Truth Commissions and Gender: Principles, Policies, and Procedures

This is the first in a series of thematic, operational handbooks on gender and transitional justice. The goal of this series is to assist those working with transitional justice mechanisms and inform the broader process to which they are contributing. Focusing on how transitional justice processes can better engage with women survivors seeking justice and acknowledgment, these handbooks are designed to help create institutions and processes that are responsive to the gendered dynamics of human rights abuse and cognizant of how we address these violations. This report focuses on truth commissions, and the International Center for Transitional Justice Gender Program will also publish parallel reports on other transitional justice mechanisms, including legal accountability processes and reparations programs.

Truth commission processes are an increasingly popular institutional mechanism for addressing past injustice. They can document human rights violations and identify the individuals and institutions responsible for abuse wile also acknowledging survivors' experiences and giving them a forum to testify about their experiences. Moreover, truth commissions are not confined to addressing a series of individual cases; they can, and usually do, investigate the enabling conditions of abuse and identify patterns of human rights violations, gendered or otherwise. On the basis of their investigations and hearings, truth commissions are often empowered to make recommendations for prosecutions, reform, and reparations. Truth commissions can be a powerful forum for catalyzing a conversation about past injustices and future redress; their findings can inform history textbooks and collective memory. Every community that has set up a truth commissions has also innovated and adapted the institution to fit its own needs and goals.

From countries emerging from war to peaceful nations that carry long-term legacies of injustice and repression, truth commissions can address a broad range of contexts. Yet, in all these instances, gender roles, hierarchies, and injustices can enable and exacerbate human rights abuse in complex and varied ways. The ICTJ is particularly concerned with how gender shapes the ways in which individuals and groups experience human rights abuse, as well as paths for accountability in addressing those legacies. Patterns f abuse reach forward to shape future paths for justice and human rights; thus, addressing past injustices is critical to shaping the terrain for current and future struggles for justice.

However, gender is often neglected in commission processes. Few truth commissions have fully addressed gender, particularly the impact of human rights abuse on women and sexual minorities. In fact, women's groups have often criticized truth commissions for failing to appreciate the significant and specifically gendered effects of political violence. Historically, truth commission processes have failed many women. Yet women's groups have also recognized that truth commissions can provide an extraordinary window of opportunity to highlight neglected abuses, research the enabling conditions of gendered violations, provide a forum for victims and survivors, recommend reparations that redress injustices, and leave a long-term legacy that is responsive to women's history and quest for reform. This report seeks to highlight the potential stakes for many women in a truth commission's day-to-day engagement with past abuses and examines alternative strategies for addressing this history in a commission's mandate.