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A new ICTJ report urges the revitalization of Ukraine’s holistic transitional justice policymaking. Debunking the most common myths about transitional justice in Ukraine, the report presents the key legal, policy, and victim-centered arguments in favor of advancing a comprehensive transitional justice framework.

Despite earlier efforts to envision a national transitional justice policy, Ukraine remains overly cautious about establishing one. This report provides a robust substantiation of why Ukraine should revive its holistic transitional justice policymaking. In the first part, it debunks t...

A women holds up an infant in the air on sunny day outdoors, surrounded by yellow and blue balloons

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.

On November 20 — on the 80th anniversary of the opening of the main Nuremberg trial, which prosecuted Nazi leadership for aggression and mass atrocities of World War II — details of the allegedly proposed new “peace” plan for Ukraine emerged. The initiative has surfaced one of the Kremlin’s recurrent demands: full amnesty for wartime atrocities — the very acts Nuremberg sought to punish and prevent.

On August 8, Armenia and Azerbaijan signed the Joint Declaration on Future Relations. Hailed by some as a “historic peace deal,” it neither is a treaty nor ends the 37-year Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Rather, it is a political framework that requires international support and attention.

The numerous atrocities committed by Russia in Ukraine have been part of the former's aggression since its initial invasion of the Crimea and Donbas regions in 2014, though they have skyrocketed in number and severity since the full-scale invasion in 2022. Among these crimes are enforced disappearances, which serve as the means by which the Kremlin more broadly intends to subjugate Ukrainians and eliminate any traces of the Ukrainian national identity.

The African Union and the European Union successfully concluded the fifth AU-EU expert seminar on transitional justice, held from June 19 to 20, 2025, in Abuja, Nigeria. Hosted under the Initiative for Transitional Justice in Africa, the seminar brought together more than 50 experts, policymakers, researchers, and civil society representatives to discuss the critical role of reparations in fostering justice, reconciliation, and sustainable peace.

This report summarizes the key issues discussed at the fourth African Union-European Union experts’ seminar on transitional justice. Convened by ICTJ in Brussels in June 2024, the seminar brought together experts from the two regions to share experiences and to explore how transitiona...

Cover of report on the 2024 AU-EU Experts’ Seminar on Transitional Justice

Since long before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has spread disinformation to justify its aggression, disguising their longstanding premises that Ukraine is, allegedly, not a sovereign nation, and its statehood is conditioned upon an alliance with Russia. Countering these narratives is not only valuable for Ukrainians, but also for buoying any democratic transformations in Russia and for establishing a more nuanced understanding of the history of Central and Eastern Europe.

Two and a half years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, victims continue to demand justice for the massive violations they have suffered, which have left many of them gravely harmed. The International Criminal Court opened an investigation into alleged crimes in March 2022. It now faces a critical challenge: how to ensure that Ukrainian victims can meaningfully participate in all stages of its procedures, despite the court’s location far from the conflict.