ICTJ congratulates Skylight Pictures on the latest film in its transitional justice series, "Granito: How to Nail a Dictator."

The film is currently on its worldwide festival tour, and has been awarded the Peace and Reconciliation Prize at the Geneva Human Rights Film Festival and the Grand Prix at the Paris International Human Rights Film Festival. ICTJ provided transitional justice expertise and served as a key outreach partner for the film.

"Granito," meaning "tiny grain of sand," invokes the ideas and possibilities of collective change. The film highlights this concept and the connections between documentation and the pursuit of justice. The story follows an unlikely twist of events, when footage from the director's first film about conflict in Guatemala, "When the Mountains Tremble," re-emerged as evidence in the genocide case 25 years later.

“Granito” also explores recently discovered national police archives and DNA evidence retrieved during the exhumations of Guatemala’s mass graves, evidence coming together in the continuing effort to end impunity for mass human rights crimes.

Four Haitians then stepped forward and brought a second case against him for crimes against humanity. Duvalier led Haiti from 1971-1986, leaving the country after a popular uprising accused him of brutality and misuse of government power.

Paul Seils, ICTJ’s legal counsel, recently traveled to Haiti to speak with justice actors about the cases against Duvalier, the potential for a public forum to bring out more information about the Duvalier period and how the judiciary can ensure a trial that is fair and allows for the participation of victims of rights violations during that period.

“What we’re keen on doing,” Seils says, “is at least maximizing the information that’s coming out in such a way that victims have a way of making sure that their rights are vindicated in some form.”

Seils believes that international actors can play a crucial role in supporting Haiti during this case primarily by calling for a thorough investigation and a fair, transparent trial. The most difficult task ahead, according to Seils, may be how to ensure the qualitative participation of victims in the justice process when many still fear retribution.

“[There remain] huge levels of fear,” Seils adds. “Most of the people who were political opponents, either civilian dissidents or as political activists, basically were either kicked out of the country or left the country for fear of their own safety. That means that the prospects of coming back and speaking out really have to be measured against their own memories of those fears, but also what the circumstances are for being protected and taken seriously now. Talking to some of the victims that are bringing the cases just now, it’s very clear that fear still plays a large part.”

On February 7th, 2011, Sudan's government officially recognized South Sudan's referendum decision to become an independent state. The U.S. Institute of Peace has identified nine points of dispute along the north-south border and violence continues to upset Darfur and Jonglei. However, the referendum itself succeeded peacefully. Now the fledgling South Sudan government must prioritize what transitional justice issues to tackle first.

“People are very optimistic,” Suliman Baldo, ICTJ's Africa Director, says in an interview during his current visit this week to Juba, South Sudan. “At the same time, people are apprehensive because there are many serious issues, and sensitive ones, which have not been addressed, that were supposed to be addressed prior to the referendum.”

People that the north must be held accountable, Baldo asserts, “for atrocities committed by its forces and militias under its command within South Sudan. However, we noticed in the trainings we are conducting with civil society groups…and victim’s groups that there is an increasing sense of pressure from these groups for accountability from within South Sudan. There needs to be an acknowledgement that atrocities have occurred. There needs to be an accounting for that. There needs to be reconciliation.

As President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has agreed to step down after 18 days of protests, ICTJ looks to how Egypt will begin transforming in terms of justice and accountability.

ICTJ Vice President for Programs Hanny Megally discusses what we can expect in the weeks and months to come. What happens in the next few days will be crucial in determining how quickly constitutional and legislative reform can happen.

Habib Nassar, director of ICTJ’s Middle East and North Africa Program, traveled to Tunis last week to bring the organization’s expertise to the discussion on how such a strategy might be shaped. On his return to New York, he shared what he learned in this podcast interview.

“When I was there before the revolution it was almost impossible to move around Tunis and meet civil society activists without being constantly followed by the political police,” Nassar recalled. “Human rights defenders were persistently harassed and intimidated. The use of torture, arbitrary detention, and other sorts of abuse was pervasive…What I saw this time was Tunisians breathing freedom.”

Nassar clarifies that ICTJ’s role in Tunisia is to share a broad range of expertise shaped in related political transformations in many different countries. Ultimately the organization seeks to support a domestic approach to the transition.

“We are right now in the phase of assessing what the needs of Tunisians are, what their expectations are, what their plans are. At the end, it’s up to the Tunisians themselves to devise the right transitional justice strategy for their country.”

In the first of ICTJ's podcast series on the legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, we sit down with Ambassador Allieu Ibrahim Kanu, the former Deputy Permanent Representative for Legal Affairs at the Mission of Sierra Leone to the United Nations.

In this discussion with ICTJ's Hannah Dunphy, he reflects on the evolution of the institution, and recalls the challenging negotiations in the early days of establishing the Court. The Ambassador describes how the SCSL has helped to enhance a broader understanding of international law in Sierra Leone, and contributed jurisprudence to the international system. In recounting the successes of the SCSL, he stresses that if any international criminal justice system is to be credible, robust outreach is critical. In closing, he shares his personal views on the lessons to be learned from the work of the Special Court.

A soldier walks past a graffiti reading 'Sixth Front FARC - EP for the New Colombia' in the rural area of Caloto, Cauca department, Colombia, on June 3, 2012. LUIS ROBAYO/AFP/GettyImages

In the first ICTJ Forum, transitional justice experts discuss the upcoming peace negotiations between the Colombian government and leftist FARC rebels, the UN Security Council debate on accountability for crimes against children, the proposed ordinance on a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Nepal, and the first report to the UN Human Rights Council by the recently appointed Special Rapporteur on transitional justice.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) celebrates its 10th year in existence this coming July, and has yet to deliver a verdict in any of its 21 active proceedings. The first ruling, in the case against former rebel commander Thomas Lubanga for the use of child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is expected in the coming months.

But this should not be interpreted as a failure of the court, or as a failure to pursue accountability for mass crimes more broadly. In a statement made upon his election to the role of prosecutor of the ICC, Luis Moreno Ocampo explained that true success in combating impunity must be achieved in national courts:

“The efficiency of the International Criminal Court should not be measured by the number of cases that reach the court or by the content of its decisions. Quite on the contrary, because of the exceptional character of this institution, the absence of trials led by this court as a consequence of the regular functioning of national institutions would be its major success.”

This statement underscores the principle of complementarity—that the primary responsibility for investigating and prosecuting war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide rests with states. This is the principle on which the ICC was founded. How to successfully turn this principle into practice, however, remains the subject of ongoing debate.

Following ICTJ’s second high-level meeting to further this discussion between leading justice and development actors, we launched a special podcast series on complementarity. In this installation we speak with Ambassador Thomas Winkler, undersecretary for legal affairs at the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Our discussion focuses on the role of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP), the legislative body of the ICC, in supporting the capacity of national court systems to address international crimes. Denmark and South Africa, as focal points within the ASP on complementarity, have been instrumental on moving the discussions forward on this issue.

Complementarity cannot be thought of as separate from the work of the ICC, Winkler explains. What is needed is an increased focus by the court, and by the ASP, on building the capacity of national judiciaries. For this to be successful we must see increased support and commitment from states within the ASP, resources dedicated to complementarity work, and a clearly defined role for the court and states parties on how to turn this principle into practice.