DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSIONS AND REPARATIONS

1. Who has the moral obligation to apologize and/ or make reparations for war crimes and human rights abuses? Should individuals be held responsible for war crimes and human rights abuses perpetrated by their forebears? In other words, should individuals be held morally responsible for the "sins of their fathers"? Who has the moral authority to apologize for human rights abuses or war crimes?

2. Do truth commissions have moral legitimacy if they are not established through democratic processes?

3. Is individual justice or collective justice more important in post-conflict societies? (For example, is it more important to hold an individual war criminal accountable, thereby bringing justice to his or her direct victims, or is it more important to promote reconciliation at the societal level, even if doing so means avoiding prosecutions of individual war criminals?)

4. Does justice require that officials responsible for war crimes or human rights abuses be brought to trial? Or is it preferable to promote reconciliation through truth and reconciliation commissions or apologies as opposed to pursuing punishment of the guilty through judicial prosecution?

5. Are "lustration" and other non-criminal sanctions justifiable punishments for individuals who have supported human rights-abusing political regimes? Why or why not? (See Chpt. 8 of the Kritz volume for a review of the definition of lustration.) If so, what standards of evidence should be required before such sanctions are applied? Should they be applied even to individuals who did not directly perpetrate war crimes or human rights abuses?

6. How should we weigh the relative importance of justice, peace, and reconciliation? Should any of these goals have a higher priority? Why or why not?