Truth and Reconciliation Commission

A truth commission or truth and reconciliation commission is a commission tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government (or, depending on the circumstances, non-state actors also), in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past. They are, under various names, occasionally set up by states emerging from periods of internal unrest, civil war, or dictatorship. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established by President Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu after apartheid, is popularly considered a model of truth commissions.

As government reports, they can provide proof against historical revisionism of state terrorism and other crimes and human rights abuses. Truth commissions are sometimes criticised for allowing crimes to go unpunished, and creating impunity for serious human rights abusers. Their roles and abilities in this respect depend on their mandates, which vary widely. Often, there is a public mandate to bring past human rights violators to justice, though in some cases (such as Argentina after 1983 and Chile after 1990), abuses of human rights have gone unpunished under truth commissions due to threats of antidemocratic coups by the powerful parties who endure in the military. In this sense, the militaries in question, having ceded control to a civilian government, insist that the "price" of ending their own military rule must be full impunity for any of their past abuses. In some cases, such as the "Full Stop" law of Argentina that prevented prosecution of officers of the military junta, this impunity has been enshrined in law under the civilian government.

One of the difficult issues that has arisen over the role of truth commissions in transitional societies, has centered around what should be the relationship between truth commissions and criminal prosecutions.