Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission (Instance Vérité et Dignité, or IVD) was formed on 17 December 2013. The commission was mandated to investigate gross violations of human rights from 1955 to the official start of its proceedings. This timeline included the authoritarian regimes of former prime ministers Habib Bourguiba (1957-1987) and Zine El Abidine Ben...
For nearly five decades, Togo experienced an internal conflict that was characterised by clashes between political factions, state security forces and various other organisations. From 1958 to 2005, there were continuous attacks by these armed groups on civilians, communities, chiefs and other leaders (CVJR, 2012, p. 227), beginning with the rule of Sylvanus Olympio and...
On 30 June 1974, President Idi Amin passed Presidential Legal Notice No. 2., the Commission of Inquiry Act (Charter, 1974), to establish the Commission of Inquiry into the Disappearances of People in Uganda since January 25, 1971. It was alleged that a number of Ugandan citizens had disappeared in Uganda after the military coup that...
Following the 1986 coup by the National Resistance Army (NRA), the group’s leader Yoweri Kaguta Museveni became president of Uganda. Museveni established the Commission of Inquiry into Violations of Human Rights (CIVHR) as his first action to address 24 years of gross human rights violations inflicted on Ugandan people by past regimes. The Commission of...
The Truth, Reconciliation and National Unity Commission (TRNUC) was established by the Truth, Reconciliation and National Unity Commission Act of 2018 under then President Danny Faure. The commission, which ran from 2018 to 2022, was mandated to investigate and create an accurate public record of human rights abuses related to the 1977 coup d’état and...
The Nigerian Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission – later named the Judicial Commission for the Investigation of Human Rights Violations, and commonly known as the Oputa Panel after its head Chukwudifu Oputa – was inaugurated on 14 June 1999 by then President Olusegun Obasanjo and operated until 2001. The commission was mandated to investigate the...
In 1999, following the death of Moroccan President King Hassan II, his successor Mohammed VI created the Independent Arbitration Commission (IAC) as a mechanism for reparations to compensate victims/survivors of past political abuses, specific to arbitrary detention and forced disappearances. However, the IAC was largely criticised by victims/survivors and their relatives for not fully committing...
On 18 April 2003, former President and leader of the National Patriotic Front (NPF) of Liberia Charles Taylor and two rebel groups – Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) – signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). This agreement signalled the end of a 14-year conflict that...
Following a political stalemate in the 1980s and 1990s, which had seen growing unrest and ungovernability in South Africa, the National Party government, the African National Congress (ANC), the Inkatha Freedom Party and other political groups entered into negotiations to end apartheid and establish a democracy.
From 1991 to 2002, a civil war raged between pro-government forces and rebel groups in Sierra Leone. Conflict-related sexual violence (CSVR) was pervasive during the war. Sierra Leonean women and girls were subjected to widespread and systematic sexual violence perpetrated by rebel groups and, to a lesser extent, pro-government and peacekeeping forces (HRW, 2003). From...