ABSTRACT

Among the most prominent supporters of truth commissions are co-founder of the International Centre for Transitional Justice, Priscilla Hayner, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, Martha Minow and Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Hayner 1994, 2001, Minow 1998, Tutu 1999, 2000). Based on a comparison of twenty truth commissions from around the world, Priscilla Hayner has argued that, since neither national nor international courts can deal with the extensive demands for accountability after mass atrocities and since they cannot address the needs for acknowledgement, reform and reparation, truth and reconciliation commissions should be recommended (Hayner 1994, 2001). Martha Minow has claimed that trials have proven too frail and insufficient and that compensation is not enough to heal victims either (Minow 1998). Instead she promoted the idea of restorative justice and argued in favour of the kind of public acknowledgement of the utter wrongness of the atrocities that truth commissions can provide (ibid.). Desmond Tutu has also defended the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s amnesty in exchange of truth principle and argued that the relatively peaceful transition to democracy in South Africa would not have taken place if bringing perpetrators to retributive justice had been a precondition for the transition (Tutu 1999). Tutu also contended that the Commission was able to establish the truth in cases where the courts had failed to do so and that the commissioners and the truth-telling process helped victims come to terms with what had happened to them (ibid.). Theissen has also contended that a truth commission can

break the silence about past human-rights violations, and encourage people to speak out about past atrocities, since the risk of repression decreases as more people go public; expose past atrocities from a victim perspective, turn the public against the perpetrators and thus decrease their credibility and power in society [and] provide a comprehensive and well-written

account of past human-rights abuses, and encourage public debate as to how peaceful co-existence can be secured in the future.