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Throughout 2025, ICTJ’s experts offered thoughtful analysis on conflicts and major political developments in more than 10 countries as part of the World Report newsletter. Their insightful commentaries shed light on the obstacles that victims, civil society, and their partners must navigate as they pursue sustainable peace and justice. In this edition, we look back on the past year through the Expert’s Choice column.

The death of eight women in childbirth at a hospital in Agadir this past August sent shockwaves through Morocco. The news crystallized national anger over deteriorating public services as well as persistent high unemployment and corruption. Years of frustration erupted into the streets as thousands of mostly young Moroccans gathered in cities and towns across the nation to protest and to demand accountability and institutional reform.

Côte d’Ivoire descended into chaos following the October 2010 elections. One of the enduring lessons from this tragic experience could be that elections should never give a reason to set one’s country on fire. Like it or not, however, presidential elections in Côte d’Ivoire have become a malaise that grips the country every five years. And while the 2015 presidential elections were carried out peacefully, the recent October 2020 elections unfortunately were not. The tensions and violence that accompanied it, though far less devastating, brought back macabre memories of the 2010 post-election carnage that left 3,000 people dead and forced more an a million to flee their homes.

On the eve of Côte d'Ivoire’s 58th independence anniversary, in a dubious attempt at “social cohesion,” President Alassane Ouattara granted amnesty to 800 persons accused or convicted of crimes against the state during the post-election crisis of 2010-2011. Former First Lady Simone Gbagbo — who had been tried for undermining state security — and other high-ranking officials associated with former President Laurent Gbagbo’s party, the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), were among those released. The lapses in accountability and acknowledgment in Cote d’Ivoire have emboldened perpetrators and made it impossible for many victims to move on with their lives. The challenges of transitional justice processes present clear obstacles to the sustainable peace that the people of Cote d’Ivoire have been working toward.