As the three women prepared to testify before the TDC, they gathered at the front of an elegant room, which was once part of an exclusive club for the dictator’s wife and their cronies. In the hours to follow, the building’s history – and indeed Tunisia’s future – would be rewritten by the mothers’ stories.

Theirs were stories of loss; of suffering and of a thirst for justice. But embedded within them were the women’s hopes, their willingness to forgive, their dream of unity, and the enduring legacy of their sons. As the testimony progressed, the number of viewers held in rapt attention climbed ever higher- they crowded into the room, they huddled around television sets, and they streamed the proceedings to their devices by the tens of thousands. The impact was seismic, says Ibtihel Abdellatif, one of the TDC commissioners. “It was an earthquake for the country. Not an earthquake that destroys, but an earthquake that builds.” Such can be the power of public hearings.

To address the legacy of massive human rights abuses and uncover the truth about the painful past, some countries have resorted to non-judicial mechanisms like truth commissions. Through investigations, testimony gathering, and archive research, these bodies have played a key role in establishing an official record about the past in countries ravaged by repression and conflict from Argentina to South Africa, from Morocco to Canada. Through their focus on the testimony of victims of atrocity, truth commissions provide acknowledgement and recognition of suffering and survival to those most affected.

On the International Day for the Right to Truth we spotlight one of the most powerful ways truth commissions can reassert victims’ dignity: public hearings. These open events can have a potentially cathartic power for victims and their families, but also the public at large by generating solidarity and empathy for the suffering of others in societies deeply polarized and traumatized by atrocities and denial, as could be witnessed in contexts as diverse as South Africa, where a truth commission was established to put an end to apartheid, to Peru, where armed conflict and repressive rule ran unchecked for two decades, and to Canada, where indigenous peoples were forcibly assimilated over decades.