Since Antiquity, the granting of amnesty to past atrocities has played a prominent role in political transitions. However, the moralized discourse of human rights that has emerged after the end of the Second World War has called for prosecutions in such cases. This study shows that granting individual amnesties to those responsible for past atrocities, as opposed to their prosecution, is a critical element in paving the way towards homonoia---harmony or concord---in a community that has been affected by civil strife. After having explored the origins of amnesty in Ancient Athens and its similarities with the amnesties granted by early modern European peace treaties and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the author argues that individual amnesty constitutes the only way of uncovering the truth about past atrocities. This is turn facilitates the forgiving of perpetrators and thus the achievement of homonoia. Moreover, individual amnesty, as mainly a political act, can nevertheless encompass considerations of justice, when the notion is not restricted merely to its punitive aspect.

This research is an analysis of Ontario teachers’ experiences with Grade 11 NDA3M Current Aboriginal Context in Canada curriculum. By deconstructing and critically analyzing the curricular and pedagogical implications, my thesis is a targeted response to number 63 of the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action. As outlined by Clandinin and Connelly (2000), this research is centred in narrative research techniques. Additionally, I draw on Miller’s (1996) 3L’s: Look, Listen, and Learn approach, paired with Dion and Dion’s (2004) storytelling as a means of telling and (re)telling the story. I used one-on-one interviews with teachers and one sharing circle with teachers and elders to synthesize data from documents to capture the essence of the lived experiences. Participants revealed their experiences of what Aoki claims is curriculum-as-planned and curriculum-as-lived in this course. The results of this research were revealed responses to components of number 63 of the Calls to Action; NDA3M requires a review of curriculum expectations to align with teachers’ classroom experiences; participants discussed how their respective schools are using every opportunity to students’ capacity and awareness of Indigenous Worldviews; and professional development to support Indigenous education is in high demand.

During the mid to late 1900s many Latin American countries found themselves under the rule of violent military regimes and in civil war. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the atrocities committed in the late 20th century throughout Latin America and to discuss the ways in which these societies, affected by state violence, were able to overcome the past. In this paper, I will look at the purpose of truth and reconciliation commissions and their outcomes in Chile, Argentina, and Guatemala in order to find some similarities and compare and contrast the successes and failures of the different commissions in their respective settings.

Magister Legum - LLM / The end of Apartheid and the transition to a new constitutional democracy in South Africa was ushered in by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The purpose of the TRC was to promote a dialogue between victims and perpetrators of gross human rights violations to try and achieve reconciliation in the country. To this end, the TRC was given the power to grant conditional amnesty to those who came forward to reveal the full truth to the country about the crimes that they had committed. Those who refused to apply for amnesty or who did apply but were denied amnesty were supposed to be prosecuted. A number of years have passed since the final TRC report was submitted and hardly any prosecutions have taken place. This paper argues, by comparing the transitions in Argentina and Chile to the one in South Africa, that the lack of post-Truth Commission prosecutions in South Africa has contributed to nurturing a culture of impunity for acts of corruption in high offices of state. It argues that in countries transitioning from repressive and authoritarian regimes to democratic governments, prosecutions of gross human rights violations are necessary for the creation and strengthening of the rule of law and a human rights culture. Therefore, the impunity for economic crimes such as corruption is detrimental to democracy.

This study investigates the role of the Afrikaans Churches in the quest for reconciliation in South Africa. Since it is a historical and analytical study, much use has been made of the relevant historical material. It is important in a study like this that there be a relevancy for this kind of study. South Africa is a nation with a complex society, who were weighed down for about forty years under an Apartheid policy, necessitating a probe into the influence of apartheid on society at large but also on the Afrikaans Churches. The different cultural groups in our country need to be reconciled to each other. But what kind of reconciliation? Many different definitions of reconciliation are given depending on who defines it. The politicians’ definitions were different from that of the church. Because reconciliation is a biblical term, it is necessary to look at the biblical mandate and how reconciliation is defined in biblical terms. Short overviews of the history of the origin of the different Afrikaans Churches under discussion are given. (Chapter 1) In order to understand the reaction of the different churches to the announcement of the constitution of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), it is necessary to look at those events that happened in the churches during the years of Apartheid. The fact that the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) is the largest church under the Afrikaners, explains why more space is given to occurrences in the DRC than to the others. Because Afrikaners work together in many situations, belong to the same clubs, etc. it is also clear that the occurrences in the DRC would have some effect on members of the other churches. Attention is paid to the polarisation and tension amongst churches due to race relations as it manifested itself within South Africa and also globally. (Chapter 2) Through Parliamentary legislation, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established for South Africa. It is important to take note of the mandate of the TRC and its method of work. Different reactions came from the faith communities and especially from the Afrikaans Churches. This researcher investigates the different attitudes in the churches as made known through correspondence in the different church magazines and daily newspapers. Attention is paid to the different reactions of the churches to the special hearings and the question whether churches must confess before the TRC or not. (Chapter 3) The reactions in the churches on the submission of evidence before the TRC are investigated. Only the DRC and the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) of the Afrikaans Churches and four theologians from the Reformed Churches of South Africa (RCSA) made their submissions. The other churches did not make use of this opportunity to clear their slates. The submission of the Uniting Reformed Church of South Africa (URCSA)is also mentioned as many of its members are Afrikaans speaking. (Chapter 4 ) The TRC suggested some proposals on reconciliation for the faith communities. This chapter looks at the responses of the churches to these proposals. There are wonderful things happening where churches were obedient and involved in their surroundings. Mostly they are helping in the areas of poverty relief and unemployment. The question about unity between the ‘sister’ churches amongst the Afrikaners and unification between the DRC and URSCA is discussed. (Chapter 5) Is there hope for our country for reconciliation? This question was addressed to a few leaders in the different churches and their responses are given. Churches do not always know how to go about helping their congregants working on reconciliation. Three models are currently being presented in South Africa on how reconciliation can become a reality and are briefly discussed. A new model is then worked out and proffered for use in and by the church to help congregants in the quest for reconciliation. (Chapter 6) Chapter 7 concludes this study by proposing a few conclusions. An extensive Addendum is given. This researcher interviewed church leaders. Their responses and other relevant material e.g. submissions by churches etc. to the TRC are given. A bibliography concludes this dissertation. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Science of Religion and Missiology / unrestricted

"This dissertation seeks firstly to re-examine the merits of the competing philosophies on the role of amnesties in transitional justice. It seeks in particular to investigate the currently popular notion that justice is necessarily retributive and even beyond that, to determine the veracity of the claim that prosecution represents a necessary element of retributivist justice. The objective is to contribute to the ongoing debate by examining and drawing practical lessons from the case of South Africa, which emerged in 1994 from several generations of institutionalised gross violatoins of human rights. Accordingly the Amnesty Committee of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the law and the political philosophy undergirding its functions represent the focus of this study. ... This dissertation unfolds into five parts. Chapter 1, as an introduction to the rest of the work, sets out the relevance of the subject under review, the methodology and a brief overview of the chapters. Chapter two reviews the extensive literature on transitional justice and discusses the concepts that may be distilled therefrom. It discusses the contextual determinants of models of transitional justice and sets out the essence of the debate between vengeance and forgiveness as tools for achieving transitional justice. It also discusses the development of international law with respect to the permissiveness of amnesties and both the articulated and other justifications for their use. The burden of the third chapter is to first recount the factual circumstances of South Africa's trnsition and the factors that predicated the promulgation of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act 34 of 1995. It then briefly examines the provisions of the statute and it's implementation. It also engages in an empirical assessment of the almost 800 amnesties granted and employs a number of indices to determine whteher the process was even handed and achieved its objectives. These indices are: the politicl affiliations of the awardees; whether or not the crimes for which they received amnesty involved the loss of life; whether or not they had already been punished for thier transgressions and; whether or not they received forgiveness from the vicitms - actual or constructive. Chapter four focuses on some fo the criticisms that the TRC received. It assesses their merits and determines to what extent they subverted the quest for justice in transitional South Africa. In particular it looks at the reasoning of the Constitutional Court in the AZAPO Case, the alleged lack of objectivity of the TRC, its almost exclusively Christian orientation and its almost exclusive focus on abuses of civil and political rights. Chapter five concludes the dissertation by first determining whether or not there are any lessons to be learnt from South Africa's amnesty experience. It then outlines what the lessons are or should be. It closes by making recommendations as to what factors or particular considerations should guide the efforts and aspirations of abused societies that embark on the quest for transitional justice." -- Chapter 1. / Prepared under the supervision of Professor Frans Viljoen, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, South Africa / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2001. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

Masters of Art / At a lecture presented in London on June 5, 1994, Jacques Derrida discussed the complexities of the meaning of the archive. He described the duality in meaning of the word archive-in terms of temporality and spatiality-as a place of "commencement" and as the place "where men and gods command" or the ''place from which order is given". As the place of commencement, "there where things commence" the archive is more ambivalent. It houses, what could best be described as 'traces" of particular objects of the past in the form of documents. These documents were produced in the past and are subjective constructions with their own histories of negotiations and contestations. As such, the archive represents the end of instability, or the outcome of negotiations and contestations over knowledge. Yet as sources of evidence the archive also represents the moment of ending instability, of creating stasis and the fixing of meaning and knowledge.

No description available.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC) outlined 94 Calls to Action (CTA) that are essential to address reconciliation in Canada (TRC, 2015). Five (Calls 87-91) of those CTA were related to sport. One of those Calls, Call 90, emphasized the need for national sport organizations (NSOs) in Canada to create inclusive policies and programming with an emphasis on anti-racism awareness and training. Similarly, safe sport in Canada was created as an initiative to address maltreatment, discrimination, and harassment in sport. In 2019, the federal government mandated NSOs to create safe sport policies and programming. However, there has been no such mandate to implement the TRC's CTA. The TRC's CTA 90 and safe sport have been treated as separate issues and there has been no effort to see how these two initiatives could inform each other. Through the use of Bacchi's (2012) "What's the Problem Represented to be" approach and applying a settler colonial lens to my analysis, I investigated how NSO staff and safe sport policymakers are constructing safe sport in Canada and if that included addressing anti-Indigenous racism. Through 10 semi-structured interviews from participants representing a total of eight NSOs as well as archival research of safe sport and equity, diversity, and inclusion policies, I found that the participants and the policies produced three discourses: 1) Anti-Indigenous racism does not require a separate policy; 2) policies alone are insufficient: Safe sport education and resources are needed to address anti-Indigenous racism; 3) the TRC's CTA are not being treated as a priority by Sport Canada but NSOs want to act in consultation with Indigenous organizations. These discourses provide insights into how NSOs are constructing safe sport in Canada, leaving anti-Indigenous racism unproblematized, and thus furthering settler colonialism.

<p>This research project involves a comparative, cross-national study of truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) in countries around the world that have used these extra-judicial institutions to pursue justice and promote national reconciliation during periods of democratic transition or following a civil conflict marked by intense violence and severe human rights abuses. An important objective of truth and reconciliation commissions involves instituting measures to address serious human rights abuses that have occurred as a result of discrimination, ethnocentrism and racism. In recent years, rather than solely utilizing traditional methods of conflict resolution and criminal prosecution, transitional governments have established truth and reconciliation commissions as part of efforts to foster psychological, social and political healing. </p><p>The primary objective of this research project is to determine why there has been a proliferation of truth and reconciliation commissions around the world in recent decades, and assess whether the perceived effectiveness of these commissions is real and substantial. In this work, using a multi-method approach that involves quantitative and qualitative analysis, I consider the institutional design and structural composition of truth and reconciliation commissions, as well as the roles that these commissions play in the democratic transformation of nations with a history of civil conflict and human rights violations. </p><p>In addition to a focus on institutional design of truth and reconciliation commissions, I use a group identity framework that is grounded in social identity theory to examine the historical background and sociopolitical context in which truth commissions have been adopted in countries around the world. This group identity framework serves as an invaluable lens through which questions related to truth and reconciliation commissions and other transitional justice mechanisms can be explored. I also present a unique theoretical framework, the reconciliatory democratization paradigm, that is especially useful for examining the complex interactions between the various political elements that directly affect the processes of democratic consolidation and reconciliation in countries in which truth and reconciliation commissions have been established. Finally, I tackle the question of whether successor regimes that institute truth and reconciliation commissions can effectively address the human rights violations that occurred in the past, and prevent the recurrence of these abuses.</p> / Dissertation