Abstract

Truth commissions, as a new tool for promoting reconciliation in the international community, are established to confront and investigate past human rights violations within a given state. With this responsibility, they are tasked with a number of objectives of fact-finding and rewriting this period of the country’s history and offering recommendations in the publication of their report. In doing, the state must be held accountable for their past behavior to ensure that it does not reoccur in the future. Yet, the victims of these violations are the ones left struggling with reintegrating themselves back into a society that had excluded and mistreated them. This begs the question of How does the publication of truth commission reports help to promote more successful reconciliation with the victims? To answer this question, I begin with outlining the responsibilities and subsequent impact of truth commissions. My research focuses on the presence of truth commissions in Latin America due to its history of repression and human rights violations under military regimes. Building off theories of dehumanization and “othering,” I hypothesize that if the content of the truth commission works to address the re-humanization process of the victims through the reclamation of their agency and identity, the state will experience a successful reconciliation. I proceed to move to my case selection and identify factors that I view as essential to facilitating the re-humanization process of the victims. Applying a thematic reading to the Argentinian and Guatemalan truth commission reports, I determine that the victims do, to an extent, reclaim agency as human begins but this not necessarily reflect in more successful reconciliation. At the conclusion, I provide suggestions for further research and how it can contribute to building this literature, especially within the political psychology community.

Advisor

Kille, Kent

Department

Political Science

Disciplines

International Relations | Political Science

Keywords

truth commissions, reconciliation, dehumanization, re-humanization

Publication Date

2023

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

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© Copyright 2023 Emily Mendoza