Fourteen months after their formation, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons (CIEDP) have announced that they will be receiving victims' complaints from mid-April. However, the victims as well as international bodies such as the United Nations have voiced doubts over the credibility of the transitional justice mechanisms, raising serious questions over provisions of the law that regulates these mechanisms.Under this scenario, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), in association with the Conflict Victims Common Platform (CVCP), has re-launched a Transitional Justice Research Center (TJRC), which aims to support conflict victims through advocacy, capacity building and victim-centric programs.
TJRC has organized a three-day conference on unofficial truth-telling: international experiences and lessons for Nepal. On the second day of the conference on Friday, experts and conflict victims discussed the forms of unofficial truth-telling and the artistic approaches to truth-telling.
During the discussion, the experts suggested giving emphasis to community-based documentation of cases of human rights violations as well as choosing artistic means such as drama, film, painting, music and documentaries, for expressing the truth. The victims and experts stressed that the artistic expressions could be real if the artists interacted more with the victims. The experts opined that the artistic means of expressing truth would prevent the cases of serious human rights violation from being erased from people's memory.
"We are initiating unofficial truth-telling as we thought it would put pressure on the state, which has been ignoring the families of those who suffered during the decade-long armed conflict," said Suman Adhikari, chairman of CVCP.
"Unofficial truth-telling activities are civil society-based and can complement the official process of transitional justice," he added.
Adhikari claimed that the conference will help the victims in obtaining and developing an understanding of unofficial truth-telling processes and encourage them to think of potential unofficial truth-telling options.
Speaking at the inaugural session of the conference and launching ceremony for TJRC on Thursday evening, Minister for Peace and Reconstruction Ek Nath Dhakal expressed the government's commitment that there would be no amnesty for the perpetrators of human rights violations during the conflict era.
Dhakal urged the conflict victims and the international community to trust the TRC and CIEDP. "It would be too early to comment on the credibility of the commissions before they have started investigations into cases. Civil society and the international community should not make comments in haste," said Dhakal.
He argued that the commissions were formed to establish an environment of reconciliation within society by bringing the perpetrators of conflict-era cases of human rights violation within the ambit of legal action.
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