Interactive Dialogue by the Human Rights Council on Transitional Justice
On 5 March, in the framework of the 58th session of the UN Human Rights Council, the session dedicated to the interactive dialogue on the Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (A/HRC/58/36), published on 9 January 2025, took place. In this meeting, the role of Transitional Justice in peacebuilding and sustainable development was discussed, with a special focus on SDG 16: Peace, justice and strong institutions.
During the session, the main conclusions and good practices contained in the Report were presented, which were drawn from the regional consultations carried out with numerous States and Organisations. In this way, and despite the diversity of the environments considered, the experiences analysed in the transition processes have made it possible to extract a series of fundamental lessons that can be transferred, with the appropriate contextual adaptations, to any post-conflict scenario or one characterised by serious human rights violations.
Firstly, as Mr. Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, emphasised during the session, in an international scenario prone to the proliferation of conflicts, Transitional Justice must be understood as a fundamental tool for confronting the past and building sustainable peace. However, in order to maximise its impact, it is essential to adopt a holistic approach that encompasses all the dimensions of Transitional Justice: truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition, to which we can add memory policies.
Similarly, the various speakers, after presenting the experience and measures adopted in specific contexts, underlined the importance of adopting a victim-centred approach, not only through the design and implementation of effective remedies and reparation measures, but also through the promotion of their active participation, as well as that of civil society organisations.
This protagonism is essential to enhance their transformative capacity in more developed, just and resilient societies, capable of overcoming the abuses of the past and, in turn, of encouraging political actors to adopt measures aimed at the effective protection and guarantee of human rights. However, for such participation to be truly effective, it is essential to ensure certain basic conditions, such as the creation of safe spaces for the exchange of ideas, access to legal and psychological support, and the incorporation of inclusive approaches that integrate multi-ethnic, gender and generational perspectives, ensuring meaningful youth participation.
The report also documents practices that can be applied even in contexts where conditions are seemingly unfavourable for the implementation of Transitional Justice mechanisms. This is possible thanks to the broad and flexible nature of this approach, as well as the diversity of measures that comprise it, which allows it to be adapted to different socio-political realities. In this sense, it highlights multiple successful experiences developed in different states, underlining the positive impact of certain initiatives, mostly focused on victims, and providing valuable references for their possible replication in other scenarios.
It also emphasises the relevance of the role that international mechanisms and actors can play in complex contexts, both as a means to support and lay the foundations for Transitional Justice processes, as well as for the supplementary role they can play in the face of scenarios of state inaction. In this sense, the usefulness of instruments such as universal jurisdiction and international judicial mechanisms, which can act when states fail to adopt effective measures to investigate and punish serious human rights violations, is highlighted.
By way of conclusion, and in light of what was pointed out both in the Report and in the Human Rights Council session, it is clear that the current context is characterised by a growing propensity for new conflicts and the persistence of unresolved crises. Against this background, it is imperative that, at both the national and international levels, measures to prevent the recurrence of violence and to lay the foundations for lasting peace be actively promoted. In this sense, transitional contexts offer a particularly propitious opportunity to implement such measures, allowing for the consolidation of reconciliation processes and guaranteeing the construction of more just and inclusive societies; societies that, ultimately, make possible a world in which living in peace is an attainable reality for all people.
Paula Gutierrez Gago, FIBGAR’s collaborator.
17 April 2025
