The Global Textual Legacies of Truth Commissions: Narratives on Sexual Violence in the Reports of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Kenya and Beyond

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In October 2017, UNESCO added a further item to its Memory of the World register: the 454 dossiers and 103 recordings of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial (1963 – 1965) covering 183 days of court hearings. They detail the trials of 22 people accused of murder or complicity in murder at the death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau at the hands of National Socialists during the Second World War. UNESCO's Memory of the World initiative aims to secure documents of historical significance for future generations. In awarding the status to the Auschwitz trial, UNESCO has stated that the documentation of transitional justice processes is an important cultural heritage deserving global attention and preservation. Written and oral recordings hence form part of the legacy of mechanisms that deal with past violent conflicts and repressive regimes. In doing so, UNESCO has accorded significance to a particular object: text.

In line with UNESCO's appreciation of texts of transitional justice institutions, this chapter thus focuses on texts produced by truth commissions as part of their legacy. As presented elsewhere in this volume, the global legacy of truth commissions is Often considered in terms of reparations and reforms or less tangible societal aspects such as the effect on the relationship between the conflicting parties. By contrast, the present chapter operates on the basis of text. It is concerned with the global textual legacy of truth commission reports that depict the findings of the commissions based on individual statements, corroborated facts and background research. In truth commission hearings, individuals narrate what they have experienced and witnessed so that recounting these ordeals produces a cacophony of voices on violence. The truth commission reports, however, do not simply repeat these voices, rather they interpret them. There is thus a very strong normative element to the reports: they assess, organise and evaluate the fragmented accounts on Often extreme violence by individuals, turning them into narratives with clear storylines, and in so doing provide meaning to a sequence of events that seem beyond comprehension.

In other words, truth commissions offer narratives about past atrocities that are fixed in writing, printed on paper and made available as reports for future reference.