Criminal trials are fundamentally about individual accountability whereas truth commissions are less about the guilt of the perpetrator … - Payam Akhavan

Same topic Authors

Quote of the day

Living in New York is like being at some terrible late-night party. You're tired, you've had a headache since you arrived, but you can't leave because then you'd miss the party.

Payam Akhavan

Criminal trials are fundamentally about individual accountability whereas truth commissions are less about the guilt of the perpetrator and more about the suffering of the victim. A criminal trial is only incidentally a therapeutic or cathartic process for victims. But truth commissions, as we saw in South Africa, have the advantage of giving tens of thousands of people the opportunity to tell their stories, and not only does that contribute to healing but it also contributes to reconciliation, especially when perpetrators also come and express contrition.

Commissions, Healing, Opportunity, People, Perpetrators, Trial

Same Author Quotes

Helping survivors of residential schools in Canada is not the same as the UN sending in peacekeepers to prevent the genocide in Rwanda. But both are a reflection of our culture and of our priorities. Where there is empathy there is always a solution, where there is apathy there is always an excuse.

School, Reflection, Empathy, Schools, Excuse, Prevent

Storytelling is very important. It is through context and relations that we understand the importance of human dignity. The concept means nothing as an abstraction. It's important for us to understand why people do the things they do, including the monsters - the suicide bomber and the war criminal. Understanding is not acceptance. Understanding is exploring the human psyche. If we want to put an end to violence, we need to have the sort of conversation I had with the teenage suicide bomber.

Suicide, Teenage, War, Exploring, Importance

When we deconstruct how radical evil occurs we realize that it is anything but spontaneous combustion. You need pyromaniacs.

Evil, Occurs, Radical, Realize, Realizing, Spontaneous

We need to sacrifice something. And this is what I find lacking. We want to construct an image of ourselves as virtuous but we don't want to suffer for our beliefs. We want to change the world with a Facebook like. That's not how the world works.

Change, Construct, Facebook, Sacrifice, Suffering, World

When I joined the UN War Crimes Tribunal, it was a realization of the dream of justice, that finally after Nuremberg, the UN is going to put the accused on trial again! And I still believe that accountability that eradicates impunity is very, very important for transforming the sordid culture of politics and power that we see in the world. But we need to be humble about the fact that justice will not bring back the dead.

Believe, Dream, Justice, Trial, War