita
Former Deputy Director/Program Manager CAVR
Senior Associate ICTJ