Negotiating Justice: The Challenges of Addressing Past Human Rights Violations

The focus of this article is talking about what difficulties arise when peace has been agreed upon after a conflict that saw significant human rights violations. This comes under the field of transitional justice. One common procedure in dealing with reparations is a Truth Commission where a temporary group of people investigates the human rights violations. This is not related to a judicial system. At the end of this process, the committee makes a public report and suggests improvements and reforms to policy and institutions. Truth commissions often include people telling their stories and communicating about things that happened during the conflict. The hope in truth commissions is that lessons will be learned from the future and the victims will find some reparation. One of the largest challenges to think about is the idea of amnesty. Should the people who committed the human rights violations and other crimes be offered amnesty if they come forward and tell their story as part of the truth commission. This is a tricky question because there are so many levels of crime and the judicial system cannot completely be ignored. Another issue is whether or not the people who have amnesty will have that same privilege in international law or when traveling from their country.

The article gives two examples about truth commissions. In Liberia the lack of amnesty for the leader, Charles Taylor, helped in the transitional justice process. He has an indictment, which actually helped the peace talks because they knew that he could not continue to seek power in the future. In Sierra Leone the peace agreements included the clause that 'full and unconditional amnesty' was granted to all the parties. Both sides wanted this to be in the agreement, and this fact helped the peace negotiations. Clearly there is no blanket answer on the effectiveness of amnesty on a peace negotiation, but it is an interesting element to consider. I feel like if I had my human rights violated, I would want to see some more concrete form of justice, but perhaps I would be open to a non-judicial reparation.