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©Chris Herwig/Liberia/2008 - Child participant in the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Children's Gallery, Monrovia City Hall in September 2008

Innocenti bulletin, 11/ 2010

Transitional justice refers to the "full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempts to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses in order to ensure accountability, service justice and achieve reconciliation. These may include both judicial and non-judicial mechanisms, with differing levels of international involvement (or none at all) and individual prosecutions, reparations, truth-seeking, institutional reform, vetting and dismissals, or a combination thereof." (Report of the Secretary-General, 23 August 2004 (S/2004/616), para. 8).