Report on Impunity Watch Panel Discussion

Transitional justice: are we ticking the boxes when we should be joining the dots?

Café Dudok, The Hague, 15 December 2009

Read more

Report on Impunity Watch Expert Debate

1 July 2009, Amsterdam: Remembering the Srebrenica and Rwanda genocides: Do war memorials unite or divide?
Read more

Dealing with Impunity in Serbia - Options and Obstacles

Now available in English, this document provides a summary of a research project conducted over the past two years in Serbia, examining the root causes and nature of impunity for crimes committed by the Serbian state and citizens during the wars of Yugoslavia's dissolution during the 1990s.
Read more

Recognising the Past: Challenges in the Combat of Impunity in Guatemala

Now available in English, this document provides a summary of a research project conducted over the past two years in Guatemala, examining the root causes and nature of impunity for crimes committed during its long civil war.
Read more

The Persistence of Truth

This report looks at progress in truth-seeking and the combat of impunity in Guatemala ten years after its UN-backed truth comission, the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), published its findings on the events of the internal armed confrontation of 1960-96.
Read more

Impunity Watch Research Instrument

This Impunity Watch tool offers a basic framework for researching the state of accountability in post-conflict societies.
Read more

NEWS

Impunity Watch Exchange Meeting 2009

01/10/2009 - Impunity Watch shall this weekend begin its second annual partner exchange meeting, a gathering of its partner organisations from Guatemala and Serbia with its national and international staff. Also attending the meeting, this year held in Belgrade, Serbia are guests from Burundi, where Impunity Watch expects soon to begin a new Country Focus Programme.

At the end of 2008, Impunity Watch and its partners in Serbia and Guatemala completed comprehensive research into the causes of impunity and obstacles to overcoming it, and conducted policy consultations to determine a way forward. With both Baseline Country Reports (BCR) produced using Impunity Watch’s Research Instrument, they provide an excellent basis upon which to make a comparative analysis of the nature and effectiveness of transitional justice approaches in helping societies to recover and move on from painful periods in their past.

Even before any formal comparison of the reports was made, the juxtaposition of Guatemalan and Balkan transitional justice responses made it clear that an exchange of experiences has much to offer: the conflict and atrocities in Guatemala have been the subject of two extensive truth-finding initiatives, but, despite the consistent demand of victims, prosecutions of those responsible have been minimal and focused on low-level perpetrators; the Balkans largely reflects a mirror image, with massive efforts to achieve criminal justice and so far no large-scale and coordinated truth-finding at national or regional level.

Therefore, as Guatemala and Serbia continue to struggle for justice and truth, this meeting seeks to provide Impunity Watch's partners with an opportuity to assist one another in developing the best possible policies, mechanisms and approaches when it comes to combating impunity.

Taking place from 4-9 October 2009, the Exchange Meeting comprises three days of presentations and discussion, stimulated by a programme which includes a trip to the massacre and memorial site in Vukovar, Croatia, a tour of Belgrade’s monuments, and a series of visits to national and international institutions engaged in the combat of impunity.

A two-part debate series shall also take place, open to the wider public, in which participants from Guatemala and Burundi will communicate their experiences of truth-seeking to the Belgrade public and wider members of the RECOM initiative, a coalition of organisations from across the former Yugoslavia that is currently working to establish a regional commission to establish the truth of what happened during the wars of the 1990s.

For more information on the debates, click here.

Back to all news articles