The search for post-conflict justice in Iraq: A comparative study of transitional justice mechanisms and their applicability to post-Saddam Iraq.

Source: (2007) Brooklyn Journal of International Law. 33(1): 59-124.

Few societies have suffered as has contemporary Iraq. … In particular, mechanisms aimed at national reconciliation
could do much to allay sectarian divisions in Iraq, notably those created by the Sunni minority’s persecution of the Shi’a
majority and the Sunni Ba’ath regime’s genocide of the Kurdish population. … Such justice focuses on the experience of
victims; hence the importance of reparation. … Hayner notes that while truth commissions “produce a list of victims”
and are “an obvious source on which to build a reparations program,” they “usually document[] only a small portion of
the total number of victims, and rarely ha[ve] the resources to corroborate all of the victim statements that [they] receive[].”
… Within the Russian official’s comments may lie a partial solution–lustration law must take into account the
wealth of talent available without members connected to the ancien regime and be willing to compromise if there are
too few of those individuals to effectively run the state. … Next it considers the two transitional justice mechanisms
heretofore implemented in post-Saddam Iraq; the Iraqi Special Tribunal and efforts at de-Ba’athification. … As Iraqi
Voices notes, some of the participants in the study were skeptical as to the value of a truth commission.(Author’s abstract).