Reconciliation and T&R Commissions: Part 3 Benefits, Problems, and Limitations

Some Benefits of T&R Commissions: For Victims Facilitate healing May provide a degree of closure to victims and their friends and relatives Help to restore the human dignity of victims and break the pride of perpetrators Give voice and catharsis to those who had been silenced Provide consensual validation of the pain felt from racism, violence, and colonialism

Some Benefits of T&R Commissions: At the Societal Level Provide an opportunity to deepen our understandings of meanings of pain, suffering, resistance and loss experienced Correct distorted histories conveyed in official curricula by replacing settler heroics with balancing info, such as brutalities inflicted by settlers Provide for reintegration of falsely accused informers into the community Decriminalizes the behaviour of some freedom fighters

Some Problems of T&R Commissions Lack of a shared moral order Invalid assumptions about reintegrative community shaming Refusal to self-identify as a victim results in foregoing eligibility for reparations Reopens psychological wounds Deniers, Platitude Speakers, and Critics Australian Case Study: Integrative and Assimilative

Some Limitations Limitations of Memory Shortcomings of Oral Testimony Neglect of the structural, systemic violence and racism. Barriers to Cross-cultural Communication Oversimplification due to a narrow range of witnesses Failure to Identify Women as Victims Pay insufficient attention to actors and institutions on the international scale Politicization of the apology issue