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The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) assists countries pursuing accountability for past mass atrocity or human rights abuse. More
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Transitions
TJ News and Analysis from around the World
Under the Lens
World Economic Forum Names Paul van Zyl, ICTJ Co-Founder and Executive Vice-President a 2008 Young Global Leader
Paul van Zyl joins 245 leading executives, public figures, and intellectuals—all age 40 or younger—chosen from around the world.
The World Economic Forum named International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) co-founder and Executive Vice-President Paul van Zyl as a Young Global Leader 2008. This prestigious honor is awarded annually by the World Economic Forum to recognize and acknowledge 200-300 young leaders from around the world for their professional accomplishments, commitment to society, and potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world.
Over the past decade, Paul van Zyl has acted as an adviser and consultant to human rights organizations, governments, international organizations, and foundations on transitional justice issues in more than 20 countries. From 1995 to 1998, he served as Executive Secretary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, helping to establish the Commission, develop its structure and modus operandi and manage its operations. He has also worked as a researcher for the Goldstone Commission, as a department head at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in Johannesburg, and as an associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York.
Throughout his career, Van Zyl has received a number of academic and professional honors. In addition to being selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader 2008, he was selected as a TED Fellow in 2007, and was named as one of New York's "Top 15 Lawyers Under 40" by New York Lawyer Magazine.
Van Zyl currently serves as director of New York University School of Law's Transitional Justice Program, and teaches law both in New York and Singapore. He obtained a BA and an LLB from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and an LLM in International Law from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Following these studies, he was accepted into the prestigious Hauser Global Scholars Program at New York University School of Law, where he completed an LLM in Corporate Law.
"Paul van Zyl's commitment to transitional justice, human rights, and his creative enthusiasm to address some of the world's most pressing challenges, make him an invaluable addition to the 2008 class of Young Global Leaders, said Juan E. Mendez, President of the ICTJ. "Paul's ability to devise and implement innovative solutions to tackle legacies of human rights abuses in post-conflict contexts adds significant value to the ICTJ's work around the world. I am confident he will apply these solutions and best practices in the exciting endeavors that he and fellow Young Global Leaders look to address."
To see the full press release, click here.
Transitional Justice in The News
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered an emotional apology in federal Parliament in which he spoke of the "profound grief, suffering and loss" experienced by Australia's indigenous Aboriginal people. On behalf of the Federal Government, he promised practical measures to follow the symbolism of the apology he offered to all indigenous Australians, and especially the "Stolen Generations", generations of young Aboriginal children who were taken from their parents in a policy of assimilation which lasted from the 19th Century to the late 1960s. Today indigenous Australians make up 2 percent of the population and are statistically the country's most disadvantaged group, with higher rates of infant mortality, drug abuse, alcoholism and unemployment than the rest of the population.
Following recent outbreaks of violence in the aftermath of Kenya's presidential election last December, stakeholders continue to make strides toward peace. Parties have agreed to a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, which will be established through national legislation and will primarily focus on events dating back to independence, December 1963. In addition, Parliament is preparing a bill on the governance structure following the signing of a power sharing deal between President Mwai Kibaki and ODM leader Raila Odinga, who heads Kenya's main opposition group. Parties have also signed an agreement to form a Commission of Inquiry on Post Election Violence to investigate the two months of violence that followed the presidential election. The Commission will operate over the next three to four months, and will include one national and two international members
U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan has ordered former Peruvian army officer Telmo Hurtado to pay $37 million for his role in the Accomarca Massacre of 1985 in Peru in which 69 civilians were slain, including elderly people and infants. The lawsuit was filed by two Peruvian women, Ochoa Lizarbe and Pulido Baldeon, who were 12 and lost family members during the attack. The ruling judge previously found that Hurtado had committed torture, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Earlier in the trial, Hurtado refused to participate in the proceedings and invoked his right not to testify under the Fifth Amendment. Hurtado came to the U.S. in 2002 after an amnesty law protecting him from prosecution in Peru was nullified.
On February 26th, Iraq's Presidency Council ratified the death sentence of Ali Hassan al-Majeed, Saddam Hussein's cousin, for his role in genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity committed during Iraq's 1988-1989 "Anfal" campaign. Al-Majeed (also known as "Chemical Ali") will be executed for his leadership role in the brutal eight-phase military campaign against Iraq's Kurdish population that included disappearances, forced displacement, arbitrary imprisonment, mass executions, and the repeated use of chemical weapons. The Presidency council failed to ratify the death sentences of two others convicted in the same case. According to the statute of the Iraqi High Tribunal Al-Majeed's execution is to take place within 30 days of the ruling.
A top commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), Raul Reyes, was killed along with 16 other rebels during an attack near the Ecuadorian-Colombian border. Reyes, 59, also known as Luis Edgar Devia, is the first member of Farc's ruling secretariat to be killed in combat in the group's 44-year history. In addition to being part of Farc's cabinet, Reyes acted as the group's international spokesman and had led its negotiating team during the failed three-year peace process with the previous government of Andres Pastrana. He joined the rebel group from the Communist party in the 1970s.
Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, will step down on June 30, 2008, ending a four-year term that has been highlighted by confrontation with the Bush administration over the Iraq war, the death penalty, and the US-led war on terrorism. A former Canadian Supreme Court justice, Arbour is the prosecutor who secured the indictment of late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Arbour is largely praised by human rights advocates as a tough, principled lawyer, who has done significant work to expand the presence of UN rights monitors around the world, making reports on abuses routine and widespread.
Spain plans to extradite a former Argentine naval officer accused of murdering thousands of people during the country's "Dirty War." Ricardo Miguel Cavallo has been held in a Spanish prison since 2003, when he was extradited from Mexico and charged by the authorities in Spain with genocide and terrorism, marking the first time a country had extradited a suspect to another to stand trial for alleged rights abuses committed in a third. Argentina's Dirty War, lasting from 1976 to 1983, denotes a time when the country was ruled by a succession of military juntas and the military orchestrated a campaign of terror and disappearances, with more than 10,000 people-by some estimates, up to 30,000-forcibly disappeared.
Algerian authorities are considering financial compensation for more than 13,000 victims of widespread violence in the country since the 1990s. The Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, adopted by referendum in 2005, aims to provide amnesty to armed rebels and exonerate state security forces, while promising to provide reparations to victims and their families. Since 1991 an estimated 150,000 Algerians were killed and nearly 7,000 disappeared during what became to be known as the "dirty war" between the army and Islamist armed groups. However, the Charter does not provide for any truth seeking mechanism or investigation into these serious abuses.
The Guatemalan president has ordered the release of military archives from the country's brutal civil war in an attempt to shed light on human rights abuses during the period. President Alvaro Colom, who personally lost his uncle as a result of the war, ordered the release during ceremonies held to mark the conflict, which left around 200,000 people dead or "disappeared" from 1960 to 1996. The documents will be reviewed by a panel that will decide which papers should be declassified and made public.
The judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) elected Italian Silvana Arbia, 54, to be Registrar of the Court for a five-year-term. Arbia, chief of prosecutions of the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), was elected out of ten contenders for the position. Arbia pursued her degree in Italy, then went on to practice as a lawyer, and later became a magistrate. In addition, she was a member of the Italian delegation to negotiations regarding the Treaty of Rome in 1998, which led to the creation of the Hague-based ICC.
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