Year
2019
Volume
13
Number
2
Page
48
Language
English
Court
Reference
O. HERMAN, “Holding Armed Groups to Account under International Human Rights Law: An Analysis of the Under-Explored Practice of Truth Commissions”, HRILD 2019, nr. 2, 48-72
Recapitulation
Truth commissions have become valuable accountability mechanisms set up in the aftermath of non-international armed conflicts. Accordingly, such commissions are increasingly mandated to investigate the conduct of non-state armed groups while applying an international legal framework. Yet, as noted by Andrew Clapham, ‘[t]he issue of the human rights obligations of non-state actors has arisen as a very practical problem in the context of truth commissions’, strengthening his argument by referring to the work of the Guatemalan Historical Clarification Commission and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone. Although the question whether non-state armed groups can violate international human rights law has attracted extensive scholarly debate, an in-depth analysis of truth commissions’ practice in this regard is lacking. This article fills this gap in legal scholarship by conducting a comprehensive analysis of the manner in which truth commissions have held non-state armed groups to account under human rights law and, at the same time, are potentially contributing to the emergence of a human rights accountability framework for such actors. The scope of analysis includes a variety of commissions operative in different regions of the world over a 20-year time period. This allows for an extensive analysis of this under-explored practice. The relevance of the practice for the further development of international law, and especially for the debate on the accountability of armed groups under human rights law, is also addressed. The article concludes by considering the implications of their practice for the existing accountability framework.