ABSTRACT
T ruth commissions are obliged to fulfill the direction given them in thewritten mandate, or terms of reference, upon which they are founded. The mandates of some past commissions have been explicit about what abuses they were to document and investigate, but many provide only general guidance about the kind of abuse to be investigated and exactly what cases should be covered in the investigations. These terms of reference, usually created by presidential decree, national legislation, or as part of a peace accord ending a civil war, can define a commission’s powers, limit or strengthen its investigative reach, and set the timeline, subject matter, and geographic scope of a commission’s investigation, and thus define the truth that will be documented.
