The conflict victims have ruled out the possibility of collaboration with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the remaining tasks based on the latter’s verbal commitment to make the transitional justice process victim-centric.
The Conflict Victims’ Common Platform, an alliance of victims’ organizations, has put forward pre-requisites for the commission to meet for its support.
It has demanded the vetting of the members of the Local Peace Committee, through which the commission is set to collect complaints from the conflict victims.
The commission had approached the conflict victims to form an oversight mechanism to monitor the collection of the complaints from the victims at the district level. The victims have reservations over the members of the committee, as they are representatives of political parties.
They have demanded witness security, psychosocial training to its employees to deal with the victims, truth establishment based on the collected information, public hearing, reliable action plans, arrangement of experts and resources, and working alliance with the local community while dealing with conflict-era cases. “We want to clarify that our support to the commission depends on its working style,” read the statement.
The alliance has reiterated its approach of critical engagement with the commission to move ahead of the transitional justice process.
“We cannot lend our support to the commission which has not given us a reliable basis to date for us to believe it will make the process victim-centric,” read the statement.