16 November 2025
17 November 2025 – Ten years ago, the European Commission adopted the EU’s policy framework promoting a comprehensive, long-term approach to transitional justice. It is aimed at fighting impunity, providing recognition and redress to victims, fostering trust, strengthening the rule of law and contributing to reconciliation and non-recurrence. The Council stressed the importance of victim-centred and context-specific approaches to transitional justice to ensure that their design and implementation are locally and nationally-owned.
What progress has been made in the 10 years since this policy was introduced? How do we know that transitional justice indeed works for communities that need it most?
Civil Rights Defenders and Impunity Watch, members of the Global Initiative Against Impunity for International Crimes and Serious Human Rights Violations: Making Justice Work (GIAI), are pleased to present the ‘Transitional Justice in Action’ campaign.
This visual booklet highlights impact stories* from various grassroots and civil society organisations around the world, demonstrating the value of diverse transitional justice initiatives and their continued relevance in a world full of new and worsening crises. The stories highlight a prolific movement that is actively resisting impunity in every corner of the globe.
We call for solidarity with the victims and survivors who lead and inspire these stories and movements, and for continuous support for their long fight for justice.
**The impact stories are collected from the grantees of a Financial Support for Third Parties (FSTP) mechanism, implemented by Civil Rights Defenders. The FSTP programme ensures a holistic approach to justice and accountability, spanning both criminal and transitional justice mechanisms.
The challenges that face us
Despite important advances in strengthening justice and accountability responses for serious human rights violations, several systemic and political challenges continue to hamper progress.
In line with the EU’s Transitional Justice Policy and global accountability frameworks, dangerous and persisting challenges include:
- Progressive erosion of justice ecosystems and declining adherence to international legal norms.
This is driven by politicisation of institutions, shrinking civic space, and the weakening of checks and balances at both national and international levels. - Fragmentation and limited coordination across accountability actors.
This includes judicial institutions, investigative bodies, civil society organisations, and international mechanisms—resulting in incoherent strategies, gaps in protection, and reduced overall impact. - Insufficient integration of victims’ and survivors’ rights and perspectives.
Meaningful participation is often constrained by security risks, inadequate procedural safeguards, and the lack of accessible, survivor-centred pathways to justice. - Disinformation and the strategic manipulation of narratives.
These distort truth-seeking efforts, delegitimise accountability actors, and undermine public trust in justice institutions. - Chronic underfunding and short-term project cycles.
These limit the sustainability, reach, and long-term effectiveness of justice and accountability initiatives, particularly in protracted and politically sensitive contexts.
Consequently, accountability remains elusive, grievances worsen, abuses continue, institutional trust diminishes, cycles of violence continue as root causes are unaddressed–and impunity prevails.
This underscores urgency for a more cohesive and inclusive approach to justice and accountability.
Recommendations for the EU and Member States
Ensuring continuity of funding for transitional justice initiatives remains a cornerstone of sustainable peacebuilding and accountability. The EU’s leadership under the GIAI programme illustrates the value of long-term, coordinated support in advancing justice, prevention, and non-recurrence.
The EU and its member states can redouble efforts to fight back against the global trend of normalisation of impunity and the erosion of human rights and rule of law norms by demonstrating solidarity with victims and survivors that fight for justice, truth, reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence.
Together with civil society, the EU must foster dialogues, learning and exchanges amongst actors across continents to promote the fight against impunity and support of transitional justice. They must also support the design of joint strategies for political action and help building broad, effective coalitions for change. In this respect, centring victims’ voices to craft compelling counter-narratives to disinformation can inspire mobilisation for transformative change.
The EU and its member states must also leverage still-existing entry points, policy spaces and resources at the global, regional, and national levels to promote the fight against impunity and transitional justice. This includes multilateral spaces, but also bilateral dialogues and engagements. The participation and brokering of knowledge of victims and survivors should be ensured at all times.
Finally, we propose a few key paths forward for the next decade of the EU’s Transitional Justice Policy:
- Ensure that TJ efforts adopt gender-transformative and intersectional approaches, moving beyond general gender mainstreaming.
This includes addressing structural gendered harms, challenging harmful gender norms (including militarised masculinities), and recognising how intersecting identities shape experiences of violence and access to justice. - Increase protection and risk-mitigation support for human rights defenders, victims, survivors, and civil society organisations engaged in accountability work, particularly in restrictive or high-risk environments.
This includes legal protection, digital security, emergency support, and robust safeguarding measures, as well as measures to mitigate the unintended negative impact of sanctions regimes on civil society operations and victim and survivor support. - Invest in local organisations and victim-led structures, ensuring they have the resources, autonomy, and long-term capacity to document violations, participate meaningfully in justice processes, and shape advocacy agendas.
This should include access to core and flexible funding, not only short-term project-based support. - Clarify and operationalise the implementation of the EU Transitional Justice Policy, including establishing concrete mechanisms for coordination, regular monitoring, review, and evaluation. Given the Policy’s emphasis on implementation, it is important to assess whether systematic monitoring has taken place and strengthen follow-up where needed.
The crucial work of the grassroots organisations highlighted in this booklet, among many others, emphasise that solidarity and a strong victim-centered approach is the only way forward.
With long-term, sustained, and meaningful support for Transitional Justice initiatives, we can continue fighting and mobilising against the rising tide of authoritarianism, and dismantle the structural root causes of impunity.
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For more information, please contact: info@crd.org or info@impunitywatch.org
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About the Global Initiative Against Impunity
The Global Initiative Against Impunity for International Crimes and Serious Human Rights Violations (GIAI) is a civil society-led initiative of eight organisations, the Secretariat of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC), and two associate partners.
Co-funded by the European Union, the Consortium endeavours to strengthen the global response to serious crimes and human rights violations, ultimately promoting a culture of accountability and respect for human rights worldwide. Find out more.
| About Civil Rights Defenders
Civil Rights Defenders is a politically and religiously independent human rights organisation, which partners with and supports human rights defenders who work in some of the world’s most repressive regions. Find out more. |
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| About Impunity Watch
Impunity Watch is an international non-profit organisation working with victims, survivors and communities affected by violence to transform deeply ingrained structures of impunity, deliver redress for grave human rights violations, and promote justice and peace. Find out more. |
Disclaimer
The publication, ‘Transitional Justice in Action’ has been co-funded by the European Union through the Directorate-General for International Partnerships (INTPA). The contents of the booklet are the sole responsibility of Civil Rights Defenders and Impunity Watch and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Union or DG INTPA.The European Union is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained herein.