Search Results for: truth AND reconciliation commission

South Africa’s Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) Tuesday made a monumental move in the attainment of justice for apartheid-era victims. In a revised indictment for the COSAS FOUR case, the DPP included apartheid as a crime against humanity for the first time. The United Nations General Assembly declared apartheid a crime against humanity in 1966.  The Apartheid [...]

The Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) of Gambia Thursday delivered its report to President Adama Barrow. The report, while not indicting anyone specifically, recommends prosecutions for anyone who was associated with atrocities committed during Yahya Jammeh’s 22 years in the presidency. The report itself has not yet been released publicly. The report, which details systemic [...]

Ian Profiri is JURIST’s Staff Correspondent for Canada. He files this dispatch from Calgary.  The government of Canada has filed for an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada over a September 29 Federal Court decision to uphold a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal order requiring Ottawa to compensate First Nations (FN) children for the role [...]

The French Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (CIASE) reported Tuesday that clergy, monks, or nuns sexually abused an estimated 216,000 children during a 70-year period. CIASE released its report after investigating French Catholic churches for over two and a half years. The report proposed detailed measures on issues relating to theology, ecclesiology, [...]

Mary Simon became Canada’s first Inuk Governor General on Monday. She is also the first Indigenous person to hold the position in Canada’s 154-year history, and her appointment comes at a time when Canadians are grappling with their common identity in the wake of the recovery of remains at several former residential schools. Simon has [...]

The Cowessess First Nation announced the discovery of 751 unmarked graves near the site of the Marieval Indian Residential School, approximately 160km east of Regina, Saskatchewan, on Thursday. The bodies were found using ground-penetrating sonar across an area of 44 000 square meters. The site is believed to have been a cemetery for victims of [...]

United Nations human rights experts called on Canadian authorities and the Catholic church on Friday to investigate the mass grave of over 200 children Indigenous children at a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. Earlier this week, Marta Hurtado, spokesperson of the UN Human Rights Office, called the discovery of the mass grave in [...]

A group of Canadian lawyers has formally requested the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the Vatican and the Canadian government for crimes against humanity following the discovery of the remains of 215 children at a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. If the investigation proceeds, it could lead to the prosecution of employees [...]

The government of the Australian state of Victoria announced Tuesday that it would become the first state in the country to establish a formal truth-telling commission to record the effects of colonization and dispossession on Aboriginal people. The Yoo-rrook Justice Commission, named after the word for “truth” in the Wemba Wemba/Wamba Wamba language of north-western Victoria, aims [...]

South Sudan’s cabinet on Friday authorized the minister of justice and constitutional affairs to begin the process of establishing a hybrid court and other institutions set out in the 2018 peace deal. South Sudan descended into civil conflict nearly three years after gaining independence in 2011. The government, led by President Salva Kiir Mayardit, was pitted against [...]