Truth-seeking processes allow societies to examine and come to grips with past crimes and atrocities and prevent their future repetition. Truth-seeking often occurs in societies emerging from a period of prolonged conflict or authoritarian rule. The most famous example to date is the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, although many other examples also exist.

Through a truth-seeking process, actors in a country are able to investigate past abuses. and seek redress for victims and their families. Such investigations go beyond simply identifying guilty parties or individuals, but may investigate root causes, patterns of suffering, and social impact as well as events in individual cases, such as disappearances.

By seeking to investigate such questions with a high degree of professionalism and commitment, truth-seeking processes seek to create long-lasting public impact, often through the publication of a public report. Such reporting helps expose the facts of violations and suffering, which are often otherwise denied, and minimize possibilities of revisionism in the future.

Given that truth-seeking requires both considerable time and resources to properly tackle investigations and victims’ needs, local community and regional representatives, civil society organizations, NGOs and aid agencies, and governmental and judicial entities play different roles in this process.

The Right to Truth

Many steps taken in a truth-seeking process are based on the premise of a right to truth. The right to truth is an emerging principle in customary international law. It has been recognized in the United Nations Principles on Impunity and subsequent UN materials, as well as by regional bodies such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Inter-American Court of Human Rights

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is an autonomous judicial institution based in the city of San José, Costa Rica. Together with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, it makes up the human rights protection system of the Organization of American States , which serves to uphold and...

, and in some national courts. The right to truth entails that victims and communities affected by past crimes have the right to know the identity of suspected perpetrators consistent with the rights of the suspects.

Truth-seeking Mechanisms

Frequently used tactics during truth-seeking include the protection of evidence, collection of extensive victim data and testimony, the opening and maintenance of state information and public archives, and the publication of comprehensive reports. To implement such practices, truth commissions are often established to represent voices of victims. Such commissions are typically independent in nature and focus on accountability for past crimes, the root causes for the conflict and constructing historical narratives countering revisionism of the past. Policy recommendations issued by commissions often lead to a call for national reforms and further transitional justice

Transitional justice

Transitional justice generally refers to a range of approaches that states may use to address past human rights violations and includes both judicial and non-judicial approaches. They include series of actions or policies and their resulting institutions, which may be enacted at a point of...

initiatives, such as reparations, vetting and prosecutions.

Official truth commissions (often called truth and reconciliation commissions) have taken place in many countries, including South Africa, Peru, Timor Leste, Liberia, and South Korea. In 2010, truth commissions were actively at work in the Solomon Islands and Canada, amongst other places.

Unofficial or Local Truth-seeking

Unofficial or local truth-seeking projects became popular in the 1980s and 1990s in Latin America, when community organizations such as churches and academic institutions documented human rights violations and issued reports following the end to military rule. Though unofficial, such efforts from civil society often serve to pave the way for or complement state- led transitional justice initiatives, and sometimes produce superior results, as in Guatemala. Unofficial truth-seeking initiatives have also taken place more recently in Northern Ireland, the United States, and elsewhere.