Truth Commissions

Truth commissions offer a prospect of facilitating national and personal reconciliation while potentially complementing efforts to promote justice.  However, they might also serve as a post-conflict battleground of narrative construction and unwanted compromise.

Truth commissions came to prominence following the fall of the military regimes in Chile and Argentina, which may activists and scholars in the region consider to have pursued genocidal policies against dissidents.  The commissions were meant to help relatives of victims of those regimes – whether missing or deceased – attain closure by uncovering the specific fate of those victims.  They also served to publicize the misdoings of those regimes, and thereby increase pressure for retribution of some sort against them.

Guatemala’s 1995 Historical Clarification Commission was created in 1994 as part of the peace process between the government and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) rebels. The Commission’s report conveyed evidence of the systematic, targeted slaughter of ethnic Mayans – in short, genocide.  The experience of the commission also illustrates both the power and limitations truth commissions face:  For many years, the government of Guatemala essentially ignored the CEH’s final report (which was translated into English through an effort supported by the GSP), allowing individuals named in the report to live and even hold office with impunity, while ignoring the report’s calls for reparations to victim groups.  Yet, in 2013, the report’s findings served as one of the bases for a case – and conviction – of genocide against General Rios Montt, which became the first instance of a national court reaching a guilty verdict on a charge of genocide against a former head of state.