Beyond Words project on truth commission recommendations

The transformative potential of truth commissions (TCs) arguably lies most directly in the body of recommendations put forward in the report. TC recommendations usually include reforms in the legal, political and social fields, and reparations of various kinds. The list is often extensive. The tendency over time has been towards longer list of recommendations. This in itself raises questions about expectations and the possibility of implementation. In general, implementing TC recommendations clearly faces many obstacles. The implementation record is generally poor. Nonetheless, implementation has not been systematically examined, either within a case or across cases. Moreover, the relationship between the nature of recommendations, aspects of the political and socio-economic environment into which they are introduced, and implementation has largely been neglected in the scholarly literature. This panel presents findings from a three years research project on the implementation record o