Supporting transitional justice

For societies emerging from conflicts, reliable and responsive justice systems are a key to moving forward. When communities are vulnerable, transitional justice can provide confidence in the commitment of countries to recover from the legacy of violence.

Societies must be enabled to address large-scale violence resulting from conflict, political upheaval, or authoritarian regimes. Nationally-led transitional justice processes contribute to atonement for human rights violations, help societies guard against a relapse into systematic discrimination or violence, and foster reconciliation. Strengthening national justice institutions can strengthen countries’ independence.

For example, in regions such as the Western Balkans, stronger and more efficient regional cooperation among countries is required to resolve the remaining backlog of war crimes cases and search for missing persons and ensure redress for the victims of past human rights violations.

To help enable societies recover from the legacy of conflicts and violence, UNDP:

• encourages dialogue and provides advice to governments and communities on measures of transitional justice, including establishing truth-seeking mechanisms and prosecuting conflict-related crimes, such as in the Western Balkans
• supporting agents of change that can strategically provide critical policy, programme and engagement solutions that are evidence-based, inclusive, and anchored on the long-term.

Regional War Crimes project

Twenty years after the end of armed conflicts that accompanied the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, accountability for war crimes is still a critical prerequisite for reconciliation and restoration of social cohesion and trust. Finding and identifying those who went missing during the conflicts can also help prevention of further fragmentation and violence in the Western Balkans.The Regional War Crimes Project (2018-2022), aims to address legacies of the conflicts in the Western Balkans from the 1990ies and support peacebuilding, reconciliation, and social cohesion by improving cross-border judicial cooperation, enhancing national capacities for victim support and search for missing persons, and raising public awareness about transitional justice. The project builds on previous UNDP engagement in the sub-region on transitional justice issues.

Specifically, the project seeks to:

• strengthen and consolidate the platform for regional cooperation among the prosecution services, courts and other state institutions and enhance their capacities for processing war crimes cases and search for missing persons;
• improve judicial and non-judicial victim and witness support mechanisms, including by CSOs, to increase victims and witnesses’ participation in war crimes proceedings and improve rights-based services and support to victims of war crimes and families of the missing persons;
• promote fact-based public communication and outreach in the region on accountability for war crimes and dealing with legacy of the past conflicts, especially among young professionals as future opinion leaders, to maximize societal impact of the criminal proceedings and other transitional justice processes for long term stability and prevention of re-radicalization.