IPU Committed to Reconciliation

This issue of the World of Parliaments is central to IPU's work to promote peace and cooperation through political dialogue. It will feature prominently at the 118th Assembly in Cape Town where members of parliament will have a first hand opportunity to learn about the South African reconciliation process.

They will also attend a panel discussion with prominent political leaders sharing their experience of reconciliation and peace building. Reconciliation and the administration of justice is also the theme of the feature article written by a prominent South African personality, former Justice Richard Goldstone. A separate article describes the complex case of Sierra Leone and refers to IPU's programme to assist the Parliament of that country in promoting reconciliation. The articles describing President Casini's visit to the Middle East and IPU's contribution to the new United Nations initiative known as The Alliance of Civilizations touch on important facets of the reconciliation theme.

Reconciliation and the administration of justice: The Role and Responsibility of Parliaments

The need for reconciliation follows periods in the life of a nation attempting to recover from a history of severe and systematic human rights violations. One thinks in this context of States such as those of the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and South Africa. In each of these countries, one finds markedly different approaches to reconciliation.

In the case of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the facts relating to carefully planned genocides, crimes against humanity and “ethnic cleansing” have been meticulously and painstakingly established by the United Nations ad hoc criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (ICTY and the ICTR). In South Africa, the truth was laid bare by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the few criminal prosecutions that followed the end of apartheid. The investigations of the ICTY ended the fabricated and false denials that came from officials of the Bosnian Serb Army that a massacre of innocent Muslim men and boys had been perpetrated during 1995 in Srebrenica. That genocide committed there was more recently confirmed by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The ICTR has conclusively shown that the hundreds of thousands of killings that took place in the middle of 1994 were the consequence of a carefully planned and efficiently executed genocide. In South Africa, the TRC effectively put an end to the official denials that, not unusually, accompanied the violations during the apartheid era.

In all three situations, the recording of the truth is an essential foundation for reconciliation. The sordid past has to be brought into the open. The victims of such violence and criminality justifiably demand an official and credible acknowledgement of what they suffered.

It is that acknowledgement that makes it possible for those victims to accept a new society in partnership with the perpetrators and their supporters.

It is parliaments that must ensure that means are given to the victims to reclaim ans restore the human dignity of which they were robbed. The necessary legislation may require sacrifices from the former regime and those who principally benefited from an evil system. This makes it essential for parliaments to ensure that appropriate programmes are introduced to achieve effective remedies. To that end, for example, the South African Bill of Rights provides that: “To promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken.”

If those measures are to encourage the achievement of reconciliation, the remedial measures must be carefully designed and calibrated and must in no way be, or be perceived as being, arbitrary or unjust. In other words, the laws must be constitutional and thus fair and proportionate. Adherence to the rule of law is essential if all citizens are to buy into the new society and if the victims are able to have their dignity restored.

Parliaments have a crucial and often daunting task to play. While the courts must ensure that the laws are appropriately designed and applied, it is parliaments, representing the will ofthe people, that are uniquely placed to make reconciliation possible. Reconciliation is the oil that enables the legislative engine to work and the rule of law to flourish.

The complex case of Sierra Leone

In one of his speeches, Reverend Jesse Jackson said that “our dreams must be stronger than our memories…We must be pulled by our dreams, rather than pushed by our memories”. In many post-conflict countries, the killing may have stopped but incompatible historical memories persist. On the one hand, perpetrators deny the carnage and on the other, victims insist on the truth being told. These conflicting memories often leave vast rifts between post-conflict peoples and without doubt slow down any reconciliation process. The case of Sierra Leone is even more complex.

In this country, the perpetratorvictim dichotomy is complicated by the fact that many of the perpetrators - child soldiers - were also victims. True reconciliation can only begin to be achieved when there is genuine consensus on the past - what really happened, the present - what are we doing about it, and the future - where we are going.

Of all State institutions, the national parliament is the very embodiment of civil society and a representative and effective parliament is vital to the success of any transition from conflict to peace and even more so to the ambition of living up to the overwhelming challenge of reconciliation. Parliament's representational function is key to establishing consensus and subsequently reconciliation.

One of parliament's primary roles is to represent and convey the will of the people at the State level. Made up of men and women who are elected by and are in direct contact with the people, parliament is the natural institution par excellence to act and speak for the common interests of all segments of society. Members of parliament are well placed to raise awareness of all relevant issues, to promote public discussion and to ensure that they are placed on the national agenda. Action by the parliament and its members is crucial not only for implementing sustainable policies and programmes, but also for relaying and explaining to the public the issues involved, thereby forging popular support and consensus for action. Circumvention of this vital function of parliament, particularly so in conflict/post-conflict countries, is done at the peril of a return to violence. One can argue therefore that the collapse of the 1996 Abidjan Peace Accord was due in part to the absence of the Sierra Leone Parliament's involvement in negotiating it and above all, in implementing it. The inevitable happened: the country slipped back into brutal violence.

The Parliament is among a number of post-conflict African parliaments the IPU has identified as beneficiaries of a two-year project intended to build capacity to establish, monitor, assess and provide follow-up on the work of transitional justice mechanisms, such as truth and reconciliation commissions, and to strengthen inclusive political processes. The Parliament will host a regional seminar on those topics in June 2008. In addition, the IPU, in cooperation with other partners, including the United Nations, is designing a far-reaching programme of assistance for the Parliament.