The reparation for acts and activities committed by military campaigns essay

In countries affected by armed conflict, the principle of the rule of law is often poorly enforced or is missing at all: law enforcement is not provided properly, the potential in the administration of justice is insufficient, and the number of cases of human rights violations is growing. This situation is often exacerbated by the lack of public confidence in the public authorities and the lack of resources.

With the different degree of success, to combat the enormous variety of fundamental rights violations and abuses, especially in times of military conflicts, a variety of measures have been developed and implemented by the international community, including criminal prosecution in court, strategies of truth establishment, different types of institutional reforms such as performance appraisal of the system of justice and development programs in the field reconciliation and local justice systems, as well as programs to compensate for the damage caused to the victims of conflicts. While the other measures are directly aimed at the general public, the measures of damage reparation are mainly focused at the interests of victims of violations, i.e. in terms of potential direct impact, at least, on the victims, these measures take a special place among the measures on restoring justice. Therefore, at the end of a military conflict, the programs on compensation for the damage caused by military actions become essential for justice in relation to the victims of human rights violations.

Further in this paper, we will discuss the legal basis of the right to damages reparation, forms and means of reparations, as well as focus on preferable features and components of reparation programs for victims of military campaigns.

Legal grounds of reparation for damages caused by military campaigns

Before human rights under international protection were proclaimed, the prevailing viewpoint in the international law was that the illegal acts committed by a state against its own citizens is essentially an internal affair, and illegal acts committed by a state against citizens of another state can serve as the basis for the complaint only from that offended state in order to protect its own rights. Since the end of the Second World War, the UNO establishment and the adoption of its Charter as the main contractual document of international law, the international legal framework has gradually evolved from the co-existence law to the co-operation law. The part of this process is the internationalization of human rights.

With the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenants on Human Rights, it has been recognized that human rights are no longer the subject of exclusive national jurisdiction, and that continuing serious violations of human rights justify international intervention. In addition, international human rights law has gradually recognized the right of victims of human rights violations to file petitions for reinstatement of damages to domestic courts, and if necessary to international organizations.

In general, the principle of the international law is that the breach of an obligation entails the responsibility for compensation of damages in an adequate form both in peacetime and wartime. In turn, the main task of the international humanitarian law is to decrease – as much as it may be possible – human suffering in times of armed conflicts. The international humanitarian law sets the standards of humane conduct and imposes restrictions on the means and methods of conducting military operations. Its rules and principles are designed to protect, in the first place, those who are not involved in the military actions, especially civilians and combatants including the wounded and prisoners.

The main instruments of international humanitarian law are the four Geneva Conventions (1949) and their two Additional Protocols (1977). Article 3 common to all the four Geneva Conventions and Protocol II is applicable in case of armed conflict not of an international scale, but it does not provide clear rules of conduct of operations. The rules of military engagement are set out in Protocol I related to international armed conflicts. Rules of military engagement are considered part of customary international law, and therefore they are applied to all parties of the conflict. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC, 2010) conducted a survey on customary international law and found out that most of these rules are applied in the case of both an international armed conflict and a conflict of an international scale. Blatant breaches of many of these rules can be recognized as war crimes. Universally acknowledged definitions of such crimes in relation to both international conflicts and armed conflicts of not an international scale are set out in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC, 1998).

Article 48 of Protocol I provides the “basic rule” of protecting civilians and civilian objects – the principle of distinction. This principle is the keystone of the international humanitarian law: under the Rome Statute of the ICC, intentional attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities are considered war crimes worldwide. According to paragraph 3 of Article 51 of Protocol I, civilians are protected, unless and as long as they take a direct part in hostilities. Paragraph 1 of Article 52 of Protocol I states that civilian objects are all objects which are not recognized as military objects (ICRC, 2010).

Paragraph 4 of Article 51 of Protocol I also prohibits indiscriminate attacks which hit military objects and civilians or civilian objects without distinction. From the standpoint of the international law, over-proportionate attack is considered a war crime, along with the attack that causes death or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects. Unlawful, aimless, and extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity is considered a war crime. In general, Article 57 contains a requirement to all parties to constantly care to spare the civilian population and civilian objects. The opposing parties are also obliged to take all possible precautions to protect civilians and civilian objects in their area of responsibility in order to neutralize the impact of the attack by the enemy and the damage (ICRC, 2010).

The rules regulating the responsibility of states for “internationally wrongful acts” in accordance with the general international law have been included in the document drafted in 2001 by the International Law Commission, “Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts.” This document codifies the legal rules regarding the state responsibility, and the UN General Assembly in 2002 proposed it to the attention of governments. Article 31 states that the responsible state is required to provide full compensation for the damage caused by the internationally wrongful act. The damage includes any injury, whether material or moral, caused by the internationally wrongful act of the state. Internationally wrongful acts include the state’s violation of the obligations under international customary and treaty law (ICRC, 2010).

The right to compensation for damage caused to individuals has also deeply established in the Ml 1114 as the main component of the right to legal protection fixed in the international and regional treaties on human rights. In the book “Customary international humanitarian law” edited with the assistance of the ICRC (2010), Rule 150 states that the state responsible for violation of international humanitarian law is obliged to fully compensate for the harm caused as a result of losses and damage. In addition, the “Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law” (2006) adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2006 (Resolution 60/147 dated December 16, 2006) assign the obligation of states to provide victims with effective remedies including compensation for damages.

Thus, as a result of the international law-making process the legal basis of the right to the use of remedies and reparation has been firmly incorporated in the developed body of international human rights instruments, which are now widely recognized by the states. These treaties include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 8), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 2), the International Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Article 6), the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Article 14) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 39). International humanitarian law and international criminal law also have relation to this issue, in particular the Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (Article 3), the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions for the protection of victims of international armed conflicts (Article 91), and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Articles 68 and 75) (ICRC, 2010; ICC, 1998; The United Nations Organization, 1948; UN General Assembly, 2006; Greiff, 2006).

Inclusion of human rights into the concept of state responsibility has led to emergence of the basic premise that in case of violations of international obligations, remedies and compensation should be provided not only the state but also to individuals and groups who have suffered this loss. Today a general understanding has been set that in terms of international law the right to compensation for the damage caused by the war has two sides (Greiff, 2006): a) the substantive dimension understood as an obligation to provide compensation for the damage in the form of restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and, depending on the case, the guarantees of non-repetition, and b) the procedural dimension which is necessary to ensure those substantive violated rights. This procedural dimension is a conceptual part of the obligation to provide the “effective domestic remedy”, which is firmly fixed in most of the major human rights treaties. As stated by the Committee on Human Rights, the obligation of states to provide reparation to individuals whose rights have been violated under the Covenant is an integral part of an effective domestic remedy (UN General Assembly, 2006). This supports the practice of some human rights organizations that attach growing importance to ensuring access to effective means of judicial protection as one of the rights of the victims of human rights violations, not only as an obligation of states.

Range of measures on damages reparation

It is typical for the legal approach to demand and materialize rights by making (quasi)judicial decisions, which in matters of human rights, as a rule, require the participation of victims as claimants and a state. In legal documents and comments, the right to damages reparation is usually considered from the point of view of judicial decisions and relevant jurisprudence practice. The decisions made in the result of such legal procedures, may have great importance for a victim-plaintiff, but by themselves, they may not necessarily have any effect on other victims who may find themselves in a similar situation as a result of severe and systematic violations of human rights.

It follows herefrom that, especially in the context of transitional period justice systems, when national societies strive for compensating moral and material damage caused by massive human rights violations, the moral and political duty of states is to undertake comprehensive measures on restoring justice and developing programs to provide reparation for damage to the broad categories of victims of military actions. It is similarly assumed that it is the national states which should bear the implementation of structural programs and projects aimed at combating and eradicating the factual backgrounds and preconditions leading to systematic violations which have previously occurred in a state. Both of these approaches, the program and the judicial one, are to be linked and interact in a way that the right to damages reparation has become a reality and could meet the fair demands of military actions victims. The reference base for this could be found in the “Basic principles and guidelines on the right to a remedy and reparation for victims of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law” (UN General Assembly, 2006).

While in accordance with international law, severe violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law imply the right to compensation for damage caused to the victims, the establishment of the obligations for states to recoup for this damage, implementation of this right and fulfilling related obligations are generally seen as the subjects of national law and national policy of given states. In this regards, state governments possess quite wide discretionary powers and flexibility. Here again, UN Basic Principles and Guidelines (2006) may serve as a source of inspiration or an incentive being a tool for developing adequate policies and practices which would consider the interests of victims. It should be marked that Basic Principles and Guidelines (2006) offer a wide range of damages reparation measures, including:

• Restitution, meaning the measures aimed at restoring the initial position of a victim fixed before the violations of international human rights law or international humanitarian law, and assuming such steps as the restoration of freedom, human rights, personal identity documents, family life and citizenship, returning to the original place of residence, employment restoration and return of property;
• Compensation, meaning a measure that should be provided in a case of any economically assessable damage in proportion to the severity of violations and individual circumstances of each case, which is the consequence of international human rights law and international humanitarian law violations, including the cases of opportunity losses, losses of profit and moral damage;
• Rehabilitation, involving medical and psychological help, as well as provision of legal and social services;
• Satisfaction, supposing a wide range of measures, starting with the ones aimed at the cessation of continuing violations and up to the measures on the establishment of truth, search for disappeared persons, identification and burial of the remains, public apology, adopting administrative and judicial sanctions, commemoration and paying tributes to the victims, as well as spreading training programs on human rights; and
• Guarantees of non-repetition, also representing a broad category of measures, which includes institutional reforms on ensuring effective civil control of military forces and security services, strengthening judicial authorities’ independence, protecting of human rights activists, organizing training courses on human rights, enhancing international human rights standards in the fields of public service, law enforcement agencies, media and industry, as well as providing psychological and social services.

Moreover, the right to damages reparation is now getting more firmly rooted not only in theory, but also in practice. Currently, the International Court continues producing decisions on reparations to victims of military actions. In particular, in the case concerning armed activities on the territory of the Congo, the Court decisions illustrate the continuing topicality of the issue of damages reparation between the states, by determining that Uganda is obliged to provide the compensation of damage to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, caused, among other things, in the result of the seizure and occupation of the Ituri region. At the same time, the Court ruled that the Democratic Republic of Congo is obliged to pay reparations to Uganda for the mistreatment of Ugandan diplomats at the Embassy of Uganda in Kinshasa, as well as at the international N’djili airport (Greiff, 2006). In another case, in its advisory opinion on the legal consequences of the wall construction on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the Court admitted that Israel is obliged to provide compensation for damage caused to all persons or entities that suffered any damage as a result of the construction of the wall (Magarrell, 2007).

Finally, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998) not only confirms the right of victims to damages reparation in cases considered by the Court (Article 75), but also establishes a trust fund for victims (Article 79). Configuration mode of these compensations surely generates complex problems like identification of victims and volume of damages as well as methods of determining adequate compensations. However, the fact that this right is now seen as a part of international criminal law not only sustains the current international law practice, but also gives promises to further development in issues relating reparation of damages caused by military campaigns. Further, we will focus on the possible elements of reparation measures accepted in the frameworks of the international humanitarian law.

The essence and components of reparation measures

Conceptually, the measures for damages reparation can be defined as the relationship between the three components: victims, beneficiaries and benefits. Any program for damages reparation is ultimately aimed at ensuring that its implementation brings every victim at least some benefits, which thus turns a victim into a beneficiary of the program. If this goal is achieved, the program can be considered fully completed. The success of reparation programs to some extent depends on what categories of violations are established as a basis for obtaining compensation, as the completeness of the program can only be guaranteed a) if the objectives of the program are formulated in advance, b) if the steps to guarantee its implementation are taken from the very beginning of the process and continue to be taken during the entire program, and c) if organizational and institutional problems are resolved in advance (Magarrell, 2007). Full completion of damages reparation programs also partly depends on such factors as: providing informing on the program and wide victims participation, outreach conduct, accessibility of the program, and clear determination of the limits of damage evidence.

Under the damage reparation program, various kinds of benefits can be provided. A combination of different types of benefits provided is best described by the term complexity. Any program of indemnifying measures becomes more complex, if it supposes the provision with as many as possible different types of benefits and in as many as possible different ways than alternative programs. For the ease of developing more targeted compensation programs, the forms of reparation listed above (i.e., restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition) can be built around two main differences: between the individual and collective provision of appropriate benefits, and between the material and symbolic forms of compensation (Magarrell, 2007; Greiff, 2006).

Material and symbolic reparation may take many forms. Material reparation may take the form of compensation, i.e. the payment of monetary facilities or distribution of negotiable instruments, or provision with a set of services, which may include different benefits in the areas of education, health care, housing, etc. Symbolic reparation may include formal apology, changing of the titles or names of public places, establishment of memorial days, creation of museums and parks dedicated to the victims, or recovery measures, such as the restoration of the good name of the victims. Such measures are categorized as satisfaction (Greiff, 2006).

It is possible to list at least two major reasons for developing complex, integrated programs for damages reparation. First of all, this leads to maximizing the involvement of resources. Programs, combining the provision of various benefits (from material to symbolic ones) and distributed on both individual and collective basis, are able to cover a significantly greater part of victims, than programs which are reduced to the provision with only material compensation and, therefore, turn to be more complete in the end. Further, since the victims of military campaigns and associated human right violations are not to receive absolutely identical types of benefits, the availability of a wider range of benefits provided by a program enables reaching more victims. Being important as such, an option of a wider variety of benefits allows responding more adequately to the various types of damage which may be caused by one and the same violation, and thus, makes it more likely to provide damages reparation in a greater or lesser degree.

The programs of measures for damages reparation can range from the very simple, i.e. when just a sum of money is paid to a victim, to very complex, i.e. when in addition to monetary payouts, medical care, support for education and housing, etc. are provided being accompanied with the symbolic actions of individual and collective nature. In general, it should be marked that due to the fact that some things cannot be bought by means of money (and for some, any sum of money will not be enough), an approach based on complexity allows providing benefits to a greater number of victims and not just victims (in particular, in the case of collective symbolic actions) and distributing the corresponding benefits with greater flexibility in order to meet the diverse needs of the victims. Thus, as Magarrell (2007) notes, with all other factors being equal, the complexity of measures and their integrated character are preferable components.

Nowadays, financial compensation to individuals who suffered damages due to military actions attracts far more attention than any other form of compensation, but we should also mark that other benefits are being increasingly integrated into the existing reparation program or start receiving now more and more attention as potential elements of such programs, including, in particular, symbolic reparation, medical services and other forms of rehabilitation.

Symbolic reparation. Since many measures of reparation programs are recently proposed by the commissions on truth establishment (having wider authorities and purposes in comparison to regular courts), they to a lesser degree become just compensation mechanisms and are increasingly offering more comprehensive steps on restoration, including symbolic ones. Personal letters of apology signed by the highest officials of the government, addressing a copy of the truth committee report to each victim and assistance to victim families in the proper organization of funerals of their beloved ones – all this belongs to the individual symbolic measures which have been applied with some success in various conditions. Some of the collective symbolic measures undertaken by states include the renaming of public spaces, creation of museums and memorials, turning into memorials the places people were detained and tortured in, declaration of memorial days and organization of community actions on remembrance and repentance (Greiff, 2006). Similar to other reparation measures, symbolic measures, at least in part, contribute to the recognition of the human right abuses which took place. At the same time, in contrast to other appropriate measures, the vast potential of symbolic events lies in the fact that they are the carriers of a certain moral meaning and, therefore, can help the victims in particular and society in general realize the tragic character events of the past armed conflicts more deeply.

As a rule, symbolic measures gain such an importance, because turning paying tributes to the victims into the matter of public concern they liberate victim’s relatives from the heavy burden of being personal guardians of victims’ memories and allow them to live a full life (Greiff, 2006). This is particularly important in the case where damages reparation implies the recognition of victims as not only victims, but also citizens and holders of rights in a broader sense. Thus, symbolic actions for damages reparation, on both individual and collective level, should be further encouraged and developed. Nevertheless, they are not able to solely grasp the burden of a complex post-military transition period and should always be considered only as the means for rather smoothing the damage than compensating it. At the same time, the participation of the civil society in the development and implementation of symbolic reparation measures can probably be even more important than its participation in the development of any other measures, taking into consideration their deep meaning and representative function.

Medical services. In accordance with the Basic Principles and Guidelines (2006), the concept of “rehabilitation” of victims also includes medical and psychological rehabilitation. Since 1992, Chile has provided medical services to dictatorship victims. The program of compensation measures proposed by Peruvian Commission for Truth and Reconciliation also covered both physical and mental health care, and it is noteworthy that the Peruvian Commission and the Moroccan Commission Justice and Reconciliation involved their departmental health services (Magarrell, 2007). For example, in Peru, the medical unit mainly focused on providing mental health services was working with victims before, during and after the public hearings and testimony, and also gave assistance to the staff of the Commission itself. Medical unit of the Commission in Morocco, not replacing other sources of medical care (although providing some services), had two main functions: to help other parts of the Commission in their work and to prepare a detailed study of the state of health of the victims covered by the mandate of the Commission (Greiff, 2006). This study was designed to help form the framework of the recommendations for compensation, as well as to identify particularly critical cases that could not wait until the end of the process. This scheme has its advantages and merits and is worth further studying.

In general, there are good reasons for making the programs of measures for compensation pay more attention to medical problems, at least because of the very high number of injuries resulting from violence. Apart from that, it is assumed that the victims of violence are more exposed to diseases. Providing health services, including psychiatric treatment and psychological counseling is a very effective way of improving the quality of life of persons who underwent violence and their families.

Other forms of rehabilitation. Some programs for damage reparation included specific measures for the rehabilitation of not only health of the victims, but also of what may be called their civil status. These include measures to restoring the good name of the victims by making public statements about their innocence, cancellation of the criminal cases initiated against them, restoring of passports, voting cards and other documents. The importance of these measures overlaps the views of reasonable practicality – they should be part of any program that aims to recognize the victims as rights holders. In addition, taking into account the grieving experience of the widows of the missing persons, particularly in Argentina, who obviously needed help in solving problems related to guardianship, marriage and inheritance, but dared not ask issue death certificates for missing spouses, the relevant programs started providing the issuance of certificates of the absence due to involuntary disappearance (Greiff, 2006). This allows the surviving spouses, in particular, to get back or to sell the property, get married once again or solve the trusteeship dispute without feeling a sense of guilt, which, as they reported, often accompanied them when they applied for the issuance of death certificates for their husbands.

Collective reparation of damages. Lately, the news that the benefits, as reparation of damages, may be granted to collectives has caused a lot of interest and support. Indeed, this idea is supported by the Basic Principles and Guidelines (Paragraph 13) and in the Updated Set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights through Action to Combat Impunity (Principle 32) (UN General Assembly, 2006). Its logical grounding, as it seems, is that when the object of violence is a collective, it is necessary to provide them with the conditions for reparation of damages. At the same time, not a single document provides the definition of what the collective reparation of damage means, and the term itself is rather ambiguous, however, there are many known examples of collective reparations. For instance, public apology is typically used as a measure of collective damage reparation in a sense that the community consisting of the members of a particular group, for example, a state or a legal entity, receives certain benefits, in this case in the form of an apology.

The usefulness of collective measures is evident in certain circumstances. For instance, few people would dispute the appropriateness of public apology. The aim of such measures is not only the recognition of the rights of military conflicts victims, but also the confirmation of the effectiveness of the universal rules that have been violated, and thus, indirectly, confirmation of the significance of the rights and norms in general, including, surely, the rights of victims (which reinforces their status not just as victims, but, above all, as rights-holders).

Collective reparation measures may not be only symbolic; and some of them are quite material, for example, in cases of compensation in interests of a particular group in a form of constructing schools or hospitals. However, in such cases, there is a constant risk that a material collective measure for damages reparation would not be perceived as a benefit or would have a minimum value in restoring justice for the rights of victims (Magarrell, 2007). The problem partly lies in the fact that these measures do not affect victims specifically, as collective reparations programs are often focused on the distribution of “not to be excluded” benefits, i.e. benefits which will be provided to the victims not alienated from other citizens, and will be accessible to all citizens, not necessarily to the victims of human rights violations. Still, services in the sphere of education, culture, art, professional training and specialized medical care, directed at meeting the special needs of military actions victims are the possibilities that are worth further studying in this perspective.

Thus, comprehensive reparation programs supported by the international community and integrated into the local policies provide opportunities for turning a greater number of victims of military actions into beneficiaries, than more narrow programs under the same total costs (Magarrell, 2007; Greiff, 2006). But what is even more important is that complex programs can be more effective because they are able to meet the more diverse needs of victims, not only of material character, but also in the areas of health care and education, and by means of symbolic benefits, which bear deep meaning and represent the needs concerning the conceptualization of the tragic past.

Conclusion

One of the principles of the international human rights law runs that the breach of an obligation entails the responsibility for compensation of damages in an adequate form both in peacetime and wartime. Currently, the legal basis of the right to damages reparation is firmly incorporated into the developed body of international human rights instruments and international humanitarian law, which are now widely recognized by the states and applies in national legislation and policies. The right to damages reparation in the form of restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction or guarantees of non-repetition is now also is seen as a part of international criminal law and is increasingly developed by International Court.

Damages reparation programs may take various forms of material and symbolic, individual and collective measures, involving a wide spectrum of step in the field of providing education, health care and housing services, public apologies, commemoration and paying tributes to the victims, employment restoration and return of property, spreading human rights training courses, enhancing law standards, and many others. Meanwhile, efforts on damages reparation should be designed in a way to ensure that they are closely linked to other initiatives in the post-conflict period in the area of restoring justice or violated rights, for example, in the field of criminal justice, establishment of truth, or institutional reforms in countries who suffered military actions. Therefore, one of the key factors for the effectiveness of reparation programs is their conceptual basis: programs which manage to establish such links can be considered externally-linked or having external integrity. The requirement for complex character is important both from the pragmatic (maximizing resources) and conceptual point of view (resources of a broader sense), as such linkage provides an incentive for interpreting the reparation measures as measures of justice and not simply as a mechanism for the allocation of money or services.

Currently, the mechanism of reparation programs is still developing and surely faces a number of problems to be solved in future, featuring meeting the standards of national policies of states, issues of determining victims and separating them from non-victims, identifying exact damages and adequate forms of compensation for them, striving for complexity and complete character. In particular, many post-conflict or transitional societies would like the international community to be involved in the relevant processes more, but mainly in the role of the donor. However, the international community now rarely allocates significant resources to finance programs for damages reparations. In our opinion, the reason for this cautious attitude has two sides. First, taking into consideration that the reparation measures should always include the recognition of responsibility, the international community has repeatedly stated that primarily, these measures should be the result of local initiatives by national states. However, this seems quite reasonable only in cases when the responsibility for the military conflict bears essentially local character, while in other cases, the feasibility of such an approach is questionable. Second, the implementation of reparation programs is always a painful political decision-making, and therefore, the international community does not feel eager to participate in the process, stimulating national governments to post-military resolutions guided by the principles of the international humanitarian law and the UN “Basic principles and guidelines on the right to a remedy and reparation for victims of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law” in particular.

At the same time, as we see it, international actors could contribute to reparation laws effective implementation through:

• rethinking their reserved attitude towards direct financial support for reparation of damages caused by military conflicts, especially in cases when they play an important role in the conflict;
• providing technical assistance in developing and implementing of reparation programs;
• assisting local initiative groups involved in the discussion of restoration measures to be taken;
• influencing multilateral institutions in order to create the environment where the economy of post-conflict states could afford paying adequate attention to the victims of military conflicts;
• promoting external coherence of damages reparation programs by consulting and producing impact on various sectors of national governments, in order to get reparation program properly linked with the various elements of comprehensive programs of justice restoration designed for the transitional periods;
• influencing national governments in order to develop constructive local programs on damages reparation along with the support often provided in the framework of international cooperation with various peacemaking initiatives.