The EU’s Policy Framework on Support to Transitional Justice

This document is the first strategy to develop and implement an EU policy on Transitional Justice. Its objective is to provide a framework for EU support to transitional justice mechanisms and processes and to enhance the EU’s ability to play a more active and consistent role.

This framework sets out how the EU can engage in situations where past violations and abuses, including violations and abuses of human rights and serious violations of international humanitarian law, have occurred. The EU’s engagement occurs through a context-specific combination of measures promoting truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence, i.e. ensuring transitional justice.  Such processes must be locally and nationally owned, inclusive, gender sensitive and respect states’ obligations under international law.

Transitional justice is an integral part of state- and peace-building and therefore should also be embedded in the wider crisis response, conflict prevention, security and development efforts of the EU. As stated in the document, the planning process for each CSDP mission and operation will assess how they could support the transitional justice process and how this mission and operation could contribute to the fight against impunity and support institutional reform. CSDP missions will also be involved in reporting on the strategy’s implementation.

It has been adopted by the Council of the European Union on November 16, 2015.

Reference: European External Action Service (2015). The EU’s Policy Framework on support to transitional justice.  

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