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8 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 277 (1998)
Reconciliation and Justice: The South African Experience

handle is hein.journals/tlcp8 and id is 283 raw text is: Reconciliation and Justice: The South African Experience John Dugard* I. Introduction ............................................................................................. 277 II. International Norms and Guidelines for Dealing with Crimes of the Past ............................................................ 279 III. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Process ........................... 290 IV. Does South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Process Comply with International Norms? ......................................... 301 V. The Truth and Reconciliation Process and the Protection of Human Rights ................................................................... 308 I. INTRODUCTION When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted on 10 December 1948, to give expression to the rights proclaimed in Articles 55 and 56 of the United Nations Charter, no one could have contemplated the enforcement of these rights by criminal sanctions. States still viewed the treatment of their own nationals as a matter of exclusive domestic concern, protected by Article 2(7) of the Charter, and the only enforcement procedures anticipated were reports by states on their compliance with the rights proclaimed and, perhaps, the hearing of individual complaints by an international body. In the years that followed, regional conventions, such as the European Convention on Human Rights, and universal conventions, notably the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, gave legal force to the rights proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They established machinery to receive reports from signatory states, to provide for the settlement of disputes between states over the question of compliance with their obligations, and, in the final resort, to allow individuals to petition international monitoring bodies when their human rights were violated. The idea that state officials might be punished under international law for grave human rights violations perpetrated on their own nationals in time of peace or internal conflict remained a utopian dream. It is true that the Nuremberg tribunals had tried the leaders of the Nazi regime for atrocities committed against their own nationals, but that was for crimes * Professor of Public International Law, University of Leiden, The Netherlands; Professor Emeritus, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa; Member of the United Nations International Law Commission.

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