CNDH HIGHLIGHTS IN EGYPT MOROCCAN EXPERIENCE IN THE AREA OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE

The (Moroccan) National Human Rights Council (CNDH), represented by its chairperson Mr. Driss El Yazami, will take the floor in an international conference on the challenges and opportunities of transitional justice in Arab countries, organized in the Egyptian capital Cairo, on February 24-25, 2012, to shed light on the Moroccan experience in the area of transitional justice.

This conference is organized by the Arab Institute for Human Rights, in cooperation with the Arab Organization for Human Rights, the International Centre for Transitional Justice and with support of the Canadian International Development Agency’s Regional Human Rights and Peace-building Fund.

The conference will discuss the process of transitional justice in countries that witness a democratic transition and the necessities and possibilities of a successful transitional experience. The participants, Arab and international experts, will present their suggestions, examples and views on draft laws on transitional justice mechanisms, including truth commissions, reparation, hearing sessions, institutional reform recommendations, etc.

The participants, from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Libya, and foreign countries, will form four working groups to discuss (1) accountability and non-impunity, (2) compensation and reparation, (3) reconciliation and reforms and (4) hearing sessions and recording of witnesses. The objective is to prepare a guiding document related to transitional justice in the Arab world.

The program of the conference includes a session on “Creation of an Arab network for transitional justice” and side-meeting of the rapporteurs and coordinators of each workshop who will draft a project on a comprehensive system of transitional justice. This project will be discussed in the final session.

Morocco started in the nineties a leading experience of transitional justice, unique in the Arab world. It tackled and settled the issues of its past grave human rights violations. The Independent Arbitration Commission was thus created to compensate victims of enforced disappearance in 1999. In 2004 the Equity and Reconciliation Commission was created. Its final report included several important recommendations related to the elucidation of truth, individual and community (collective) reparation, memory preservation, institutional and legislative reforms, security governance, etc.