V. Truth Commissions, Transitional Justice, and Civil Society

Abstract

Many societies seeking a just transition from authoritarian regimes or civil wars to democracy have employed official truth commissions to investigate systematic violations of internationally recognized human rights by a previous government, by its opponents, or by combatants in an internal armed conflict. Currently being utilized in South Africa and Guatemala, such investigative bodies have been employed in at least 20 countries and are being considered for such nations as Bosnia and Kenya. The human rights violations that truth commissions investigate include extra judicial killing disappearance, rape, torture, and severe ill treatment. The question of 'transitional justice', as I shall be employing the term, is 'How should a fledgling democracy reckon with severe human rights abuses that earlier authoritarian regimes, their opponents, or combatants in an internal armed conflict have committed'? The challenge for new democracy is to respond appropriately to past evils without undermining the new democracy or jeopardizing prospects for future development. Societies in transition to democracy have employed many interrelated means in reckoning with human rights abuses that a prior regime or its opponents have committed. In addition to investigator bodies, these measures range from 'forgive, forget and move on' to national or international war crime tribunals. They also embrace such tools as social shaming and banning of perpetrators from public office ('lustration'); public access to police records; public apology or memorials to victims; reburial or reparation of victims; literary and historical writing; and amnesty or impunity (the ignoring or accepting of past violations). In this paper I argue, first, that truth commissions can contribute to achieving many important goals in societies in transition to democracy. But they must be supplemented by, and work in tandem with, other measures and institutions. I compare the strengths and weaknesses of investigator bodies and other tools for meeting the challenge of transitional justice, and I delineate eight goals by truth commissions should be fashioned, combined, and sequenced with other tools. Second, I seek to show that a nation's civil society) - especially when it practices public deliberation or deliberative democracy - is often indispensable to the success of truth commissions and to reckoning with past wrongs more generally. Finally, I support the contention that international civil society may play a useful role in advancing the goals of national truth commissions and transitional justice.