In this episode of the podcast series, we speak with Mr. Jean Arnault, former special representative of the secretary general for Guatemala, and head of the UN Verification Mission in Guatemala from 1997 to 2000. He was also an observer and mediator in the Guatemalan peace negotiations and served as senior political affairs officer in Afghanistan, Namibia, and Western Sahara.

In this interview with ICTJ’s Hannah Dunphy, Mr. Arnault explains the unique role of peace mediators, looks back at the shortcomings of the peace process in Guatemala, and explains why truth-seeking and peace agreements must respond to the needs of a society.

Arnault asserts that the political polarization, discrimination and societal tensions faced today in Guatemala are deeply connected to the country’s UN-brokered peace process which ended the 36-year internal armed conflict in 1996.

“If I look now at Guatemala, 20 years later, there’s no question in my view that somehow a big space was left empty. And that’s the space of national reconciliation.”

When asked what he would have done differently, he stresses that neither the truth commission nor subsequent measures have really addressed the problem of polarization.

“If you arrive in Guatemala today, one thing that will certainly strike you is the fact that […] polarization—rather than decreasing—has maybe even increased, compared to where we were around the final years of the peace process. And I think the responsibility for that polarization partly rests with the fact that, frankly, the negotiators—including yours truly—never really thought that this was a subject.”

Reflecting on truth-seeking during his twenty years of international experience as a peace mediator, Arnault says he’s learned that strong national demand for the truth is essential to the success of a truth commission, as it reflects a general need for transitional mechanisms to respond to the needs of a society, including the basic necessities of daily life.

“I’m deeply, deeply convinced that if I look at most peace processes 20 years later, they have secure peace in most cases, fairly stable in many cases. But one thing that most of these processes have not delivered is socioeconomic peace dividends.”

Arnault warns that after a transition, the consequences of this failure can threaten the very foundations of peace.

“At the end of the day, without lifting people out of poverty, without improving their daily life, you may have a durable peace, but you will not have the peace that is immune from the resumption of conflict.”

PHOTO: Jean Arnault, pictured at the High-Level Symposium "Challenging the Conventional: Can truth Commission Effectively Strengthen Peace Processes?" held in New York, November 2013. (ICTJ)

A former commissioner of Kenya’s Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC), Betty Murungi has over 23 years of experience in the practice of law at the national, regional, and international levels, as well as extensive human rights experience in the context of violent conflict and international criminal justice accountability mechanisms.

In this interview with ICTJ’s Hannah Dunphy, Ms. Murungi shares insight on Kenya’s own process of truth-seeking, the role of women in Sierra Leone’s truth commission, and the critical importance of innovating new approaches to determining the needs of women after conflict.

Murungi first reflects on the impact of the TJRC of Kenya, noting its failures to deliver on all aspects of its broad and ambitious mandate.

“There are some really good parts of the mandate that were covered very well and reported on very well, with excellent recommendations,” she says. “But then there are others that are poor.”

Part of Murungi’s extensive advocacy for the rights of women and girls transpired in Sierra Leone, which was undergoing its own series of justice measures—including truth-seeking—after a conflict had raged for over a decade, and where levels of violence against women were staggering.

“The women of Sierra Leone wanted to tell their stories, and they wanted to be heard; and in fact, they were heard,” Murungi explains. “There were a whole lot of women in Sierra Leone who testified in public, so that the rest of the population could hear what had happened to them.”

When asked to reflect on broad lessons to be learned from other truth commissions, Murungi says it is not enough to only address crimes or violations against women in conflict: women must be included in the design of justice measures—such as reparations programs— meant to address harm suffered.

“Women, men, and children experience conflict differently. And therefore their needs, their justice needs, post-conflict, are different,” says Murungi.

“When you speak to women in post-conflict settings or in conflict settings, about, for example, restitution, they do not want to be restituted to the positions they were in, prior to the conflict. When you look at reparations from a gender perspective, you want to look at what are the [root] causes, the structural causes of violence in communities.”

Learn more about women's participation in transitional justice in our recent Gender Justice Program Report, or listen to the stories of survivors of Sierra Leone's conflict in ICTJ's multimedia project, Seeds of Justice.

PHOTO: Betty Murungi, pictured at the High-Level Symposium "Challenging the Conventional: Can truth Commission Effectively Strengthen Peace Processes?" held in New York, November 2013. (ICTJ)

In the first of our special ICTJ Forum series on truth commissions and peace negotiations, we speak with Alan Doss, Senior Political Advisor to Mr. Kofi Annan and Associate Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP).

In this interview with ICTJ's Hannah Dunphy, Mr. Doss shares his reflections on his work brokering and implementing peace deals in countries around the world.

From 2007 to 2010, Mr. Doss was the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Head of the UN peace keeping mission (MONUC). Immediately prior to his assignment to the DRC, he was the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Liberia and head of the UN mission (UNMIL).

In the DRC, where the infamous rebel group M23 has recently admitted defeat, Mr. Doss says the country faces yet another opportunity to pursue peace and justice in the wake of devastating violence.

"If this now is to be a real turning point, as opposed to once again a brief interlude before conflict reignites, it would be important to deal with these underlying problems," says Doss.

"Deal with the problem of communal relations in North Kivu[...] Deal with the problem of the absence of discipline in the armed forces, in the security forces, which is very important, because they are part of the problem. They need to be part of the solution. Deal with the regional dimension: Rwanda, Uganda. And above all deal with the institutional weaknesses of the Congolese state. If not, these problems will come back to haunt the country in one form or another."

He also responds to the criticism of the Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which emerged out of peace negotiations that brought about the end to the country's second civil war.

"Right from the outset, it was going to be a very difficult, even traumatic process," he says. "If we were to do it all again, one would have to look carefully at who is selected, who is on the commission, who leads the commission, the terms of reference for the commission, what exactly were we expecting to get out of the commission."

Leymah Gbowee addresses participants at the conference "Peace Through Law: The Development of an Ideal" in The Hague, Netherlands, August 2013, organized by the International Criminal Court Student Network. (HANNAH DUNPHY/ICTJ)

Leymah Gbowee is a human rights defender who was one of the leading voices in the women’s peace movement that contributed to the end of Liberia’s second civil war. In 2011, she—along with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Tawakkul Karman—was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their non-violent struggle for women's rights.

In August, we spoke with Ms. Gbowee in The Hague, Netherlands, where she was a keynote speaker at several events marking 100 years of the Peace Palace. As former Liberian President Charles Taylor awaited the verdict of his appeal across town at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, Gbowee reflected on the 10-year anniversary of the end of Liberia’s second civil war.

In this edition of the ICTJ Forum, Ms. Gbowee describes what it was like to tackle the enormous project of transitional justice in Liberia, a process which never fully included the participation of the women’s movement that was so instrumental in bringing about the end of the war.

Between 1989 and 2003, Liberia was engulfed by civil war. More than 200,000 people died, state structures collapsed, and a million people were displaced from their homes.

The conflict stopped only with the 2003 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Accra, Ghana, a moment which, ten years later, Gbowee recounts through vivid and emotional memories:

“It was a fight for survival. We knew that we were the consciences of a group of men who had lost their consciences.”

The conflict had definitely launched Gbowee into a role of leadership for women in her community, and the struggle for peace in her country.

But as the world presented the anniversary of one of peace, Gbowee was not so optimistic: “Peace is not just the silencing of the guns, peace is not just the absence of war,” she said. “For me, peace is when justice is not judged by the size of a person’s pocket.”

Gbowee recalls that after the CPA was signed, many Liberian victims—especially women—felt shut out of the country’s first steps towards truth, justice and reconciliation.

“It really became a space of the powerful boys in civil society, those who could talk the language of the international NGOs; and the women’s organizations did not really know the language of those NGOs.”

Among the many obstacles for peace is the lack of public trust in courts and the legal system as a whole to fairly address their grievances. The ongoing impunity for rape and other sexual crimes committed during the war is directly tied to a general lack of trust in the courts and judicial system.

Gbowee sees the high levels of corruption and lack of due process in Liberia’s justice system as a slap in the face, particularly to victims of ongoing sexual violence.

“People tell you if you don’t have money then don’t go to court. So, come back to cases of rape: why do you think parents agree to settle out of court? It’s not because they want to be living in a stone age, but [going to court] will leave them more traumatized then when their daughters were raped.”

This month, the Special Court for Sierra Leone’s (SCSL) upheld the 50-year sentence of Liberia’s ex-President for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity committed by rebels in Sierra Leone’s civil war. When asked to reflect on the Taylor case, Gbowee admits the case is historic, but expresses reservations about the fate of his victims.

“I’m glad that Taylor got arrested. I’m glad that he’s being tried and gotten a conviction,” she says. “But […] at the end of this verdict, Taylor still has millions hidden somewhere, he’s still making calls about properties in Liberia. I would love to see some of his properties sold off and given to victims in Sierra Leone and Liberia.”

Two jailed rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, walked handcuffed back to their cells after attending a ceremony where they graduated as "peacemakers" after they renounced to the rebel group and the armed struggle at La Picota prison in southern Bogota, Wednesday, March 11, 2009. (AP Photo/William Fernando Martinez)

Ongoing peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels could end the longest running war in the western hemisphere. At the heart of the debate is how perpetrators of serious crimes will be held accountable.

In the latest edition of ICTJ’s podcast series, we asked ICTJ Vice President Paul Seils to illuminate the hard questions dominating the current debate: What justice options are under consideration in the peace negotiations? Will accountability be traded for peace? Are prison sentences the only acceptable punishment for these crimes? Also, how can criminal justice work with other transitional justice mechanisms to provide justice and benefit Colombian society as a whole?

In considering the “peace versus justice” debate, Seils underscores that “we’ve come a very long way.” He notes this shift by referencing two 1985 referendums in Uruguay, in which Uruguayans voted to grant amnesty to perpetrators of serious crimes. Today, says Seils, this would be inconceivable: “We’ve moved to a position where we accept and understand the need for criminal justice to be applied,” he says. “That’s a massive jump.”

In Colombia, while discussion is underway about what kind of punishment should be applied, Seils says transitional justice measures can play a key role in informing broader needs of justice beyond jail sentences for perpetrators. Seils argues that applying different transitional justice measures, such as truth seeking, reparations for victims, and institutional reform allow for accountability in different forms, but these measures need to be applied “seriously and comprehensively, to try to genuinely create a new democratic compact within the society.”

For a discussion on these and other questions central to the historic moment, listen to this latest ICTJ podcast in English and Spanish.

Photo: People gather near a damaged car a day after a fighting in Beirut, Lebanon, June 29, 2009. AP Photo/Bilal Hussein.

In this edition of the ICTJ Forum, we speak with Lynn Maalouf, one of the primary authors of a new report by ICTJ entitled Lebanon’s Legacy of Political Violence. The report compiles information on hundreds of incidents of serious crimes that took place from 1975 to 2008 in all parts of Lebanon.

In this conversation with ICTJ's Hannah Dunphy, Maalouf explains that the report is the first effort to gather existing reports of political violence, including incidents that could be classified as widespread or systematic attacks against civilian populations. Other acts that were documented include massive bombardments of residential areas, systematic and widespread use of torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, sieges of villages, and depriving civilian populations of food and water.

"The idea is that incidents of political violence in Lebanon never stopped," says Maalouf. "Not since 1975, and not today. Especially today."

Maalouf also explains how youth in Lebanon are starting to ask why this history isn't widely acknowledged, and why despite the overwhelming number of civilians killed, injured, displaced or otherwise harmed by decades of violence, there remains a near-total lack of justice for victims.

"Today we do see these young people saying; this is wrong; we do have a right to know what happened," says Maalouf. "We do see young people being more active and more hopeful in their demands for a history curriculum, for instance, which still doesn’t exist in Lebanon."

For more background on the report and Lebanon's struggle to face its past, read our recent feature here or download the report here

Photo: Ernestina Enriquez Fierro walks at the front of a group of marchers during an International Women's Day march organized by mothers of disappeared daughters from the border city of Ciudad Juarez in Mexico City, March 2013. Fierro's daughter, Adriana Sarmiento Enriquez, 15, disappeared on January 2008 and her body was found in Nov. 2009. Authorities returned the body to her mother in 2011. AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills.

During times of conflict, there are many reasons why individuals may go missing or are left unaccounted for. But the practice of enforced disappearances is a particularly chilling one and usually involves the targeted abduction and “disappearing” of political dissidents or opponents of a particular regime. Forced disappearances are devastating tools of fear, repression and intimidation, and have occurred in countries as diverse as El Salvador, Lebanon, and Nepal.

To mark the International Day of the Disappeared, ICTJ's Hannah Dunphy talks with Kelli Muddell, director of ICTJ's Gender Justice program, who explains how and why the crime of disappearances is affecting women around the world. She also explains how transitional justice mechanisms can work with women to bring justice and redress for the victims of this disturbing practice. This podcast is part of ICTJ's observance of the International Day of the Disappeared.

In this edition of the ICTJ Forum, ICTJ Communications Director Refik Hodzic discusses transitional justice in the news with Truth and Memory Program Director Eduardo Gonzalez and Reparative Justice Program Director Ruben Carranza.

The Forum examines the meaning and impact of the explosive new documentary “The Act of Killing” from director Joshua Oppenheimer, which features the perpetrators of atrocities against political dissidents and suspected sympathizers in 1960’s Indonesia. “The Act of Killing” emerged out of what was originally research for a post-doctoral thesis, and with the backing of acclaimed documentary filmmakers such as Errol Morris and Warner Herzog, it has turned into a cultural phenomenon that is sparking new discussions in the film and human rights communities.

The ICTJ Forum also addresses events in Peru, where weeks of anti-government protests have brought new questions to justice in the country, which next week will mark the 10-year anniversary of the final report of its Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The forum also discusses events in the Philippines, which continues its peace negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Read more about the discussion here

In this conversation with Hannah Dunphy of ICTJ, she says that the SCSL should be remembered "for its vision," and talks about the release of a new report by NPWJ, Making Justice Count: Assessing the Impact and Legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Ms. Smith served as the chief legal adviser to the Vice President of Sierra Leone on the Special Court and international humanitarian law.

Photo: A mural of Mohamed Bouazizi by faroutflora

In the latest ICTJ podcast, Reparative Justice Program director Ruben Carranza joins us for a discussion on Tunisia, where reparations are at the forefront of the country’s discussions of transitional justice.

Tunisia's government, civil society, and victims groups are engaged in intense debate over how reparations for victims of the revolution should be defined and administered. As the debates move forward, post-revolution economics are proving to be a critical component of reparations planning.

Transitional reforms continue to address economic dimensions of the revolution, including a commission of inquiry into corruption and embezzlement, the freezing of assets of former President Ben Ali and those close to the regime, and confiscation of property.

In this conversation with ICTJ's Hannah Dunphy, Carranza explains why economic injustices were at the heart of Tunisia’s revolution, the difficulties of designing compensation programs for victims, and what to watch in the unfolding debate around reparations.