scholarly journals Declining ethnic relations in post-war Liberia: The transmission of violent memories

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (910) ◽  
pp. 151-171
Author(s):  
Aaron Weah
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Relations ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Collective Remembering ◽  
Post War

AbstractMore than ten years after the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released its Final Report, there has been no implementation of the recommendations proffered. This article focuses on post-conflict memorialization, the TRC's strategy to engender collective remembering, and a set of State-led actions designed to teach future generations about the past violence with a view to preventing relapse into violent conflict. Both the constructive and destructive patterns of remembering that have evolved in the wake of the government's silence since the release of the recommendations will be analyzed.

Evaluating the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

2001 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Stanley
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Developmental Change ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Level

Following a negotiated transition to democracy in South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established to deal with crimes of the past regime. Despite the detail of submissions and the length of the Final Report, this article highlights the partiality of truth recognised by the Commission. The usefulness of acknowledged truth to deal with South Africa's past is shown to have been neutralised by wider concerns of social and criminal justice. In detailing the governmental reticence to provide reparations, the judicial disregard to pursue prosecutions, and the dismissal of responsibility for apartheid at a wider social level, the author argues that opportunities for reconciliation and developmental change are limited. Against the problems of crime, violence and unresolved land issues, the potential of the TRC to build a ‘reconciliatory bridge’ is called into question. The truth offered by the Commission increasingly appears of limited value.

scholarly journals Post-Colonial Historical Practices

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Nurse
Keyword(s):  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Historical Practices

This article suggests that historical practice in Canada is in the process of changing as a result of national and international developments, such as Black Lives Matter, Rhodes Must Fall, and the final report and recommendations of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A key part of this process has been the reconsideration of Canadian narrative frameworks, but it also involves debates surrounding commemorative practices and other innovations in exhibition and display. This shift creates an opportunity to revisit the moral nature of historical narratives, Indigenous conceptions of the importance of the past, the authority of professional historians, and the place of community-engaged historical research. Cet article suggère que les pratiques historiques au Canada sont en train de changer sous l’effet de développements nationaux et internationaux tels que Black Lives Matter, Rhodes Must Fall, et le rapport final et les recommandations de la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada. La reconsidération de cadres narratifs canadiens est une partie clé de ce processus, lequel comporte en outre des débats sur les pratiques commémoratives et sur d’autres innovations relatives aux expositions et installations. Ce changement présente l’occasion de réexaminer la nature morale des narrations historiques, les conceptions autochtones sur l’importance du passé, l’autorité des historiens professionnels, et la place d’une recherche historique qui soit engagée au niveau communautaire.

Using African Truth and Reconciliation Commission documentation for truth telling and reconciliation

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Proscovia Svärd
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commissions ◽  
Reconciliation Process

Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) are established to document violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in post-conflict societies. The intent is to excavate the truth to avoid political speculations and create an understanding of the nature of the conflict. The documentation hence results in a common narrative which aims to facilitate reconciliation to avoid regression to conflict. TRCs therefore do a tremendous job and create compound documentation that includes written statements, interviews, live public testimonies of witnesses and they also publish final reports based on the accumulated materials. At the end of their mission, TRCs recommend the optimal use of their documentation since it is of paramount importance to the reconciliation process. Despite this ambition, the TRCs’ documentation is often politicized and out of reach for the victims and the post-conflict societies at large. The TRCs’ documentation is instead poorly diffused into the post conflict societies and their findings are not effectively disseminated and used.

EXPRESS: New Order and Old Institutions: South Africa and the Institutional Work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

2021 ◽  
pp. 017084062110062
Author(s):  
Tapiwa Seremani ◽  
Carine Farias ◽  
Stewart Clegg
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
New Order ◽  
Institutional Work ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Maintenance Work ◽  
Institutional Maintenance ◽  
Collaborative Efforts

The paper contributes to literatures on settlements and institutional maintenance work. It does so by unpacking post-settlement legitimation efforts required to maintain contentious institutions between previously conflicting actors. Settlements often necessitate the maintenance of institutions from the past whose legitimacy is dubious for the new regime. We study the role played by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in re-legitimating and maintaining the institution of the armed forces in the transition from apartheid to democracy. Maintaining this legitimacy required collaboration between the incoming government as well as the apartheid era armed forces. We term these unexpected collaborative efforts “reluctant accommodation work”. Our findings show that the lines of allegiance may be more fluid than currently depicted in the literature. Actors that previously conflicted need to find an interest in collaborating in their efforts to shape central institutions. Second, we show that for settlements to shape the field, they need to agree on the terms of collaboration, what we term “passage points” as well as engage in public ceremonies to broadly legitimate the settlement and the institution it seeks to preserve.

Any Role for Human Rights in the Norwegian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Addressing Forced Assimilation?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Hans Morten Haugen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The North ◽  
National Minorities ◽  
The Right

Abstract Norway’s policies regarding Sámi and most national minorities in an historic perspective can be characterized as forced assimilation; except for Jews and Roma, where the historic policy can be termed exclusion. The Norwegian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (trc) is intended to be a broad-based process, resulting in a report to the Norwegian Parliament in 2022. After identifying various explanations for the relatively strong standing of the (North) Sámi domestically and in international forums, the article identifies various ways that human rights will be important for the trc’s work and final report: (i) self-determination; (ii) participation in political life; (iii) participation in cultural life; (iv) family life; (v) private life; and (vi) human dignity. Some of these rights are relatively wide, but all give relevant guidance to the trc’s work. The right to private life did not prevent the Norwegian Parliament’s temporary law to enable the trc’s access to archives

Reading (Re)conciliation in White Settler and Chinese Canadian Narratives: From Liberal towards Transformative Approaches

2021 ◽  
pp. e20210005
Author(s):  
Petra Fachinger
Keyword(s):  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Cultural Genocide ◽  
White Settler ◽  
Chinese Canadian

This article explores how four settler narratives situate themselves differently within the reconciliation discourse in response to the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. In my reading of Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s The Spawning Grounds (2016) and Jennifer Manuel’s The Heaviness of Things That Float (2016) alongside Doretta Lau’s “How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?” (2014) and Amy Fung’s Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being (2019), I show how these narratives express different degrees of critical reflection on the settler colonial state and differ in their acknowledgement of Indigenous resurgence. I adopt David B. MacDonald’s distinction between “liberal reconciliation,” which is based on a “shared vison of a harmonious future,” and “transformative reconciliation,” which “is about fundamentally problematizing the settler state as a colonial creation, a vector of cultural genocide, and one that continues inexorably to suppress Indigenous collective aspirations for self-determination and sovereignty” as a critical framework.

scholarly journals Khoisan Identity: A Contribution towards Reconciliation in Post-Apartheid South Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Stephanus Klaasen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Significant Period ◽  
Fixed Boundaries ◽  
Or History

This article seeks to explore the identity of the Khoisan as symbolic for reconciliation in South Africa. What contributions can the narrative of a marginalised people such as the Khoisan make to reconciling a divided nation such as South Africa? The Khoisan have been victims of continuous dispossession since the arrival of Bartholomew Diaz at the Cape in 1488. However, it was the taking of land in 1657 from the Khoisan for the free burgers that marked a significant period for the current discourse on land and for identity and reconciliation within post-apartheid South Africa. Notwithstanding the attempts by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to use narratives for healing, restoration, and continuing engagement with the meta-narratives of the past, my own use of narrative is open-ended with space for dialogue through interaction. The past or history does not have fixed boundaries, but rather blurred boundaries that function as spaces of transcendence. The narrative approach has four interactionist variables which are personhood, communication, power as reflected experience, and fluid community. I point out weaknesses of the use of narrative by the TRC as well as the interaction between experience and theory by practical theologians to construct an open-ended narrative of the Khoisan for reconciliation in South Africa.  

Gender Implementation in the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pascha Bueno-Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Gender Analysis ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Funding Sources ◽  
International Pressure ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
Feminist Movements

This chapter examines how the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (PTRC) reinforces a logic that upholds social hierarchies while also opening new spaces to consider a gender analysis. When the PTRC began its investigation in August 2001, a gender analysis was not included. However, the commission was compelled to integrate the issue of gender into its investigation due to international pressure coupled with funding sources that required a gender component, as well as Peruvian women's and feminist movements' advocacy. This chapter analyzes the struggle for inclusion within the PTRC by focusing on the debate around the meaning of gender, its methodological operationalization, and incorporation into the final report. It shows how the push to document direct human rights violations against women led the PTRC to make a concerted effort to include a gender analysis and to address gender-based violence, specifically sexual violence.

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