Legal Affairs Minister Muhammad Al-Mikhlafi delivered a lecture on transitional justice to the NDC’s National Issues and Transitional Justice Working Group on Monday.

“The NDC’s responsibility is to pave the way for democratic transition; transitional justice will follow,” he said, before adding “Transitional justice will be served through government measures to address severe human rights violations.” 

The concept of transitional justice emerged in the 1990s. According to Al-Mikhlafi, South Africa was one of the countries which successfully applied transitional justice law.

“The normative transitional justice framework includes four standards, as follows: the truth, justice, national memory and preventing repeat violations,” he said.

Al-Mikhlafi said the Legal Affairs Ministry was seeking to enact the transitional justice law in order to provide a sense of finality for national reconciliation efforts, and also out of fairness to victims and their families. 

With regard to the transitional justice law draft, there exist disagreements on two points: the first concerns the timeframe for achieving transitional justice, while the second concerns institutional reforms, he said. 

“The legal draft which was turned over to the president called for the application of transitional justice to violations which took place from 1990 on,” said Al-Mikhlafi.

“The normative framework means that we need to have witnesses if we are to apply the law to human rights crimes. The fourth provision of the law draft called for the application of justice to violations which have had ongoing impacts,” he said.

Drawing further links between the past, present and future, Al-Mikhlafi said, “Institutional reforms require that we restructure the state systems in order to tackle all the reasons why officials were allowed in the past to commit human rights violations.”