Morocco's Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER) (website in French, Spanish, and Arabic) released yesterday a summary of its report on forced disappearances and arbitrary detentions undertaken between 1956 and 1999. (The International Center for Transitional Justice has a translation of the statement made by the commission's president here.) The first truth commission in the Arab world (and thus a possible precedent for a truth commission in Iraq), the IER has nonetheless already been criticized by the Moroccan Association for Human Rights for failing to name perpetrators of human rights abuses. A Human Rights Watch report put out just before the completion of the IER's work expressed a similar concern, noting that "a number of officials suspected of ordering or participating in the commission of grave abuses continue to hold high positions within the government, and certain types of abuses were continuing to occur in Morocco."
The question of whether to name names divided the most prominent truth commissions in the 1990s, as well as the academic commentary thereon. Although truth commissions in El Salvador and South Africa named alleged perpetrators in their final reports, the commission in Guatemala was explicitly prohibited from doing so. Argentina's National Commission on the Disappeared operated under an ambiguous mandate in this regard, but did not in the end release the names of those who were said to have committed crimes. And although the mandate of Chile's National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation did not prohibit the body from naming those alleged to have committed crimes, the commission nonetheless chose not to do so, citing pragmatic concerns about stability and due process questions of evidentiary sufficiency.
What this past practice hints at is that considerations of postconflict stability often influence how transitional justice mechanisms, and their mandates, are shaped. Where the successor regime is more fragile, bold measures like naming names may be less likely to be part of transitional justice. In El Salvador, the fact that all three members of the commission were prominent international figures gave them some leeway to tell "the whole truth," while the intense media attention given to South Africa's transition, and to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission specifically, perhaps helped to ensure international support for a more complete truth-seeking process.
Insofar as transitional justice mechanisms are designed to promote movement toward democracy and away from abusive government, the lasting effect of the IER's work will be measured by the extent to which the Moroccan government implements the recommendations made by the commission, and by whether Moroccan population accepts both the findings and any new policies as recognition of past crimes and assurance that they will not be repeated.
Nice post!
When you write considerations of postconflict stability often influence how transitional justice mechanisms, and their mandates, are shaped, you are of course quite right. Transitional justice is always to a large degree "about" politics; and necessarily so, since transitions-- their nature, their extent, their eventual "success" or "failure"-- are quintessentially phenomena in the world of politics. Which is why we can never study TJ as a set of mechanisms or as a field of intellectual enquiry without also studying the politics of the situation.
The politics of the SA TRC was, i think, a little different than you describe it. In fact, of all the truth commissions you mention, South Africa's was the one that was least influenced by the preferences of the "international community." It was created as a purely internal compromise-- essentially, one between the many argued for full prosecutions of previous abusers and the (very powerful) few who wanted them to get away with a blanket amnesty. Without that compromise, which was struck between the ANC and the security chiefs in the midst of the historic election of 1994, the election literally could not have been successfully completed given that the SADF was responsible for the security arrangements for it.
Because SA had a generally functioning court system, prosecution was a fairly credible threat. It was threat that "persuaded" many perps to come forward and "confess all" (or, the bare minimum needed to satisfy the Amnesty Committe). Also, since the TRC was a fairly strongly victim-centered body from the beginning and most of the victims wanted to name names, that strongly pushed it in that direction, too.
The politics in the other countries you mentioned were very different, in many respects.
Morocco's IER is also a wholly internal process. But the political "transition" from which it flows is (as yet) far, far less deep and far-reaching than the historic transition in SA in 1994.
Posted by: Helena at December 20, 2005 04:57 PMMorocco's IER is a substantially different enterprise than so many of the other truth commissions. Mark Freeman, with the International Center for Transitional Justice in Brussels, has been involved with the IER and presented an interesting overview of the IER in spring 2005, at a conference at The University of Western Ontario, (http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/polisci/necrg/reconciliation/papers/markfreemantransitional.pdf) a lengthier version of which will be part of a forthcoming book on Reconciliation from McGill-Queen's University Press. It's worth a look.
Posted by: Joanna Quinn at January 16, 2006 10:38 AMI am writing an essay on truth commissions and the issue of naming names. I have had a hard time finding any studies or any empirical evidence of the actual impact truth commissions have had. There are a lot of claims about the positive effect truth commissions can have on responct for the rule of law and peace-building but not a lot of empirical evidence.
Would anyone have reference suggestions to suggest ?...
Posted by: Manny at June 18, 2006 04:46 PM
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