 Good morning and welcome, my name is Elise Grande and I'm the head of the United States Institute of Peace which was established by the US Congress in 1984 as a public, nonpartisan institution dedicated to helping prevent, mitigate and resolve violent conflict abroad. We are very pleased to welcome everyone to our discussion today on justice, accountability, peace building and democracy and to be co-hosting today's discussion with the US Department of State in support of the 2023 summit on democracy. We're fortunate to have a distinguished panel joining us online including Alexandra Matvichuk, the head of Ukraine's Center for Civil Liberties which as we all know has received this year's Nobel laureate. We also have Gina Cabracas-Marcia, the director of the Justice and Criminal Policy Laboratory in Columbia. Also joining us is Baba Galujalo who is the first Roger Fisher Fellow in negotiation and conflict resolution at Harvard Law School and a former commissioner on the Gambia's Truth Reconciliation and Reparations Commission. It's a pleasure to welcome Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Colleen Crenwelgi from the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice, Beth Vonskac and Fabrizio Garagrilea, the director of the Hague Branch Office of the International Development Law Organization. With authoritarianism growing and the global rules-based order under all kinds of pressure, ensuring accountability and protecting democracy have become some of the most pressing and important priorities facing the international community. These are issues that are central to global stability, to our shared prosperity, to freedom and very importantly to peace. Justice governments and organizations across the world are rising to this challenge, developing and field testing both formal and transitional mechanisms and strategies for reducing impunity and delivering justice to civilians who have been impacted by war and conflict. As a leader of global democracy, the US has a special responsibility to take decisive steps, to advance accountability and deliver justice, including things that we have been reluctant to do in the past. We need to do this so that we can demonstrate to everyone that we are serious about democracy. The announcement yesterday made by Ambassador Vonskac that the US government supports the establishment of a special tribunal to investigate and prosecute the crime of aggression against Ukraine by the Russian Federation is the kind of important bold step that is urgently needed. Our panel today will be discussing these themes and the tasks in front of us from the perspectives of Colombia, the Gambia and Ukraine. To present welcome remarks, we are delighted to have Colleen Quinwuelgi, the principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Department of State's Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. Ms. Quinwuelgi is a career Foreign Service Officer who has served in Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Nigeria and at the OSCE. Colleen, please. Thank you, Lees. And sincere thanks to you and your team for organizing and hosting today's important discussion. Its themes will be key topics throughout this week's Summit for Democracy. There is ample evidence that lack of justice and accountability can contribute to cycles of violence and undermine democratic institutions. The need for accountability for past wrongs has been demonstrated, unfortunately, time and time again. The US government has committed to ensuring accountability, including through the LAWZEL genocide and atrocities Prevention Act, and the US Strategy to Anticipate, Prevent and Respond to Atrocities. The strategy itself underscores the need to prevent atrocities, especially for at-risk groups. This of course requires careful planning and coordinated action to ensure specific needs are addressed, especially among marginalized communities. One way the United States fosters accountability is through the conflict observatory. This is, in my view, an innovative program supported by the Department of State whose partners use open source information to independently compile and document evidence to support investigations of abuses during Russia's war against Ukraine. Reports are publicly available and information is collected and preserved consistent with international standards for use in ongoing and future accountability efforts. The United States also supports accountability in countries around the world by strengthening democratic institutions, promoting the rule of law and supporting transitional justice mechanisms. It's important, of course, that US government justice and accountability efforts reflect an understanding of the cultures and communities in which they are undertaken. Colombia, the Gambia, Ukraine, and other countries present unique needs and challenges requiring tailored approaches. It's also important for justice and accountability efforts to incorporate the perspectives of groups frequently excluded, like women, LGBTQIA plus individuals, and indigenous communities. Justice and accountability contribute to society's overall stability only when equally accessible to all. All citizens must have opportunities to safely participate in governance free of the risk of violence. We firmly believe that by recognizing the atrocities of the past, pursuing justice and accountability, removing impunity, and building strong institutions to promote and protect the rule of law, we can contribute to the overall health of democracy. Now, with that, it's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Beth Vanscock, Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice. She advises the Secretary of State and other Department of State leadership on the prevention of and response to atrocity crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. She served as deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large from 2012 to 2013. Prior to that, she was the Leah Kaplan visiting professor in human rights at Stanford Law School. Dr. Vanscock began her academic career at Santa Clara University School of Law, where she taught and wrote on international human rights issues, and also served as the academic advisor to the U.S. delegation to the International Criminal Court Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda. Earlier in her career, she was a practicing attorney, and she holds degrees from Stanford, Yale, and Leiden University. Ambassador. Thank you so much, Colleen, for that very kind introduction, and also for highlighting the role that the State Department plays in atrocity prevention and response as part of our toolkit for promoting democracy around the world. And thank you, of course, to USIP for convening us today. You're such a wonderful partner in justice. So as we convene now the second summit for democracy, countries around the world are facing mass violence and authoritarianism, forms of instability and fragility that beget repression, violence, and human rights violations that both threaten and undermine democracy. The field of transitional justice, which encompasses a whole range of measures that are judicial and non-judicial, that are formal and informal, that may be retributory or reconciliatory, provides a set of tools for war-torn and transitional societies to address legacies of mass violence, authoritarianism, and repression. In so doing, transitional justice can promote accountability for gross and systemic violations of human rights, can rebuild social cohesion, can help to rehabilitate victims and survivors, can restore trust in formerly abusive institutions, and can prevent the recurrence of such violations. Transitional justice thus provides a critical avenue to building a durable peace, an inclusive society, a thriving democracy, and greater prosperity for all. As we know, a comprehensive transitional justice program will encompass a range of measures that bring justice, broadly defined to include retributive but also restorative justice, but also includes elements aimed at truth-telling, reparation, memorialization, and building historic memory, institutional reform, and putting in place guarantees of non-repetition. For a program to be effective, it must be inclusive, and it must reflect the preferences and expectations of the segments of the community that were most affected by violence, including women, racially and ethnically marginalized communities, and other minority groups. These processes today are being actively pursued in a number of different societies and post-authoritarian communities around the world. I'll just highlight a few here, and we'll hear from our esteemed speakers today about their own individual experience. In Columbia, a comprehensive peace accord ended a half-century of internal conflict that had led to mass displacement, forced disappearance, and other atrocities including sexual and gender violence. The peace accord finally gave voice to victims and survivors, including women and girls. In pursuing truth, justice, and reparations, I very much enjoyed meeting with the delegation from Columbia yesterday for the high-level dialogue in which we were all able to learn more about the current steps at implementation of their very sophisticated transitional justice program. In Ethiopia, a cessation of hostilities agreement signed in November of last year ended two brutal years of civil war. The parties to this conflict have pledged in that cessation of hostilities agreement to implement a comprehensive transitional justice program with truth and accountability for these abuses, all within the context of the African Union transitional justice policy framework. They are embarking now upon a series of public consultations with affected communities around the country. For such transitional justice to be true and meaningful, it must better incorporate the experiences and involvement of women. In the Gambia, the country and its citizens are facing the legacy of the Jameh regimes two decades of authoritarian rule. Their model truth reconciliation and reparations commission heard from more than 400 witnesses about the abuses under the Jameh regime. The country now must ensure that those responsible are held accountable and victims are made whole. The United States has a small part to play in this effort. We are prosecuting one of the junglers, one of the death squad members of the Jameh rule who was found overstaying a visa in Colorado. He will be prosecuted under our torture convention, one of the first prosecutions to go forward after the Chucky Taylor case several years ago. And of course, Ukraine is actively pursuing prosecution in the midst of Russia's full scale invasion, but will inevitably need to turn to other measures of transitional justice when the guns fall silent, particularly with respect to Russian speaking areas in the east. Now, notwithstanding the proven benefits of a robust, inclusive and genuine transitional justice program, calls to pursue these measures still face significant resistance from individuals and groups that are afraid to face their own responsibility for abuses, but also from deficits in political will. In addition, these efforts can be for stalled when persons who have been adversely named, for example, in a truth commission or who have otherwise been involved in abuses still remain in positions of power or authority. Sri Lanka, for example, has faced cycles of violence over many decades, including civil war, terrorism, insurrection, political repression, with UN investigations finding that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed. In 2015, a new post-conflict government accepted formally transitional justice commitments within the context of the Human Rights Council in the United Nations, including pledges to ensure remedies for survivors and their communities to pursue genuine accountability for perpetrators and to make other important institutional reforms. However, largely due to a lack of political will and an unwillingness to acknowledge that state actors also committed abuses, the government has largely failed to honor these commitments. The transitional justice mechanisms that have been stood up, such as the Office for Missing Persons and for reparations, have not resolved cases, do not have the support of victims or their communities or civil society, and appear to have been instrumentalized in order to entrench impunity rather than provide accountability. Sadly, the insecurity and instability that we're seeing in Sri Lanka is proof that transitional justice is not just a box-ticking exercise. In Guatemala, we've seen independent judicial actors, anti-corruption advocates, civil society organizations, and members of the media who would seek to expose and bring justice for abuses during the long history of repression there, have experienced persecution and harassment. We note with concern that many of these individuals and groups are being targeted precisely because they're trying to advance transitional justice within Guatemala, including with respect to some emblematic cases that have preceded in Guatemalan courts. In particular, judges and prosecutors previously involved in the Commission, the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, CSIG, and also the ongoing historic military diary case are being intimidated, threatened, criminally charged, and forced into exile, all while trying to shed a light on abuses of the past. And in Liberia, following 14 years of two consecutive civil wars characterized by widespread killings, torture, forced displacement, and the recruitment of child soldiers, that these abuses that devastated the country and its citizenry, has hosted a very important truth and reconciliation commission that created space for victims and survivor to spare witness to what they experienced in these two consecutive civil wars in an effort to achieve peace and reconciliation. However, the implementation of the very strong recommendations issued by that commission has been now stalled for more than a decade. No Liberians have been held accountable in the country themselves. The only justice that Liberians have experienced is in the courts of other countries where perpetrators has been found and where prosecutors have been willing to invoke universal jurisdiction and other forms of extraterritorial jurisdiction, even here in the United States. Many of those who were adversely named within the truth commission report still enjoy prominent positions within the government, where they continue to block progress on accountability, they continue to entrench impunity, and they continue to block victims from further seeking justice. Now, the imperative to pursue transitional justice is clear, and we know that a range of different retributive approaches and restorative mechanisms exist. Indeed, USIP was instrumental in putting forth one of the first comprehensive volumes of transitional justice. Back in the 90s, Neil Critts, I still have a copy of that three volume set, USIP recognized the important role that transitional justice would play in instantiating a durable peace. We also know that there are a whole range of tools, not just criminal trials, of course, but civil reparations, lustrations or vetting that would remove people from positions of power who were associated with the previous regime, rehabilitation and reparation for survivors and victims, memorialization and guarantees of non-repetition. Different forms of justice can address the continuum of needs expressed by survivors, their families, and their communities, including individual and collective reparations. Nonetheless, notwithstanding these archetypal models, each process within particular countries will be unique and context-specific. Such responses may be sequenced if some are more palatable to the prevailing political wins than others, and if there is resistance to a particular model being implemented or a particular mechanism being utilized, particularly if there are parties who may be implicated who still remain in power. Resistance to pursue criminal accountability, for example, may make the path to more restorative approaches more attainable, and that would later lay the groundwork for something more retributive. Victims and survivors continue to demand some measure of accountability so criminal prosecutions cannot be forestalled forever, and we know that long-standing impunity is one of the significant risk factors for the recurrence of violence. This appears in all models of atrocities prevention and response, so that is the one thing we can guarantee that there may not be deterrence if there is criminal accountability, but we know there will be no deterrence if there is no criminal accountability. Forgiveness and reconciliation are often seen as important aims of transitional justice processes. While these two interlocking phenomena are, of course, desirable outcomes of these processes, they cannot be forced upon communities. All a transitional justice program can do is to create space for reconciliation and forgiveness to happen organically. This attests to the critical importance of designing a whole program of transitional justice around the voices, experiences, and needs of victims and survivors. In the words of John Braithwaith, who is a pioneer in the restorative justice movement, forgiveness is a gift that victims give. We destroy its power as a gift if we make it a duty. Finally, in designing a transitional justice program, it is vital to implement gender-sensitive approaches that allow for the meaningful inclusion of women and girls in all of their diversity. Without them, the legacies of violence will never be fundamentally addressed. The women, peace, and security agenda has led to international recognition of the need to integrate women into all peace processes, including negotiations amongst warring parties. Their participation and, importantly, their leadership in these processes can ensure that the needs, perspectives, and experiences of disadvantaged and marginalized communities, including rural communities, indigenous communities, and others, are fully integrated into peace processes, negotiations, and transitional justice mechanisms. Columbia, in this regard, has been a model in terms of not only layering these different transitional justice mechanisms, but also for implementing an extensive gender-sensitive set of measures that have enabled the voices of women and girl victims to be heard and for the perpetrators of sexual and gender-based violence to be held accountable. Yet, even in the most inclusive situations, we have seen communities be excluded. They've not been provided the space or the opportunities to exercise leadership. This can structurally limit the ability of these processes to comprehensively understand and address the range of violations experienced by historically marginalized communities. Gender-sensitive approaches must include a reaction to gender, sexual and gender-based violence, which is important in combating immunity, confronting gender inequalities and norms, and providing redress. Likewise, it is important that other marginalized communities are, we've often seen that other marginalized communities are intentionally silenced, erased, or even ignored. Forms of violence that are perpetrated against individuals due to their sexual orientation or gender identity are often overlooked, including crimes we've seen people being lashed to death, burnt alive, brutally humiliated, and tortured, among other inhumane acts. Despite widespread understanding that gender inequality results in the disproportionate impact of violence against women and girls, the same recognition does not translate into looking at violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and intersex persons in existing transitional justice processes. Even though these forms of violence have been used by armed actors to simultaneously ingratiate themselves in society and also instill fear in communities. Sexual and gender-based violence against men and boys, especially in detention settings, is also repeatedly ignored, largely due to entrenched stigmatization. Atrocities are strategically and tactically committed on the basis of severe marginalization and prejudice and is structured in a way to entrench gender norms. It is time that the recognition of the linkages between violence and stigma is extended to all persons, including LGBTQI plus individuals across the globe. For example, we've seen in Afghanistan where the Taliban has increased persecution of women, but also of LGBTQ plus persons through public flogging, gang rape and detention, and forced marriage. As we know, transitional justice is often initiated in the final phases of a conflict or after a political transition when the guns have been silenced. There still is some work, however, that can be done pre-transition, and we've seen this in the situation in Syria, where governments around the world have invested in transitional justice processes even while the conflict remains underway. This can send a clear message to perpetrators, regardless of affiliation, that they will be held to account. It can aim to defer, deter future abuses and socialize the value of a holistic and inclusive transitional justice process. So I very much look forward to hearing from the representatives of Columbia, the Gambia and Ukraine who are here today with the expert moderation of David Scheffer as they speak to the justice and accountability processes currently underway in these countries. Each of these paths to justice is unique and context specific, but it's important that the international community and a spirit of partnership encourages transparent, inclusive and genuine survivor-centered transitional justice processes in all of its form. Thank you very much and I look forward to our discussion. Beth Colleen, thank you for your introductory comments and Beth for laying out what was so striking and listening to you was what seems like remarkable progress across a number of conflicts and making central to peace processes, international dialogues, issues of accountability. It's very heartening to hear that and to understand the work that's being done. I'm very pleased now to introduce my co-moderator for this session, Ambassador David Scheffer. David is currently a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is one of the U.S.'s leading experts on international law and international criminal justice. David served as the U.N. Secretary-General's special expert on U.N. assistance to the Khmer Rouge trials. He led the U.S. delegation to the U.N. talks that established the International Criminal Court and he has negotiated the establishment of five war crime tribunals. That includes the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the special court for Sierra Leone, the extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia and the ICC. David, we're delighted to have you here. It is our honor to welcome three very distinguished experts to discuss the indispensable role that justice mechanisms play in promoting democracy in countries that are emerging from conflict and from authoritarianism. Allow me to start by welcoming Gina Habarkas-Massia, who is the director of the Justice and Criminal Policy Laboratory in Bogota, Colombia. Gina has designed and implemented investigative methodologies for tracking extra judicial disappearances as part of the unit for the search for persons reported as disappeared, which was created by the peace accords in Colombia. Gina, welcome. I'm very pleased to introduce Dr. Baba Gala Jalo, who is a journalist, a leading expert on transitional justice in the Gambia, where he served as the executive secretary of the Truth Reconciliation and Reparations Commission, and as I mentioned, he is the inaugural Fisher Fellow at Harvard Law School. Baba, welcome. And, Alexandra, welcome back. Alexandra Matvichuk has been at USIP a number of occasions. Alexandra, every time we have you, we consider it a great honor. Alexandra is the head of the Center for Civil Liberties, as I mentioned in our introductory comments. That Center won this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Alexandra has been at the forefront of efforts to document human rights violations and war crimes that were committed by Russia in its invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and is the author of numerous reports for the United Nations, for the Council of Europe, for the European Union, the OSCE, and the International Criminal Court. Alexandra, very nice to have you with us today. Gina, with your permission, we're going to start with you, and we would like you to share with us the way in which the lived experiences of indigenous communities in Colombia who were deeply impacted by your country's civil war, how have their concerns, their demands, been incorporated into both the legal and the transitional justice systems that would be peace accords centered much of the discussion around? Gina, over to you. Thank you. Thank you, and good morning to everybody. I feel very honored to be here and being able to share with you some insights regarding victims and survivors' participation in transitional justice process in Colombia. I've been involved in all my professional experience, has revolved around justice processes in Colombia. I was also part of the historical memory group which was created in 2007 as part of a truth-telling process of the pan-military demobilization. I was also part of the prosecution office in Colombia in charge of various investigations of great human rights violations and, as you mentioned, I was part of the unit for the search of disappeared persons as well. So what I wanted to share with you was sort of the particularities of the Colombia case regarding the participation of the victims and survivors and particularly of vulnerable and historically excluded communities in the transitional justice processes and to share some of the challenges and tensions that are part of the implementation of these processes. So just to give a bit of a context, Colombia's case is an example of a very long transition, right? So we've been in a transition, at least since 2006, and even though the 2016 Peace Accord marked a final point for the armed conflict, we're still living according to the ICRC, we're still living at least five regional armed conflicts, which means that violence keeps being part of the daily lives of a lot of communities in Colombia, particularly of indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities. Justice mechanisms have been implemented to overcome scarce justice to human rights violations, while, and I think this is an important part of the transitional justice process in Colombia, which is that while bringing justice to those human rights violations, there's also always an intent to try and solve the legal situation of former ex-combatants. So all the transitional justice processes have had that two intent in mind. In a sense, at least since 2005, trials have accompanied the questions regarding amnesties and a special treatment for former combatants that commit to peace. So efforts to strengthen democratic reforms during this transition period have been driven mostly, and this is specific for Colombia, I think, by a very present and organized civil society movement of human rights and victims organizations that include indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities that have mostly prioritized justice mechanisms to advocate for those demands. And the state response to these demands has been very important. And although I would argue very complex and sometimes low, it has resulted in various different types of transitional justice measures. So just to get a sense of all the types of measures that we're talking about, we're talking about more judicial institutions for accountability. So at least one special jurisdiction for peace, which was recently or created with the peace accords, but also a special jurisdiction in the ordinary justice system to address paramilitary violations. One complex and very big administrative reparation system for some victims of the armed conflict, a civil transitional justice jurisdiction for the restitution of land, and several memory and truth state-led initiatives, including the 2022 Truth Commission's report. So we have a wide variety of measures of transitional justice that have been implemented in over the past 15 years, and in which the participation of victim survivors and indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities has been different, but it's always been present. So one of the questions of the summit was how has this, how all these transitional justice mechanisms contributed to democracy and to a more or less violent context, right? And just to get a sense, well, in 2004, before the first, for that first transitional justice or sort of transitional justice initiative was implemented, which is called the Justice and Peace Law, Colombia's homicide rate was 45 over 100,000 persons, which meant that at least 20,000 homicides were reported a year. In 2022, there were 13,000 homicides, which meant that the rate was reduced to 26. And all those these data only accounts for a reduction on lethal violence. And one of the challenges I think of the transition is to report not only lethal violence, but other types of violence. We can all agree that Colombia is less violent now than it was when transition justice processes were first implemented. However, and trying to make sure to portray the situation of certain communities in Colombia and particularly of indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities. In the last 24 hours, two social leaders in Tumaco, which is an Afro-Colombian and indigenous community municipality in the Pacific coast of Colombia were killed. One was a woman, social leader, Afro-Colombian, Mariela, and Linden, which was precisely an indigenous juvenile youth leader. So we still have very traumatic murders and that are due to violence that relates to the former armed conflict. Participation of victims and organizations can be assessed, I think, at least in two levels. One level is how human rights and victims organizations have been part of the design of transitional justice processes and not so much on the implementation, but on the design. So I would say that we've been from 2005 to 2022. There's been more participation of these organizations in the design of the processes. So just to give you an example, the three main mechanisms of transitional justice now implemented, the jurisdiction for peace, the unit for the search and the truth commission had representatives of victim organizations, of indigenous communities and of Afro-Colombian communities as judges, commissioners, and as human rights long, very renowned human rights defender was the head of the unit for the search until February. So what we've seen is that in the design and the implementation of the processes, there has been an increased participation of organizations, especially of organizations and of victims. But another level, and maybe this is an interesting level, is how to assess the participation in the mechanisms and in using those mechanisms. So to get a sense of that, Colombia has nine over 9 million persons recognized as victims of the armed conflict. This is 18% of Colombia's population. However, less than 6,000 persons are accredited as victims in the jurisdiction for peace. So we do have, so even though victims report for administrative compensation, they are not necessarily present in the justice mechanisms. And with this, I'm going to finish with our, I'm going to mention at least six tensions or challenges I see on why we see these variants between registered and recognized victims and victims actually participating in the transitional justice mechanisms. So the first challenge I'm going to mention is how accountability processes are complex and although several legal mandates dictate, there must be a victim-centered approach. And this is part of all our legal instruments. These are processes that revolve around the alleged perpetrator and armed doctors still. So for example, prioritization and selection strategies have been built mostly without the participation of victims and victims organizations. And in this I think that the next few years are very important because the jurisdiction for peace is precisely opening macro cases that part of their intent is to actually incorporate victims and especially vulnerable and historically excluded communities. These new macro cases, which are four in total, four macro cases are supposed to precisely account for that what was mentioned in the intervention before, which is how violence and stigma are part of the armed conflict and of those systematic violations of human rights. So I would say that that's one of the first challenges, which is to, for these macro cases regarding accountability of their own conflict to actually prioritize what those violences that portray the stigma and the violence suffered by those excluded communities. This is a huge challenge because precisely for what I said, which is that accountability process is still focused mostly on the perpetrators and on closing the legal situation of those perpetrators unless on what victims and organizations demand in terms of justice. So that's the first challenge. The second challenge, I think that participation in accountability process is not enough to deal with trauma. And although there are some state services to attend trauma, these services are really very insufficient. And I think that this is maybe something that other countries can relate to, which is that a state services to address trauma are usually underfunded and are very important. And usually what happens is that all the services that victims need to address trauma have to be have to be implemented by them, right? So it's an extra cost for victims. And that brings me to the third challenge, which is that participation is very costly. And one can say that it's costly for the state, but I'm gonna argue that is most costly for the victims and the organizations. So in Colombia right now, part of what we're doing is to implement the restorative approach to reparations in both the jurisdiction for peace, but I'm sure you are all aware that in the new peace process called the total peace, which is being designed by the new government, the restorative justice approach is also part of that total peace model. And part of the challenge is precisely to make sure that the restorative approach comes back, restores the place of the victims in that approach. So now what has happened is that in the implementation of the restorative approach, measures have centered in the ex combatants and how they contribute to those measures, but it's crucial to restore the initial intent, which is how to build a truly victim-centered approach. That doesn't make a victim's participation more costly, but that actually aids those costs of the participation. The fourth challenge, I only have six, so I have three more to go, is how participation in justice mechanisms has awakened political participation of victims and organizations. And this I think has been, is true both for victims and indigenous and Afro-Columbian communities. And there's still a huge challenge to build safe and possible strategies for political participation of victims and communities. I think this is part of what the new government is trying to implement, which is to make sure that that awakening of the political participation, which was precisely what the un-conflict killed, is one of the main issues in actually achieving a political transition. The fifth challenge is how rebuilding communities where victims and perpetrators have to live together, where some victims are related to some of those perpetrators, how this is a very challenging measure. And here, both Afro-Columbian and indigenous communities have a lot to teach us. And they are implementing sometimes without the state support, they are implementing ways in which you can rebuild communities where perpetrators and victims have or come to live together again. But this is a huge challenge because victims and DVR programs, although are rightly divided, their implementation is coinciding in certain communities and this poses challenges for making this rebuild of communities an actual reality. And my final challenge is how non-recurrence is still far from being a guarantee in most communities that were most affected by the un-conflict. And this is something that we have to bear in mind always. So even though, and as I started my intervention, we can agree that Colombia is less violent now than it was 15 years ago. In certain parts of Colombia, it's still a very violent place to live. And it's a place as violent as in the un-conflict. So current efforts for a total piece as the new, or I wouldn't say new, but the renewed government strategy to keep the peace process alive, all those efforts for the total peace are definitely necessary. And participation of victims and organizations in these new processes adds complexity to an already burdensome one, but it's very necessary for a transition to be actually achieved. So with that, I would end which is the challenge of guaranteeing non-recurrence in Colombia. Thank you. Gina, that was an extraordinary description of a process which many people around the world regard as one of our generation's deepest, most successful national dialogues and peace processes. Gina, what was particularly striking for me were listening to the way that you were linking the push for transitional justice and accountability, linking that directly to, I think you use the word awakening politically of a group of people that had been historically excluded. Can you talk more about that because part of the reason that we wanted to host this event during the Summit for Democracy was to do exactly what you just described, to look at the link between the struggle for justice, the insistence and demand of citizens and victims for justice, and the link to democratic processes that over time can ensure stability and prosperity in countries. Gina. Yes, so thank you. So I think that awakening has to do with the fact that Colombia is on conflict even though it has organized crime elements, it was a political violent armed conflict. So there was, and I think in some communities there still is a fight for who speaks for politics and who is doing politics in those communities. And this is what I think that the judicial demands of victims have awakened. And I think that here human rights and victims organizations have a lot to do with this, right? Which is that those demands for political intervention have for decades, they had to be addressed first by demanding accountability processes, right? And here maybe one of the macro cases that we have to point out to is the macro case number six, which is a macro case that specifically focuses on how the armed conflict extinguished a political party in Colombia, the Unión Patriótica, which not odd enough is part of the now government coalition, right? So I think that both in the accountability processes and in the new political agenda, what we're seeing is how communities and victims organizations are both still demanding accountability for those violations and these are violations that refer to political violence. And at the same time, are trying to democratically earn a place in government both in the national government and in local and regional governments. So yes, I think that's what we're seeing now in Colombia, which I think is very positive, which is because it's what shows that we're actually in a transition. It's a very long transition, a very complex, like I said, transition, but it's what shows that we are actually in a transition from an armed conflict where political differences were excluded violently to a more open political agenda and political race. Gina, thank you. Thank you, that was fascinating, Gina. I wanna turn now to Baba Gala Jalo and ask you how the work of the Truth Reconciliation and Reparations Commission has allowed state actors to better understand the transitional justice needs of civilians in the Gambia. And if you can give us a little background on that, Baba, that would be very helpful. Have you unmuted, Baba? Thank you very much, David. And thanks to the organizers for giving me an opportunity to share some of the experiences that we had in the Gambia. As you probably know, the Gambia had two governments before the transitional justice process started. We had a government that was in power from 1965 to 1994, and that was supposedly a democratic government. Where it was a democratic government where one party and one man won election after election after election. And so to the extent that at the end of the day, people really got tired. Gambians got tired of having the same person in power for 30 years. So just as a side here, I want to say that in considering the trajectory of democracy in the present, it is important for the international community, everyone concerned with peace and country prevention to take note that people do not want one individual in power for over three decades. It's simply not democratic. However you spin it, however people spin it, they are a regular election. They are supposed to be free and fair. But one individual wins elections over and over again and appoints a group of people in a musical, political, musical chest that eventually brought about a military coup and brought us a person, a military ruler who beat his chest and boasted that he owned the country. And it is within that context of 30 years of one man, one party democracy and 22 years with very brutal dictatorship that a transitional justice process was born in the Gambia. Now in terms of how we were able to allow state actors to understand the transitional justice needs of civilians, I would say that we understood the transitional justice process and in particular the truth commission process as a conversation, as a national conversation, as a regional conversation, as an international conversation because at the national level is where we had the victims. Everyone in Gambia was a victim one way or the other, but then we had victims too from some West African countries, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Kodivar, et cetera. And we even had victims from the United States. So we conceived of the truth commission process as a conversation with many stakeholders who would be interested. And so that understanding, that determination shaped the type of operational strategy that we adopted, which was a double-pronged approach. We made sure that in addition to the public hearings, we also had a secretariat that was well-equipped with various units or departments, if you call them. We had a victim support unit that was able to engage a particular demographic, the victim population in the country, not exclusively, but that catered to the needs of the victims. We had a woman's affairs department or unit that went and catered for the needs of the women through outreach activities, through village dialogues, through town hall meetings, through women's listening circles to make sure that the concerns of all women, not only the direct victims, are expressed within the work of the truth commission, and I've brought to the attention of all of the actors, the state actors, the non-state actors, everyone who was interested in the TGA process had a chance to know what the concerns of the women are. And one of the things that came out of some of our outreach activities was that women were all-round victims. Some of them were direct victims of witch-hunting, direct victims of sexual and gender-based violence, direct victims of a fake HIV, AIDS treatment program, et cetera. But every single person who was a victim in the Gambia has a woman who also was an indirect victim. So we made sure that we maximized the presence and the visibility of the women's involvement, women's victimhood in the TRRC process. We also had a youth and children's network unit that as part of the secretariat that carried out outreach activities to schools and youth communities across the country. What we are trying to do at that level was to make sure that all the Gambian people, every sector of the Gambian community was involved, was drawn into the conversation about what happened here in the past and how we could prevent a recurrence in the future. That was one of the trumps, the approaches that we took. The other approach was that we made the process completely transparent. We hired a media partner, a consultant QTV, that had a digital satellite access that could be accessed from around the world. So you could sit in Washington DC or in Moscow or in Beijing and watch. And all of the hearings that we had, all of the public hearings we had were directly televised. We are covered live by TV, we are covered live by radio and we are covered live on social media. And we also had interpreters who interpreted in the local languages. So what we are trying to do at that point was to make sure that since we conceived of the truth commission as a conversation involving different stakeholders, everyone, everyone who had an interest in the proceedings of the commission knew exactly what was going on. And in that way then we were able to bring witnesses, victims and perpetrators. We had about 392, 393 witnesses, 229 of them were direct victims. There were 45 perpetrators, self-confessed perpetrators, people who came forward and said, we did this on the orders of the president. We also had institutional hearings on the judiciary where we had witnesses come who were former ministers, former directors of prosecution and senior ministers, senior officers of the judiciary came forward, senior officers of the National Intelligence Agency and the secret police who were the major arm, one of the major arms of the repression came forward and testified and we had junglers, members of the death squad also came forward and testified. So in this way then we were able to make sure that everyone who was interested, both the state and non-state actors as well as the Gambian population knew exactly what happened. They heard it from the mass of victims and we made sure that the process was so transparent that there is no space for denial, either by the perpetrators or by other interested parties or by the state itself. So that is how we were able to make, to allow the state actors to understand how or what were the transitional needs of civilians in the Gambia. I'll stop there until you ask your second question then we proceed with the conversation. Sure, Baba, thank you very much. Two very quick questions. One, the abuses that were documented during the TRRC process, how were those abuses and documented abuses then used in the prosecution of JAMA? Because that's oftentimes a very difficult equation for truth and reconciliation commissions to deal with, that interface with the justice system and then secondly, how did the TRRC help build momentum towards a more viable and fair democracy in the Gambia? Well, as far as the documentation is concerned, like I said, we had a transparent process. All the hearings were documented live, we are sown live on TV and radio so everyone knew exactly what was going on. But at the end of the day, the commission found that Yahya Jami and his closest associates were guilty of crimes against humanity. That is in the final recommendations as defined in Article 7 of the Rome Statute, Yahya Jami came out as an individual who was guilty of crimes against humanity, which means that he could be prosecuted on the universal jurisdiction. So even if the government of the Gambia is unwilling or unable to prosecute him and other of his associates, the international community is going to do that. I think that we know that one individual jungler, one of his death squad members is now on pretrial in the U.S. Then there is another person on trial in Switzerland who was also a jungler and there is another person who is on trial in Germany who was a jungler. So the evidence that came out, the recommendations that came out make it possible for any individual, any interested party including the ICC to some extent to be able to prosecute Jami. I think that Jami and his associates, I think that's the way that we are able to make sure that we documented, what we documented of the hearings will come to play when there is a need or an attempt to prosecute these individuals. In terms of the efforts to sustain momentum towards a transparent democratic system of government in the Gambia, that had a lot to do with the recommendations that we issued, that the commission issued, that included civic education, that included institutional reform, removal of the bad laws in the book, passage of anti-torture bills. In fact, just yesterday, or the day before last week, an anti-torture bill was introduced in the Gambian parliament, and it seems as if it's going to pass thanks to the recommendations of the TRRC. We also know that there is a lot of talk about developing democracy. One of the recommendations of the commission says that there needs to be time limits to address the constitution. That is absolutely important. Whoever wants to help Africa avoid requiring conflict must address the issue of time limits. People do not want to have the same government in power for 20 years, for 30 years. We have gone beyond that kind of one-man democracy. If there is a definition of democracy, let it be made a universal definition. That is one of the main criteria that must be taken into account if a democratic dispensation is described. But we cannot have a democracy where an individual government or one government remains in power for 30 years, one individual remains in power for 30 years, and so on and so forth. All of these are part of the recommendations that we need to address. The outreach activities that we conducted. Thanks to the outreach activities, we popularized the notion of never again. We popularized a lot of transition justice work with the result that we have a lot of transitional justice mechanisms or institutions, civil society organizations that have cropped up during the process of the TRRC for the implementation of the recommendations, but also advocacy for the public understanding of what is contained in the government-wide paper, which is kind of a response to the TRRC recommendations. In general, I would say that we started, or the TRRC started some kind of a movement that is premised on the fact that these bad things have happened and they should never happen again. And we are advocating for civic empowerment. My colleague from Columbia mentioned that a lot of people were marginalized in the political process. It's not different in the Gambia. In fact, we have people who are more marginalized here. And we think that if we must have sustainable peace and a workable democracy, then those people in the game they are playing, they should not just be expected to go to the polls every five years and cast a vote and then sit back and have no direct impact on the system that is running their lives. I think that is what I would say at this point. Bless you. Sound optimistic. Is that true? Well, I am optimistic to some extent, mainly because during the process of the Commission, we made sure that the Gambian people knew what went wrong. We made sure that they were empowered enough to say never again. We launched a very, very strong campaign called the Never Again campaign and we visited schools, we visited communities across the country. We had town hall meetings, we popularized it on the media. We made sure that Never Again is firmly entrenched in the national consciousness and that is why today we are happy to see that there are victims organizations, women's organizations as well as civil society organizations that are working on other things but also transitional justice that are saying never again. In terms of the implementation, we have seen some progress in terms of memorialization. For example, one of the arch, you know, a structure that was built by the dictator in the capital and victims Memorial Arch, we have seen an introduction of civic education into the school curriculum, which was one of the recommendations of the TRRC and we have seen a movement towards the creation of a hybrid court. You know, there have been conversations between the Gambia government and ECOWAS in creating this hybrid court to ensure that Jami and his closest associates are prosecuted. There is still a lot of work to be done, but I think in addition to the fact that, you know, like I mentioned earlier there is a torture that is currently on the right of passing in the National Assembly. These are all signs that one could be optimistic about. But most importantly for me is the fact that the Gambian people are now empowered enough. There is still a lot of work to be done, but they are now empowered enough to be able to say no to dictatorship and no to a basis of power and human rights violations. And these individuals or communities are supported by a group of civil society organizations that are now operating within the society and that would say no to any form of a move towards dictatorship by the current government and future governments. So yes, I am optimistic to some extent. Papa, thank you very much. Leith? Alexander, can you describe for us the extraordinary role that Ukrainian civil society is playing in promoting accountability even in the midst of the conflict and the war? When large-scale Russian innovation started we united our efforts with dozens of regional organizations into one Tribunal for Putin initiative. We have an ambitious goal to document each criminal episode which committed in the smallest village in each oblast in Ukraine. And working together only for one year of large-scale invasion we jointly documented more than 34,000 episodes of war crimes. And 34,000 it's a huge amount, but still only a tip of iceberg. And I start to ask to myself for whom do we document all these crimes for? Because we faced with accountability gap problem. And this gap has to be mentioned. There is no international body which can prosecute Putin and high political leadership and top military command of Russian state for the crime of aggression. Even international criminal court has no jurisdiction over this crime in situation Russian war against Ukraine. And that is why it's so important to create special tribunal on aggression and hold people who committed this crime accountable. And second dimension of accountability gap problem is in that fact that we faced unprecedented numbers of international crimes and national system is that international criminal court will limit its investigation only to several selected cases. And the question is very clear. Who will provide justice for hundreds of thousands of victims of this war? Who will not be lucky to be selected by international criminal court? And this means that in order to fill this accountability gap we have to involve international element of international investigation and national justice to make national system capable to face with this challenge. And Ukrainian civil society not just document international crimes which is committed on the territory of Ukraine but also working on the vision how this complex justice strategy and new justice architecture have to look like. In addition to criminal accountability or the crimes that civil society is documenting what are the additional either formal or transitional justice mechanisms do you think are necessary so that justice is delivered at the scale that you're describing across Ukraine? When I speak about measures beyond criminal accountability I will tell that we have to put persons affected by this war as a priority of all recovery process. When people hear about recovery because of the total destruction of country due to Russian aggression people first imagine the restorations of buildings, roads, schools, hospitals bridges and infrastructure but we have in addition to it to implement some crime survivor support programs that would include compensatory mechanism for property loss cases, psychological and medical assistance we have to support opportunities for internally displaced person and people returning to the destroyed territories. We need to implement some development projects for the local communities and to support for Ukrainian business which lost production facilities and assets due to Russian aggression we also should address natural environment restorations and protected issues and in order to achieve this goal international partners have closely with state authorities but with civil society and local governmental bodies as well. Alexander do you expect that Russia will pay for the kind of reparations that you just described? I can't predict future but we have to create all possibilities to make it happen and we have to work on this vision of future which we want to achieve and I know from the history of humankind that authoritarian regimes collapsed their leaders who see themselves untouchable appeared under the court and the state who provided pain for millions of civilians paid reparations. Well Liz shall we go to questions from the internet? Lauren? My colleagues in the audience I'm sorry, of course anyone in the audience who would like to ask a question? The stage? Okay if not we'll start with the online questions. I can jump in. One of the questions we've received is Guatemala which was mentioned in the Ambassador's remarks shows that political will is critical to effective justice processes to longer term justice. How have the panelists worked to maintain political will for justice and accountability processes? I could start with the Liz on that because I know Colombia has been at it for almost 20 years now. So how do you continue to build political will in Colombia, Liz? Jean, sorry Jean. Thank you. Colombia is a good example because political will has not always been there and I think that part of civil society and victims organizations achievement is to despite different levels of political will to keep being there and keep promoting and demanding justice. So I think that that part of my answer to that would be strong civil society and victims organizations and how these have remained very strong despite different levels of political will. I would also mention that part of the discourse is to maintain a very technical and human rights oriented discourse towards accountability and transitional justice. So trying to make sure that despite the political orientation of the various governments this discourse of human accountability for human rights violations has always been present and has in the various types of governments being at the back of the demands but I would also have to say that international community play a very important role in maintaining that political will and accompanying civil society organizations and national movements in making sure that they don't feel alone that we don't feel alone. So I think that international community in the Colombian example has played a very important role in even when political will levels are lower to accompanying organizations in their efforts to demand justice. So at least those three things I would mention the Guatemala experience is very it's very troubling and for Colombia which we've seen very closely because in Guatemala we have strong civil society organizations are very strong very important justices that have been for human rights accountability but the new government and the corrupt government has changed the situation which is very troubling for we that have witnessed what has happened in Guatemala but in Colombia I would say that at least those three factors and making pointing out that civil society organizations have been very important in making sure that those different levels of political will don't affect the demands for justice. Thank you Gina and Alexandra obviously in Ukraine we've witnessed enormous political will throughout the war but is there anything you'd like to add to the theme of the question is how you sustain this now for the long term? The problem which we face I mean how to achieve justice in the war with Russia couldn't be solved in national borders so our goal is ambitious we have to convince not and to create this political will not just on a level of state but on the level of the world and this is a point and in order to do it we have to work with two narratives first we have to explain international community that they will not be sustainable peace in our region with our justice where Russia for decades uses the war as a tool how to achieve their geopolitical interests and for decades uses the war crimes as a tool how to win this war and all this hell this pain of millions of Ukrainians which we now have for current moment as a result of total impunity which Russia enjoyed for decades in Chechnya in Moldova in Georgia in Malia in Syria in Libya in other countries of the world they have never been punished for this and they start to believe they can do whatever they want and we must break the circle of impunity that it will be very difficult to provide democratization of Ukraine without justice and justice is a part of preconditions of success of the stories because this war is not just a war between two states this is a war between two systems authoritarianism and democracy and Putin attempts to convene the whole world and Ukrainians that democracy rule of law and human rights are fake values because they couldn't protect you during the war and in order to respond to this claim we have not just quote the international conventions or declarations we have to demonstrate justice without this it will be very difficult to restore the belief of people that just rule of law is effective mechanism to solve problems and when we speak about democratization it's not enough to adopt qualities law or build sustainable institutions the non-formal values of society always stronger values always prevails and that is why we have to demonstrate justice in order to succeed in following process of democratization of the country and very quickly Baba anything to add regarding the Gambia in terms of the political will in the years ahead to follow through we're not hearing you Baba if you could unmute sorry about that I was saying that there has suddenly been some concern over political will of the current government especially prior to the 2021 elections when the current president actually approved the party of the dictator who was ousted and the dictator himself in a bid to reconcile with him fortunately for the country that bid fell and they were not able to come to terms with whatever conditions they had for reconciliation between the current government and the government that was kicked out by the Gambian people so there was a concern with that and there was the concern about political will when a faction of the dictator's party joined the current government and had some of the top officials of the past government appointed to very very very important positions such as the speaker of the National Assembly and the deputy speaker of the National Assembly who were very very strong supporters of the ousted dictator so with that said I think that whether they have the political will to the extent that Gambians wanted to or not the current government is left with little choice we are not going through with the implementation there is a lot of local preso victims organizations, civil society organizations and the general public are insisting on the implementation of the recommendations of the commission and there is also happily a lot of international preso coming in from the United States the EU and other international partners insisting that the recommendations of KRRC should be implemented and I think we have seen we have seen some movement however small towards implementation like the example Simon mentioned here there is a draft bill always torture international assembly there is a draft bill on reparations there is a draft bill on the peace and reconciliation commission that are all going through the legislative process and hopefully all of these bills will become law on the basis of the recommendations implemented so there is not totally 100% confidence there is the requisite level of political will but there is enough to keep moving the process forward with a lot of preso both locally and internationally thank you Baba, question from the audience yes, right here we just got the mic coming I am Sharon Kotak retired from the State Department but since Russia has not ratified the ICC is not a part of the ICC and since it has veto power in the Security Council is there a way of having a criminal court that would prosecute Russia for the crimes against humanity Olexander why don't I pitch that one to you did you hear the question yes if you could respond to that regarding the fact that Russia is not party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court how will crimes against humanity be prosecuted against individual leaders in Russia this question demand to respond in two the first seizes is that International Criminal Court because of declarations which Ukraine sent to the court in 2014 and 2015 got jurisdiction to investigate international crimes under his Rome Statute and crimes against humanity is one of these crimes so for current moment International Criminal Court can investigate and prosecute any person regardless of their citizenship who committed crime in the territory of Ukraine and in this regard it doesn't matter that Russia don't ratify Rome Statute but second part of your question what we will do when Russia refused to cooperate with International Criminal Court which we witnessed already and started to provide threatens to the court and to the officials of the International Criminal Court and in future will not recognize the verdict and will not provide the transfer to the International Criminal Court the suspected war criminals and in this regard is really a problem that Russia is still the UN Security Council member because it means it provides a huge political influence to Russia and International Criminal Court has no international police or some other coherence measures how to push Russia to be in line with norms of international humanitarian and international criminal law but it's a question of time because even in this regard with our current situation when Russia don't recognize the activity International Criminal Courts on investigation of crimes on the Ukrainian territory including occupied by Russia, Crimea and other part of regions it's still very important in the short term we now in situation when Putin a president of Russian state became a wanted man he officially suspected as a war criminals and all politicians who are into business as usual with Russia despite this bloody war of aggression will have to take into account this fact in long term we know that authoritarian regime collapsed and countries who want to return to the normal connection in relation with other part of the world have to play on the rule of the international order and international law and the bright example is Milosevic Serbia didn't want to transfer them to Hague but Serbia did Thank you very much I think now we turn to Fabricio is he online? Fabricio Can you hear us? Yes David, hi Fabricio, welcome you're the director of the Hague branch office of the international development law organization and you have a distinguished prior career as a prosecutor with the international criminal court and we are very pleased and honored to have you address a few closing remarks here for this session The honor is entirely mine and I'm very very grateful for the opportunity to offer some closing remarks it's a very difficult act to follow after hearing all these experiences, first hand experiences from justice seekers in Gambia, Colombia and Guatemala and I have written and rewritten my notes 20 times while listening to what they were saying which is going to be a bit messy but I think that a few important conclusions or lessons may be drawn from the discussions that we have today and the first thing I think is that it's important to try to put some content on the broad label transitional justice which is a label that can mean too many things and at times has even been used as some sort of indirectly introduce a layer of impunity in the conversation and I think that my good friend ambassador did a good job at the beginning of her presentation trying to say well there are some components here and criminal accountability has to be one in that sense I think that basically it is important that we do recognize that as I would say in a second criminal justice it's not enough but it is a necessary condition for any transitional justice process to be successful and I think that here is interesting to see how the for instance the Colombia peace process was one that arrived to what is a very interesting model, the special jurisdiction for peace after really experimenting with a number of different options including some that were bordering impunity such as blanket suspended sentences for everybody and that is the definition of responsibility so I think that's one point that I would like to make second point I think is important and critical to empower national justice seekers and in particular national systems so we heard that from Alexandra as to the challenges that the Ukrainian national justice system is facing and you know from idea we know this for some because we are part of the supporting the office of the prosecutor general in this huge task of really trying to bring accountability at the national level for the crimes committed in the context of the current armed conflict so this is an important thing ensuring the ownership of the national actors in these processes is an important element and that's what we're trying to do I think with the international support to the national efforts we support and we advise but ultimately this is a national process what is happening and I think that empowering also means protecting and given the tools to do this properly and here some of the concerns that were raised in terms of some national experiences were prosecutors and judges who were at the forefront of the fight against impunity later first persecution and had to ultimately leave the country which has a chilling effect globally in terms of what can happen if you're a justice seeker and you dare speak the truth to power the third thing is I think that it's important to put the criminal justice component within its true limits on the one hand we should not get carried away with utilitarian effects that we have described to these processes yes they can have a deterrent effect yes they may help prevent other things yes they do contribute to the rule of law but they have a value beyond that and if you look at for instance the trials of Nazi collaborators in Germany today we are not prosecuting perpetrators of crimes against humanity and genocide committed during the Third Reich with the purpose of denazifying Germany as it used to be the case in the 50s we're not trying to contribute to transition to democracy in Germany Germany is a leading rule of law champion we're doing it for something else we're doing it because we still need to establish truth memory justice as a global community as a global society the next point perhaps is that and that became clear in the conversations today criminal justice is certainly not enough and criminal justice and the criminal trial is never a suitable environment for a collective conversation in the words of Babajalo as to the underlying causes that have led to a situation of massive crimes of massive violations of human rights law and perhaps here I can bring back to some examples from my native country Argentina where basically there's been a state policy of investigating and prosecuting every single human rights violation committed during the 1976-1983 dictatorship and yet many activists and observers have concluded that that we still owe ourselves a collective discussion as to the root causes of that dictatorship how we ended up tolerating something like that and what does it mean in terms of the quality of our democracy and the quality of our approach to individual rights and political confrontation and political debate but we also have international experiences and limitations of a criminal justice response so we have on the one hand what the ICTY and the ensuing national efforts to provide accountability in the Balkans gave to the victims in terms of justice but at the same time we also know that they have not been enough to perforate the dominant narratives in the Balkans and there's still a lot of denial of the crimes and still a lot of refusal to accept responsibility so you need a broader system that is not reduced to the power logic of criminal and innocence in a criminal trial my next two points is and that was also to what was said earlier in the discussion the importance of also kind of like opening the horizons as to how to respond to these crimes and putting the survivors at the center of the equation and the importance of the survivor center justice is actually that has been there for a while but it has not been implemented across the globe and it still today is not prioritized as it should and by this for instance I mean hearing the views of the survivors factoring those views into the response and also looking beyond the criminal response to areas such as health such as social responses and sexual gender based crimes so this is another area that is critical and finally Gina referred to access to justice as a critical component and here I think that we need to start thinking out of the box a bit and perhaps it's time to start discussing the role of customer and informal justice systems in the context of transitional justice not as they have been presented at times as an alternative because that doesn't work but as a complement as a mechanism that can complement you know traditional forms of criminal justice response vis-a-vis those crimes and this is something that we're going to start discussing in the context of idea that we're starting to look at this in cooperation with international center of transitional justice how do you bring justice down to the communities and make sure that there is true access to justice by everyone affected by these crimes and I think that have already exceeded my allocated time and thank you so much again for having me Thank you very much Fabrice and I think we will bring that to the session to a close Lise would you like to make the final closing remark It's just to thank everyone David to thank you to thank Fabrice most of all to thank Gina to thank Baba and to thank Alexander for being with us we appreciate your being with us today thank you all Thank you