Dreams of January

Five years ago, Tunisia’s youth played a lead role in protests that drove dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power and set the country on a transition towards democracy, but efforts to address past human rights abuses have been hampered by waning political support and a restrictive climate fueled by fears of terrorism. The second in a series of long form multimedia pieces highlighting the role of local and national activists pushing for change, “Dreams of January” portrays the thoughts and struggles of the young Tunisians who helped sparked the Arab Spring and continue to fight for accountability and justice today.

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AFRICA

Thomas Lubanga and Germain Katanga, each convicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), were transferred to the DRC to serve out the remainder of their prison sentences. Lawyers for Kenya Deputy President William Ruto urged ICC judges to throw out the case against him, arguing that the prosecution had failed to prove its case. In Côte d’Ivoire, the trial of several top officials in former president Laurent Gbagbo’s government for the murder of ex-military chief Robert Guei during a 2002 coup attempt was delayed due to procedural issues. The UN documented cases of security forces gang raping women during searches of opposition members’ houses and has heard testimony of mass graves in Burundi, where tensions have been high since President Pierre Nkurunziza announced he would seek a third term in office. The testimony phase ended in the trial of Hissène Habré, former president of Chad, with witnesses sharing harrowing testimony of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during Habré’s rule. In Rwanda, a court convicted a former pastor of genocide for leading a massacre of people hiding in his church during the 1994 genocide.

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AMERICAS

Under an agreement between the FARC and Colombia’s government, the bodies of 29 people who disappeared during the country’s civil war were returned to their families. A Colombian prosecutor said that up to 24,000 state agents are linked to crimes committed during the conflict. In Guatemala, the retrial of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity committed during the civil war in the 1980s was suspended shortly after it began in order to resolve outstanding legal petitions. Eighteen former military officials were arrested on charges related to massacres and disappearances committed during Guatemala’s civil war. A former El Salvador defense minister was deported from the United States for his role in extrajudicial killings and torture during the country’s civil war.

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ASIA

In Nepal a victims’ advocate petitioned the Supreme Court to review of contradictory provisions in the existing rules and regulations regarding compensation benefits and services for victims of Nepal’s civil war. After her political party won Myanmar’s historic elections, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi participated in national peace talks for the first time. In a deal with South Korea, Japan apologized to so-called ‘comfort women’ – women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II – and promised to provide compensation, but victims criticized the deal because they were not consulted on the deal and because the compensation takes the form of humanitarian aid rather than reparations. A new report asserted that civilians are still abducted, tortured, and sexually abused by Sri Lanka’s security forces, despite the new government’s commitment to seek justice for those and other crimes.

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EUROPE

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite being ruled unconstitutional, the Republika Srpska publically celebrated the founding of the Serb Republic, dredging up ethnic divisions in towns like Prijedor. Meanwhile, the European Union approved funds to support Bosnia’s war crimes prosecutions after the government adopted a justice sector reform strategy. Human rights campaigners in Montenegro called on the government to establish a research and documentation center for crimes committed during conflicts in the 1990s, as it has promised to do. The Dutch government announced that it will host a special court for war crimes committed during the 1999 Kosovo conflict, and that the court will begin operations this year. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia demanded that Serbia provide regular updates on efforts to arrest three members of the Serbian Radical Party accused of threatening witnesses in the war crimes trial of their leader.

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MENA

The head of Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission said that the commission has received 20,600 complaints of human rights violations from victims around the country. In a new report, Amnesty International accused police in Tunisia of torture and killing detainees as security forces have cracked down after several recent terrorist attacks. In Egypt, security forces arrested several prominent activists ahead of the anniversary of the 2011 uprising that ousted then-president Hosni Mubarak. Meanwhile, in Lebanon, the head of the Lebanese Forces political party endorsed his wartime rival for the presidency, stressing that the country must move forward while remembering past events in order to avoid recurrence of violence. The head of a British investigation into crimes allegedly committed by United Kingdom forces in Iraq said that some soldiers may face prosecution for charges including murder.

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Education and Transitional Justice: Opportunities and Challenges for Peacebuilding

This report, part of a joint research project by ICTJ and UNICEF on the intersections of education, transitional justice, and peacebuilding, explores how a transitional justice framework can help to identify educational deficits relating to the logic of past conflict and/or repression and inform the reconstruction of the education sector.

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Tunisia in Transition: One Year After the Creation of the Truth and Dignity Commission

This briefing paper details and analyzes the progress made so far in Tunisia to implement its historic Transitional Justice Law, with a particular focus on the Truth and Dignity Commission, created one year ago.

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