Economics and the Business Community in Transitional Justice

1. Economics and the Business Community in Transitional Justice

2. Syrian Economic Forum’s Video Reportage on the Status of Factories in Syria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQfLiK_a0xQ

3. Dire State of the Syrian Economy • The Syria Report • Capital flight, de-industrialization, looting, and destruction of Syrian factories and businesses has caused GDP to contract more than 30% each quarter of the last year. • United Nations Report (citing most recent economic statistics available) • Syria’s economy lost $84.4 billion during first two years of war alone. • 2.33 million jobs lost during first two years. • Half the workforce unemployed. • More than half the population living in poverty. • “Even if the conflict ceased now and GDP grew at an average rate of five per cent each year, it is estimated that it would take the Syrian economy 30 years to return to the economic level of 2010.” – report by United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) • Could take closer to 40 or 50 years.

4. What Economic Issues Can Transitional Justice Address? • Economic Crimes • Large scale corruption and spoliation of a country’s resources by officials holding public office. • Structural violence: deliberate impoverishment of certain groups of society as a tool of oppression and violence at the hands of authoritarian regimes. • War economies. • Economic Policies • Might be designed to support and sustain authoritarian regimes or conflict and war. • Economic Causes of Conflict • Structural violence is a fault-line for violent conflict.

5. Economic Crimes • Many authoritarian and conflict-ridden states experience personal enrichment of the ruling elite to the detriment of their population. • Transitional justice can help establish patterns of violations and how systematic they were. • Defining large scaleeconomic crimes. • Politically exposed person (PEP). • Elected or appointed government officials. • Persons associated with officials. • Family members or close business associates. • Amount of money involved. • Always relative to size of state’s economy. • Complexity of transactions being investigated. • Extent to which state institutions are captured for illicit gain. • Manner in which ill-gotten proceeds are moved and concealed.

6. Structural Violence • Strategic Role of Economic Crimes in Maintaining Systems of Abuse • Fraudulent enrichment of elites undermines the legitimacy of their power. To maintain power, they must resort to political oppression, force, and coercion. • Resource abundance and exploitation can provide the funds to finance and sustain repressive regimes. • High levels of corruption often associated with high levels of poverty and low levels of human development. • Economic marginalization of specific groups reinforces political exclusion. • Makes the powerless even more vulnerable to the arbitrariness of the regime.

7. War Economies • Economic crimes committed by government forces and combatants during armed conflict often have a mutually reinforcing relationship with the human rights violations they carry out. • Committed using exploitative and violent practices. • Examples of war profiteering in Syria. • Systematic looting. • Extortion. • Plunder of national treasures in historical dig sites. • Illegal extraction and refining of crude oil. • Exploitation of shortages and dire situation of civilians, particularly in sieges. • E.g. selling water in tankers at exorbitant prices during 10-day water outage in Aleppo. • War economies strip a country of the very resources that are fundamental for post-conflict development. • Transitional country is then forced to indebt itself or seek heavily conditional foreign aid.

8. Economic Policies • Cambodia • Strict state planning and orthodox communist practices under the Khmer Rouge led to one of the worst famines in recent history. • Transitional justice could be used to hold states accountable for severe consequences of catastrophic economic policies pushed through by means of repression. • Sovereign Debt • Transitional state might find itself landed with a sovereign debt that came about through systemic corruption or that was used to facilitate human rights abuses and sustain the prior regime. • Transitional justice can investigate the history of sovereign debt and its role in human rights abuses.

9. Economic Causes of Conflict • Socioeconomic grievances against authoritarian regimes often behind protests and outbreak of conflict. • Structural arrangements like access to well-paid jobs, education, and healthcare that benefit only some groups create grievances among the disadvantaged. • Even if economic issues did not cause the conflict, they can be an aggravating factor. • Addressing economic causes of conflict in transitional justice could help prevent renewed violence based on past grievances.

10. Invisibility of Economic Issues in Transitional Justice Mechanisms • Transitional justice mechanisms have often failed to investigate fully the socioeconomic background to the conflicts in question, to elucidate the structural violence of the past, or to fully grapple with the economic aspects of the transition. • Tend to emphasize civil and political rights rather than socioeconomic ones. • International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the American Convention on Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions. • Not the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). • Failure to include economic concerns in transitional justice mechanisms tends to paint the transition as a purely political story, rather than an economic one.

11. How Can Transitional Justice Mechanisms Address Economic Issues? • Truth Commissions • Prosecutions • Reparations • Institutional Reform

12. Truth Commissions • Identify root causes of human rights violations, the context that made them possible, and those who perpetrated them. • Make recommendations for the establishment of a just order for the future. • Could be mandated to investigate and report on economic crimes committed before and during the conflict. • “Syrian Perspectives on Transitional Justice” by the Syria Justice and Accountability Center • Found that very few respondents had heard of truth commissions. However, they were receptive to the idea once it was explained to them. • Particularly liked the function of evidence gathering and compensation as a means of redressing economic damages. • Suggestion of a truth commission offering amnesty for confession, as in the case of South Africa, was unacceptable to many. • Sunni man from Hama: “Having a truth commission would restore the rights that were extorted, and the compensations would help those who lost to move on with their lives and live with dignity.”

13. Examples of Economics in Truth Commissions • Chad • Single truth commission investigated both violations of human rights and corruption. • Mandate included identifying “the financial operations and bank accounts,” as well as other assets, of former president Hissene Habre and his associates. • Issued report after two years. • Included list of plunders and their assets. • Recommended vetting those persons and sequestering their assets. • Sierra Leone • Truth and Reconciliation Commission operated side by side with prosecution at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. • Report found “years of bad governance, endemic corruption, and the denial of human rights,” as among the causes of armed conflict. • Declared that earnings from the diamonds that fueled the war should be directed to paying a part of victims’ reparations. Diamond mining in Sierra Leone. Diamonds helped fuel conflict.

14. Examples of Economics in Truth Commissions, Cont’d • Liberia • Mandate of truth commission included investigating economic crimes. • Natural resource exploitation by armed combatants seen as one of the most important crimes during the conflict because of its impact and the way it sustained armed groups. • Kenya • Mandate of truth commission included investigating economic crimes. • Land grabbing seen as a very serious economic crime because of its consequences for marginalization and violence. • East Timor • Truth commission held hearings on famine and force displacement. • Report links the violation of “the right of people to food with . . . the denial of freedom of movement, the violation of the right of individuals to live where they want, the denial of access to relief, the destruction of food sources, and ultimately the violation of the right to life.” Liberia East Timor

15. Prosecutions • Types of possible prosecutions. • Domestic prosecution. • International Criminal Court (ICC) • Syria not a signatory to the Rome Statute. • Must be referred by United Nations Security Council. • Ad hoc tribunal • International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) • International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) • Hybrid tribunal • Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) • Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) • Special Tribunal for Lebanon • Could be used to establish individual liability for economic crimes. • Convictions could be the basis for asset recovery. • Perpetrators forced to repay illegal profits or provide due compensation.

16. Reparations • Making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged. • Help repair some of the economic and social dimensions of conflict and repression. • Aids victims to manage material aspect of their loss. • Constitutes official acknowledgement of victims’ pain by the nation. • May deter state from future abuses by imposing a financial cost. • Symbolic reparations include but are not limited to: • Official apologies and public acknowledgement; • Memorials and memory projects; • Rehabilitation/reputation restoration projects; and • Public education programs that bring repressed narratives to the foreground. • Material reparations include both direct and indirect economic benefits such as: • One-time or recurring payments for families of victims and incapacitated survivors; • Pensions for victims and survivors; • Provision of education, healthcare (including trauma counseling and psychological support programs), and/or housing; • Targeted community reparations funds for specific projects; and • Provision of start-up funds and loans for enterprises.

17. Asset Recovery • Prosecution • Following establishment of guilt in criminal justice processes, the recovery of assets could be initiated. • Recovered funds could be used for the financing of reparation payments, necessary post-conflict reconstruction, financing of transitional justice mechanisms (such as truth commissions), and development projects. • Truth Commissions • Can recommend certain steps to be taken in relation to corruption-obtained assets or the proceeds of economic crimes. • By establishing patterns of economic crimes and beginning to identify individual and institutional responsibilities, truth commissions can build the political capital and public support for the long and difficult process of asset recovery.

18. Examples of Asset Recovery and Reparations • Philippines • Separate commissions dealing with human rights and economic crimes were established. • Economic crimes commission was able to carry out prosecutions against family members and associates of Ferdinand Marcos across several jurisdictions and involving different legal systems. • Froze accounts in Switzerland; examined documents in Panama; identified assets in Hong Kong and elsewhere. • Domestic legislation sets aside one third of assets recovered to fund reparations program. • Peru • Ex-dictator Fujimori investigated by truth commission, then later prosecuted for both human rights violations and corruption using the findings of the commission. • Truth commission recommended reparations for anyone who suffered specific human rights or humanitarian violations between 1980 and 2000 as a result of political violence. • Special fund created to govern the use of assets confiscated from Fujimori and his close associates. • Recovered assets have been used for both the operations of the truth commission and for later reparations programs.

19. Examples of Asset Recovery and Reparations, Cont’d • South Africa • Truth commission recommended individual reparations for victims named in the report, as well as symbolic reparations, community rehabilitation programs, and institutional reform. • Government delayed payment for several years. Eventually pledged a far smaller amount that left victims dissatisfied and angry. • Morocco • Equity and Reconciliation Commission examined the deliberate economic marginalization of communities that opposed the regime. • Recommended “communal reparations to strengthen the economic and social development of specific regions that were particularly . . . marginalized and excluded.” • ICC Trust Fund for Victims • Under Rome Statute, victims of crimes adjudicated by the ICC can obtain reparations. • Statutory penalties include the “forfeiture of proceeds, property, and assets derived directly or indirectly through that crime.”

20. Institutional Reform • Institutional reform is the process of reviewing and restructuring state institutions so that they respect human rights, preserve the rule of law, and are accountable to their constituents. By incorporating a transitional justice element, reform efforts can both provide accountability for individual perpetrators and disable the structures that allowed abuses to occur. • Addresses root causes of conflict or repression, including those of an economic nature, to help transform society. • Linking transitional justice to development immensely broadens the concept of transitional justice. • Transitional justice can help establish accountable institutions and democratic rule. • Creates a climate in which development and economic progress become possible. • Virtuous cycle in which development strengthens democracy and democracy enables further development.

21. Importance of Including Economic Crimes in Transitional Justice • Fuller account of the history of abuse • Accountability • Impunity for economic crimes reinforces impunity for human rights violations • Excluding economic crimes allows a myth to be formed that the origins of conflict are wholly political or ethnic, rather than economic or resource based • Economic arrangements under authoritarianism and during conflict will influence the chances of establishing a stable democracy

22. Comprehensive Account of Crimes Committed by Perpetrators • Economic crimes go beyond violence directed against opponents or against citizens targeted by repressive measures. • Affects entire society. • Allows for collection of data about the wealth amassed by perpetrators, resources available for reparations, and the kind of punishments or measures of forgiveness that society should impose or can afford.

23. Accountability • Imperative to hold responsible those who deliberately engaged in corrupt practices, structural violence, or war profiteering. • Examination of economic crimes is often a major demand of people who saw the fraudulent enrichment of their rulers contrasted with their own poverty and abuses of their rights. • Restore to the state and its people what has been wrongfully acquired by the perpetrators of economic crimes.

24. Connection Between Economic Crimes and Human Rights Violations • Economic crimes constitute human rights violation in themselves. • Socioeconomic rights are human rights! • Economic crimes and violations of socioeconomic rights often closely related to human rights abuses and violations of civil and political rights. • Often same perpetrators. • Regimes that lack legitimacy due to their economic crimes may resort to repression and coercion to stay in power. • Proceeds of economic crimes can be used to fund human rights violations. • Socioeconomic grievances can give rise to conflict, which leads to human rights abuses and further economic crimes.

25. Connection Between Economic Crimes and Human Rights Violations, Cont’d • Compartmentalization of economic crimes and human rights violations oversimplifies the relationship and does not reflect the reality of societies that seek to address them. • Mutually reinforcing relationship that should be examined by transitional justice. • Ignoring potential links means ignoring an important side of past injustices and could lead to a recurrence of conflict and abusive practices. • Comprehensive transitional justice strategy would include all gross violations of human rights during the conflict, as well as gross violations that gave rise to or contributed to the conflict.

26. Examples: Consequences of Impunity • “If the kind of zeal shown in prosecuting human rights cases is not applied to denying ex-dictators access to their tainted assets, these assets will be used to derail trials and asset recovery efforts.” – Ruben Carranza, Director of Reparative Justice Program at International Centre for Transitional Justice • Indonesia • Ex-dictator Suharto died without being held accountable for the corruption that allowed his family to amass an estimated $9 billion. • Family continues to enjoy fruits of economic crimes. • Nigeria • Death of Sani Abacha made it impossible to hold him accountable for human rights violations. • Post-Abacha government attempted to recover $4 billion of assets amassed by Abacha and his family, but was unable to do so. • Abacha family continues to use assets to maintain influence in Nigerian politics and to preserve the impunity of those who could still be held accountable. • Democratic Republic of the Congo • Legacy of Mobuto Sese Seko remains unaddressed, including the estimated $12 billion in bunds he embezzled. • Transitional justice mechanisms focused on cycles of violence that have taken place post-Mobuto. • Failure to examine the relationship between economic crimes and enduring violence ignores the structural causes of the continuing conflict.

27. Narration of Conflict and Peace • “Ultimately, transitional justice is a definitional project, explaining who has been silenced by delineating who may now speak, describing past violence by deciding what and who will be punished, and radically differentiating a new regime in relation to what actions were taken by its predecessor.” – Zinaida Miller • Must memorialize the history of economic crimes and war economies in order to create a new, different future.

28. Consequences of Silence: Narrative of the Rwandan Conflict • Failure to address economic issues ignores the way that structural violence created an enabling environment for genocide. • Historic connections between resource inequity and ethic division: • Differences between Hutu and Tutsi go beyond race to include unequal labor relations, land distribution, and differential access to cattle. • Ethnic hatred and economic disparity worked together to created the conditions for genocide. • Hutu regime used ethnic discourse to manipulate socioeconomic, political, and social divisions and disparities. • Government’s rhetoric fed into popular fears that Tutsi wished to reestablish their rule over the Hutus, redistributing land to Tutsi and reinstituting the uburetwalabor system. • Including economic dimensions in transitional justice could tell a more complete narrative, help heal historic grievances, and prevent those grievances from once again fermenting conflict.

29. Impact on Democracy • Economic stability and development are crucial to support democratic transitions. • Creating a new economic future requires examining economic arrangements of the past and changing problematic elements. • Problematic features might include unproductive expenditures, excessive rent-seeking practices, macro-economic destabilization, crony capitalism, and laws and regulations that hinder legitimate private sector activity. • Efforts to change these features can help eliminate the financial power base of the old elites and their repressive institutions. • Funds released through such efforts can be used for to strengthen democracy by undertaking development projects and building accountable institutions.

30. Investigating Crony Capitalists • Fear that investigating cronies of a dictator can lead to economic collapse is often very exaggerated and self-serving on the part of those being investigated. • Always some hesitation on the part of foreign investors or creditors to transact with a country where there is still political instability. • But instability often comes from those connected to former regimes or armed groups who fear accountability. • Able to create instability because of their ill-gotten assets • Use funds to support those who will bring back dictators or the political parties that will grant impunity to dictators. • Must ensure that efforts to investigate and recover assets are done in a transparent way and that all cronies and suspects are treated equally. • Sends a signal to creditors and investors that even as the country deals with the transition and with those perceived as associates of a dictator, the country is carrying out the process in a predictable, fair manner.

31. Arguments Against Including Economic Crimes • Engaging with economic crimes would require a different pool of investigators with a different set of skills and expertise. • Would not differ significantly from what investigations require in other transitional justice contexts. • Transitional justice institutions invariably need experts in areas other than law or human rights. • Will take time and resources away from investigating human rights violations. • Previous truth commissions that were mandated to investigate economic crimes (e.g., Chad and Liberia) were able to establish findings regarding corruption or socioeconomic violations. • Did not hinder them from simultaneously looking at their countries’ legacy of massive human rights violations. • Did not lead to unreasonable delays in the completion of their work or submission of their reports.

32. What role can the private sector play in transitional justice?

33. Moderating Force • Once known as a mosaic for its diversity of religions and ethnicities, Syrian society has been shattered by three years of war, with different groups set against each other. • Rebuilding a pluralistic society will require the engagement of the business community—a segment of society that largely transcends ethnic and religious differences. • Moderate, independent business community offers an alternative to the tyranny of the regime and violence of the extremists. • Private sector is a unifying, cohesive force that can offer positive solutions for the country’s future.

34. Documentation and Evidence Collection • Data collection is crucial to determining economic damages for reparations programs and investigating economic crimes. • “Without strong data that demonstrate the scale of violations and show patterns of violations across geographic, ethnic, or other significant markers of conflict, a reparations process can fall to the whims of the victor’s justice, deepening tensions within an already-fragile context.” – Syria Justice and Accountability Centre • Business community, in coordination with other civil society groups, can play a valuable role in collecting data about economic crimes committed before the conflict and economic damage incurred during the conflict. • Official records that document economic rights. • E.g. land registration records, home ownership documents. • Unofficial evidence of economic damage. • E.g. videos and pictures of damage to factories. • Testimonies and victim stories. • E.g. business owners and employees tell their stories.

35. “Syrian Perspectives on Transitional Justice” by the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre • Compensation for economic losses during the conflict is widely supported. • “Many respondents said those who had lost breadwinners, homes or jobs should receive priority for compensation. Some suggested that employers who lost shops or factories also should have priority, to help rebuild this economy. Redressing economic losses was implicitly the purpose of compensation.”

36. SEF Factory Survey: Documenting Economic Damage • SEF researchers studied a random sample of 1,017 factories located in northwest Syria in late 2013 - early 2014. • Major Findings: • 49.5% of factories have ceased production, and 37.3% of factories produce at less than half of their production capacity. • 88.7% of workers are out of work. • 25.2% of factories do not pay wages at all, and 22% of factories pay wages irregularly. • 74.5% of factories use electricity less than six hours per day, which is less than a quarter of the time. • 20.5% of factories do not have access to waste removal services. • 22.1% of factories do not have access to emergency services. • 27.5% of factories do not have access to transportation services. • 82.4% of factories' owners have confirmed the danger of artillery fire. • 62.3% of factories' owners have confirmed the danger of aerial bombardment. • 60.1% of factories' owners have confirmed the danger of armed groups. • Factories generally do not have an adequate supply of raw materials. • A comprehensive accounting of economic damage to private industry requires further study.

37. SEF Corruption Survey: Documenting Economic Crimes • Questionnaires answered by 136 Syrian businesspeople. • Major Findings: • Corruption increases businesspeople’s investment costs by 26-30% in Syria, which negatively affects citizens’ costs and standards of living. • Bribery and misuse of power are the most widespread forms of corruption. • Corruption is more prevalent in public institutions than in the private sector. • Corruption exists in most public institutions, particularly in the security services and judiciary. • There are violations in the procedures of corruption courts due to pressure from security services. • Most important causes of widespread corruption in Syria are weak oversight systems and the absence of a religious role in education.

38. Facilitating Dialogue on Economic Issues • Public-private dialogue is a key element of democratic consolidation and inclusive policymaking. • Increases representativeness, accountability, and transparency. • Business community can play an important role in bringing together stakeholders to discuss important economic issues. • What are the priorities for economic recovery and reconstruction? • What type of economic policies should be adopted post-conflict? • What type of institutional reform is necessary to promote economic growth and create accountable, democratic institutions?

39. Institutional Reform • Business community can advocate for the institutional reforms that promote a thriving private sector, inclusive economic growth, and democratic consolidation. • Examples of institutional reforms (International Center for Transitional Justice). • Structural reform. • Restructuring institutions to promote integrity and legitimacy, by providing accountability, building independence, ensuring representation, and increasing responsiveness. • Oversight. • Creating publicly visible oversight bodies within state institutions to ensure accountability to civilian governance. • Transforming legal frameworks. • Reforming or creating new legal frameworks, such as adopting constitutional amendments or international human rights treaties to ensure protection and promotion of human and socioeconomic rights.

40. Institutional Reforms to Create an Environment Conducive to Doing Business • Streamlined registration and licensing procedures. • Strong enforcement of contracts and property rights. • Access to finance. • Efficient bankruptcy procedures. • Access to information. • Reduced barriers to competition and trade. • Policies must be supported by an administrative system based on the rule of law and equal opportunity—not plagued by corruption and cronyism.

41. Private Financing • Business community can facilitate private financing for transitional justice mechanisms and economic recovery and rehabilitation. • Including raising funds from diaspora members. • Private sector approach for small revenue-generating projects that provide jobs, services, and opportunities for individuals and groups that have suffered during the conflict. • South Africa Reconciliation and Development Bond Project • Attempts to address unresolved issues of reconciliation between different groups of citizens. • Given the poverty of many black South Africans and their limited access to jobs, services, and opportunities, Project provided mechanism through which interested white South Africans, both resident in the country and expatriates, could finance projects that would help poor black South Africans overcome these challenges. • Allows interested parties to earn a real financial and social return on their investment while funding small and micro-enterprises or low income housing. • Debt financing. • Establishes fixed term for contractual relationship, allowing more freedom for the debtor; debtor can establish a credit history that allows access to future financing; debt arrangement structured so that borrower receives funding on better terms than available through any other source, thereby facilitating better relationships between creditor and debtor.

42. Private Sector Role in Economic Recovery and Rehabilitation • Free economic zone on Turkish-Syrian border. • Investment opportunities for Syrian businesspeople. • Job opportunities for displaced Syrian citizens.

43. Sources • “Syria’s Economy Will Take at Least 30 Years to Recover, Says the UN” by Ayrn Baker • http://time.com/48294/syria-economy-30-years-unrwa/ • “Socioeconomic and Damage Assessment Report: UNRWA Microfinance Clients in Syria” • http://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/socioeconomic_and_damage_assessment_report.pdf • “War Profiteers Plunder Syria” • http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/05/syria-aleppo-war-profit-theft-loot-rebels-regime.html • International Center for Transitional Justice • https://www.ictj.org/about • “’He Who Did Wrong Should Be Held Accountable’: Syrian Perspectives on Transitional Justice” by the Syrian Centre for Justice and Accountability • http://syriaaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/SJAC_Syrian_Perceptions_2014_EN.pdf (English) • http://syriaaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/SJAC_Syrian_Perceptions_2014_AR.pdf (Arabic) • “Syria: Using Data, Documentation, and Evidence in Reparations Processes” prepared by Christalla Yakinthou • http://syriaaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/SJAC-Documentation-Reparations-Memo-2013_EN.pdf (English) • http://syriaaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/SJAC-Documentation-Reparations-Memo-2013_AR.pdf (Arabic) • “Plunder and Pain: Should Transitional Justice Engage with Corruption and Economic Crimes?” by Ruben Carranza • http://www.ictj.org/plunder-pain-should-transitional-justice-engage-with-corruption-and-economic-crimes • “Asset recovery, reconciliation and economic truth commissions in transitional Egypt: An Interview with Ruben Carranza” • http://eipr.org/en/blog/post/2013/06/20/1738 • “Editorial: Dilemmas of Expanding Transitional Justice, or Forging the Nexus Between Transitional Justice and Development” by Rama Mani • http://ijtj.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2008/11/06/ijtj.ijn030.full.pdf • “Effects of Invisibility: In Search of the ‘Economic’ in Transitional Justice” by Zinaida Miller • http://ijtj.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/3/266.full.pdf+html • “Private Finance, Social Responsibility, and Transitional Justice: The Case for South African Reconciliation and Development” by Daniel D. Bradlow • http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=hrbrief

44. Discussion Questions • Should Syria’s system of transitional justice address economic issues? • What types of economic issues should be addressed? • What are the best mechanisms for addressing economic issues? Truth commission? Prosecution? Reparations? Institutional reform? • For truth commissions, should economic crimes be addressed alongside human rights violations, or should the two be addressed through separate commissions? • What is the best way to recover assets? • What types of reparations should be awarded? • What groups should be given priority in awarding reparations? • What type of evidence and data needs to be collected? • What types of institutional reforms need to be implemented? • What role should the private sector play in the process?

45. Background Reading: General • For full range of resources, see http://syriaaccountability.org/library/ • “What Is Transitional Justice?” • http://syriaaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/ICTJ-What-is-Transitional-Justice-2009_EN.pdf • International Center for Transitional Justice (browse website) • https://www.ictj.org/about • “Towards a Transitional Justice Strategy for Syria” • https://www.ictj.org/sites/default/files/ICTJ-Syria-Analysis-2013_0.pdf • “’He Who Did Wrong Should Be Held Accountable’: Syrian Perspectives on Transitional Justice” by the Syrian Centre for Justice and Accountability • http://syriaaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/SJAC_Syrian_Perceptions_2014_AR.pdf (Arabic) • “UN Secretary-General’s Report on the Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies” • http://www.unrol.org/files/S_2011_634ARA.pdf (Arabic) • “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions: Core Elements” • http://syriaaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/PILPG-Truth-and-Reconciliation-Memo-2012_AR.pdf (Arabic) • “Core Elements of Reparations” • http://syriaaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/PILPG-Reparations-Memo-2013_AR.pdf (Arabic) • “Hybrid Tribunals: Core Elements” • http://syriaaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/PILPG-Syria-Hybrid-Tribunals-Memo-2013_AR.pdf (Arabic) • “Mapping Accountability Efforts in Syria” • http://syriaaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/PILPG-SJAC-Mapping-Accountability-Effots-2013_EN.pdf • “International Human Rights Law: Introduction by OHCHR” • http://www.ohchr.org/documents/publications/factsheet30rev1.pdf • “Syria: Using Data, Documentation, and Evidence in Reparations Processes” prepared by Christalla Yakinthou • http://syriaaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/SJAC-Documentation-Reparations-Memo-2013_AR.pdf (Arabic)

46. Background Reading: Economics in Transitional Justice • “Plunder and Pain: Should Transitional Justice Engage with Corruption and Economic Crimes?” by Ruben Carranza • http://www.ictj.org/plunder-pain-should-transitional-justice-engage-with-corruption-and-economic-crimes • “Asset recovery, reconciliation and economic truth commissions in transitional Egypt: An Interview with Ruben Carranza” • http://eipr.org/en/blog/post/2013/06/20/1738 • “Editorial: Dilemmas of Expanding Transitional Justice, or Forging the Nexus Between Transitional Justice and Development” by Rama Mani • http://ijtj.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2008/11/06/ijtj.ijn030.full.pdf • “Effects of Invisibility: In Search of the ‘Economic’ in Transitional Justice” by Zinaida Miller • http://ijtj.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/3/266.full.pdf+html • “Private Finance, Social Responsibility, and Transitional Justice: The Case for South African Reconciliation and Development” by Daniel D. Bradlow • http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=hrbrief