Truth Commissions and Transitional Societies

The Impact on Human Rights and Democracy

Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781135189716
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Despite the increasing frequency of truth commissions, there has been little agreement as to their long-term impact on a state's political and social development. This book uses a multi-method approach to examine the impact of truth commissions on subsequent human rights protection and democratic practice.

Providing the first cross-national analysis of the impact of truth commissions and presenting detailed analytical case studies on South Africa, El Salvador, Chile, and Uganda, author Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm examines how truth commission investigations and their final reports have shaped the respective societies. The author demonstrates that in the longer term, truth commissions have often had appreciable effects on human rights, but more limited impact in terms of democratic development. The book concludes by considering how future research can build upon these findings to provide policymakers with strong recommendations on whether and how a truth commission is likely to help fragile post-conflict societies.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Transition Justice, Human Rights, Peace and Conflict Studies, Democratization Studies, International Law and International Relations.

Part I
Truth-seeking as an article of faith

1
An inconvenient truth

[T]ruth commissions can play an important role in providing a full account of past human rights violations, contributing to their investigation and eventual prosecution, preventing their repetition, and ensuring that victims and their relatives are provided with full reparation.

(Amnesty International, 2007)

Commissions can help to consolidate a democratic transition.... [T]hey can signal a formal break with a dark and violent past, and the transition to a more open, peaceful and democratic future. If they are successful, truth commissions can have the effect of weakening anti-democratic actors who might otherwise continue to pursue their goals outside the democratic process.

(Freeman and Hayner 2003: 126–27)

The rise of truth

Over the past twenty years, a growing consensus has developed that the truth commission can be an effective tool in the construction of a post-conflict society that is more democratic and more respectful of human rights. Although one can see historical precursors in a range of investigative commissions employed in earlier periods, the truth commission idea emerged in South America in the early 1980s and has diffused globally. As a number of Cold War-era dictatorships and long-standing civil conflicts ended in the 1980s and 1990s, these political openings frequently offered an opportunity to confront crimes that heretofore had gone unaddressed. This trend has continued into the twenty-first century as countries continue to attempt the transition to democracy and others consolidating their democracies re-examine earlier periods of brutality.

For the purposes of this study, I consider a truth commission to be

an ad hoc, autonomous, and victim-centered commission of inquiry set up in and authorized by a state for the primary purposes of (1) investigating and reporting on the principal causes and consequences of broad and relatively recent patterns of severe violence or repression that occurred in the state during determinate periods of abusive rule or conflict, and (2) making recommendations for their redress and future prevention.¹

There are four key characteristics that distinguish truth commissions from other types of investigative commissions. First, they focus on past events, though often the recent past; a truth commission does not examine contemporary abuses. Second, truth commissions investigate a pattern of abuses that often span an entire political era, which may be a period of civil conflict or a government’s tenure in office. In its mandate, the truth commission is given the parameters of its investigation both in terms of the time period to be covered as well as the types of human rights violations to be explored. Third, truth commissions are temporary. Typically, they have operated over a period of six months to two years before completing their work by submitting a report. Fourth, although they are independent, truth commissions are officially sanctioned, authorized, or empowered by the state. Based upon this definition, in the three decades up to early 2009, over two dozen truth commissions, listed in Table 1.1, have been created around the world.

Many transitional states have faced the dilemma of how to deal with those responsible for past human rights violations. The truth commission option has become particularly attractive for the many transitions that resulted not from a decisive victory by one side of the conflict, but by negotiated settlement.² In these situations, perpetrators of human rights abuses often retain some influence over the course of the transition. As such, they have the ability to disrupt fragile post-conflict societies if confronted with the prospect of punishment. It has become widely accepted that truth commissions can play a constructive role in these delicate transitional situations by balancing victims’ desire for some form of accountability with the practical recognition that perpetrators who retain power can wreak havoc with the transition if they feel threatened. For most human rights activists, truth commissions are a step forward until such time as prosecutions are possible.

At the same time, in recent years, truth commissions have been increasingly promoted as a uniquely victim-centered component of a multi-pronged transitional justice strategy.³ By providing a venue in which victims can tell their stories and have them officially acknowledged, truth commissions may be therapeutic and empowering. Such an approach may also help promote individual and societal reconciliation. In addition, truth commissions can reach more individual victims and perpetrators than trials, particularly if the judicial system is in poor shape. Therefore, truth commissions may have broader affects than prosecutions. What is more, a truth commission’s usual focus on institutional shortcomings rather than individual accountability may put this form of transitional justice in a better position to prompt reforms and make the repetition of such abuses less likely. For some, truth commissions theoretically compare favorably to trials for all of these reasons.

At the same time, it is possible to overstate the support for truth commissions among human rights policy-makers and activists. Most see truth

Table 1.1 A brief review of truth commissions (in chronological order)

commissions as a second-best option to trials because the latter provide punishment for perpetrators, an end that many argue is morally appropriate and most likely to be a deterrent. Nonetheless, there is widespread acceptance of the truth commission as a complement to trials. In a few instances, truth commissions have been established concurrently with trials. In other cases, trials may not be feasible or politically possible, so a truth commission is promoted with the hope that it will lay the foundation for future prosecutions. Foreign governments and international donors also find truth commissions appealing because of their lower cost compared to trials. At least partially as a result of this, truth commissions have been employed with growing frequency around the world.

A diverse group of influential international human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), including Amnesty International and the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), advocates the truth commission as an important element of a transitional justice strategy to address past human rights abuses. Initially, truth commission commissioners and staff from early cases promoted the idea in subsequent transitional situations on an ad hoc basis. Over time, the international infrastructure supporting transitional justice has grown increasingly robust. Perhaps most important in the development of the truth commission is the growing cadre of international human rights experts that consult with countries that are considering establishing some form of transitional justice to examine past human rights violations. Commissioners and staff from prior truth commissions have figured prominently in this group. Part activist and part epistemic community, this “justice cascade”⁴ applies continual pressure to fully address past crimes. Moreover, the veterans of earlier truth commissions have created specialized organizations to help governments navigate through transitional justice issues.⁵ Foundations, too, have largely been persuaded of the benefit of truth commissions and have been significant sources of funding in many instances. As a result, the majority of the global human rights community sees some value in truth commissions.

When Salvadoran negotiators looked at the Argentine and Chilean cases as they sought an end to their civil war, it marked a new stage in the history of truth commissions. The Salvadoran experience was significant because the United Nations (UN) was intimately involved in the process of establishing the truth commission. In the nearly two decades since then, the UN has become a vocal proponent of truth commissions and has worked to incorporate one into virtually every subsequent peace agreement in which it has been involved. The recently published UN Post-Conflict Justice Toolkit, penned by the ICTJ, touts the ability of truth commissions to prevent further abuses and prompt significant political reform.⁶ What is more, the UN has often served as a venue for raising money to support truth commission operations. Finally, international law increasingly articulates that states have a legal obligation to uncover the truth of past human rights violations that is independent of the obligation to punish those responsible.⁷

What is not to like about a development in which at least some steps are taken to address human rights violations? After all, historically, human rights violations around the world have usually been ignored. The fact is that, despite their increased use, we know surprisingly little about the consequences of conducting a truth commission. In general, existing studies have concluded that truth commissions are beneficial, or at least not harmful. However, the evidence to support these conclusions is remarkably weak. Most of the literature, whether written by activist, policy-maker, or academic, provides only impressionistic, anecdotal evidence for truth commission impact. Although recently there has been increasing attention paid to this problem, a range of conceptual and methodological issues have complicated such efforts. Generally, existing studies insufficiently measure potential truth commission effects and neglect to make convincing causal arguments. As a result, the global spread of truth commissions is based largely on faith in the power of truth-seeking rather than solid empirical evidence.

Truth commissions have remained popular despite this because real world events cannot wait for sound empirical results. For better or worse, truth commissions have garnered the reputation as an effective tool to respond to widely held notions that past human rights abuses must be examined in some way.⁸ Their growing popularity, however, has attracted greater scrutiny. Not only are the empirical foundations for the benefits of truth commissions weak, but many of the assertions of the positive power of truth have been challenged. Critics charge that truth commissions are ineffectual or, worse, dangerous. Yet, the foundation for these assertions is on similarly shaky ground. In the pages that follow, I begin the process of providing a more solid basis for truth commission advocacy by assessing the impact of truth commissions on two areas often mentioned by truth commission proponents: the advancement of democracy and human rights protection.

The state of knowledge regarding truth commission assessment

Over the past two decades, our understanding of truth commissions has advanced in important ways as their use has expanded. As is true of the beginning stages of many emerging research programs, early studies in the 1990s were predominantly descriptive accounts of individual cases.⁹ It is due to this first wave of truth commission research that we have rich descriptions of several truth commission cases. Typically, these empirical studies provided an overview of the circumstances under which the truth commission was created and chronicled the course of its investigation. Often, observers identify strengths and weaknesses based on how the commission conducted itself, largely based on assessments of how much information it was able to produce. That said, there is frequently insufficient observation of the truth commission in operation.¹⁰ Moreover, these accounts usually describe only the initial reception of the commission’s findings. It is unclear what, if any, long-term effects there were. Nonetheless, these initial studies provided valuable information on particular cases and many insightful hypotheses that are being tested by a new generation of research.

In recent years, social scientists and others have employed a variety of research methods to more critically examine truth commissions and the claims made about them. One branch of research examines the politics of political transitions to determine what factors lead countries to choose a particular approach to transitional justice.¹¹ In other words, they consider truth commissions, among other forms of transitional justice such as trials, as the dependent variable. Generally, they have found that, where the outgoing government retains significant power during the transition, yet pressure to address human rights violations exists, truth commissions are frequently chosen.

A second branch of research seeks to evaluate the truth commission experience. To do so, researchers tend to adopt one of two strategies that have different goals in mind. The first approach is to ask whether the truth commission was a success. These studies often judge the contribution based on the extent to which it fulfilled its mandate. Broader evaluations are frequently subjective assessments predicated on legal or normative criteria. The second strategy has been to explore what effects truth commissions have had i.e., to treat the truth commission as an independent variable. While increasingly employing more sophisticated qualitative and quantitative research methods, studies of truth commission impact frequently base their conclusions upon legal and moral judgments or rely on anecdotal and impressionistic evidence.¹² Individual-level studies have yielded insights on individual reactions to a truth commission, particularly South Africa’s.¹³ However, national-level assessments of truth commission impact have not proceeded as far.

National-level studies have tended to focus on a handful of the most well-known and well-regarded truth commissions. Lessons about truth commissions, therefore, are drawn from a biased sample of cases. Much of this literature, too, is dominated by former commissioners and staff, so there is the potential for bias in their analyses.¹⁴ Moreover, because much of this literature is written by members of the international human rights community, who usually move on to the next hotspot shortly after the commission is over, descriptive accounts frequently end with the immediate aftermath of the release of the commission’s final report. Therefore, at present, we still have little sense of the longer-term consequences of conducting truth commissions. There also has been a tendency to assume correlation is causation. By its mere presence, a truth commission may be given credit for developments that are more accurately attributed to other factors. Although the application of greater methodological rigor is welcome, it is still in its infancy.

Truth commission success

Those who are interested in success focus on the commission’s “deliverables.” In other words, what does the commission produce as a result of its investigation? As such, measuring success typically involves judging a truth commission on its own terms.¹⁵ As the product of unique national circumstances, there is variation in commission powers and the assigned tasks contained in its mandate. On a basic level, a truth commission can be viewed as a success simply by virtue of completing its work. In itself, this is no small feat. Commissions in Bolivia and the Philippines, for example, closed down early due to a lack of funds and the commissioners’ frustration with the lack of government and military cooperation. If a commission completes its investigation, the final report is usually submitted to the government. Completing the report and having the government publicly release it could be another indicator of success. Examples such as Haiti and Zimbabwe il...

Table of contents

• Security and Governance Series
• Contents
• Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Truth-seeking as an article of faith
• Part II Experiments in truth
• Part III Truth commissions in cross-national context
• Part IV The promise and pitfalls of truth commissions
• Appendix: countries in the statistical models
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index