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Truth Commission Research Paper

Decent Essays

A truth commission is a commission that is instated to reveal past misdoings of the public, government, non-state actors and the like; it is associated as typically the first step away from war or authoritarian rule. As seen throughout case studies, these commissions arise for different purposes; some truth commissions are what is chosen by the government to showcase breaches in human rights, rather than other constructive peaceful mechanisms. Although, these commissions do suggests recommendations (such as arrests, lustration, compensation and education), the country isn’t always required to do them. More so than that, these recommendations can fail the victims. A truth commission can fulfil all its duties in a hypothetical agenda, but justice …show more content…

Haiti’s truth commission stems from repressive tyrant leaders. During Cédras rule alone, 5,000 were killed and thousands more were beaten, tortured and raped by police officials. When Catholic Father Jean-Bertrand Aristride gained power once more, he created the commission with presidential decree that found 19,000 violations reported as well as around 8,700 victims. Many Cédras followers were still around and created problems for the commissioners. Many involved death threats. As extreme as this is, it shouldn’t be held as an excuse for the outcome of the commission. The Commission Nationale de Vérité et de Justice, or CNVJ as an abbreviation that will henceforth be used, had many weaknesses that mostly indulged with clarity. The CNVJ could not define what the truth would mean for this commission, by which the vary name of these commissions tells of the troubles that would unfold. There was issues in capacity and funding, disagreements erupted between the stressed commissioners, making investigating even more difficult, a time restraint was put in place and there was limited personnel. There is the argument that other truth commission that held funding issues and time restraints were still able to function, but these set backs were not what abruptly failed the Haitian citizens and victims. …show more content…

It is easy to critique in an obscure view what the repercussions of a truth commission is doing wrong, especially when not being immersed in the reinventing environments of which these truth commissions take place. Truth commissions are hard to accomplish and can be argued to be infinitely imperfect. Jamie Rowen pens in her chapter “Truth in the Shadow of Justice,” the difficulties involved in truth-seeking initiatives that adhere to the goals of transitional justice. Focusing on four different organizations, she found that the “findings suggests that, although [the organization] value investigation, documentation and publicizing information, civil society organizations are focusing their efforts on new strategies to publicize information” (Rowen 136). When following the argument of this paper, one would suspect disputes over if organizations should focus on improving the system of truth commissions to further enhance and better the lives of civilians, truth commissions as well as other truth-seeking initiatives. However, the documentation for truth telling does just as it sounds. Measures such as these would be beneficial to cases similar to that of Haiti and would improve the basis of truth telling. Restorative justice comes after the fact. Of course, this is relatively new information and cannot be implemented as of yet because of the limitations in

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