These insights, offered by regular citizens, have been folded into Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC), which held its first trial this week. For the next two years (a tenure the government can extend), the 11 commissioners—apolitical individuals, “of high moral character” from diverse backgrounds—will oversee the televised trials and establish an impartial narrative of what happened in the violent shadows of former President Yahya Jammeh’s regime. They’ll also, more tangibly, produce a report with recommendations on what the government should do on reparations, amnesty, and prosecution—including, potentially, the prosecution of Jammeh himself.
Prosecution tends to be the most important objective for victims. The government’s emphasis, meanwhile, is often on reconciliation. And this isn’t the only fault line—there is also the question of defining victimhood. So far, the word has been used liberally, even to describe those who suffered “pecuniary loss” at the hands of the former regime. But in a country whose poverty was deepened by Jammeh’s avarice, who hasn’t suffered financial loss by his hand? There’s also the challenge of what to do about the victims who, prior to their suffering, were themselves perpetrators. [...]
Historically, according to the Canadian author and politician Michael Ignatieff, commissions such as this strive to lay out two types of truth: factual truth (establishing what happened) and moral truth (establishing why those things happened and who did them). In places like Chile and Argentina, he argues, the commissions laid out the former while falling short on the latter. [...]
Giving reparations to these complex victims has risks: It could foment resentment, and here, where many victims are elites, it could reinforce suspicions that the system panders to the powerful. Still, there’s a fundamental reason why it should be done: Justice should be equitable. There is room to be creative in how it happens—there could be specialized panels, for example, that have the ability to make innovative recommendations, such as rehabilitation as a form of reparation, as Luke Moffett of Queen’s University Belfast writes.
