A/HRC/21/46 1. Recognition 29. Almost without fail, one of the first demands of victims is to obtain recognition of the fact that they have been harmed. What, however, is involved in such recognition? 12 The sort of recognition at issue is complex. It is important but not sufficient to acknowledge the victims’ suffering and their capacity to endure: victims of natural disasters, for example, can share those characteristics. But violations are not simply akin to natural disasters. It is therefore fundamental to acknowledge that the victims have been wronged, which is possible only by appealing to norms. 13 What is indispensable, and what transitional justice measures seek to accomplish, is to recognize that the victim is the holder of rights. This entails not only the right to seek for avenues of redress that can assuage suffering but also to restore the victim’s rights that were so brutally violated and affirm her or his standing as someone who is entitled to make claims, on the basis of rights, and not simply as a matter of empathy, or any other type of consideration. 30. To illustrate, criminal justice can be interpreted as an attempt to provide recognition to victims by denying the implicit claim of superiority made by the criminal’s behaviour through a sentence that is meant to reaffirm the importance of norms that grant equal rights to all. 14 Furthermore, while truth-seeking rarely discloses facts that were previously unknown, they still make an indispensable contribution in officially and publicly acknowledging these facts. 15 The acknowledgment is important, because it constitutes a form of recognizing the significance and value of persons as individuals, as victims and as holders of rights. Reparations provide the material form of the recognition owed to an equal rights holder whose fundamental rights have been violated. In the light of the difficulties and the “impunity gap” that normally accompany prosecutorial efforts (countries have found it difficult to prosecute each and every person who may have been involved in gross violations of human rights and serious violations of international humanitarian law) and of the potential charge that truth-telling, on its own, is “inconsequential talk”, reparations buttress efforts aimed at recognition by demonstrating a sufficiently serious commitment so as to invest resources and, in well-crafted programmes, by giving beneficiaries the sense that the State has taken their interests to heart. Finally, institutional reform, including vetting, is guided by the idea of guaranteeing the conditions under which individuals can relate to one another and to the authorities as holders of equal rights. 31. In summary, while each of the elements under the mandate may have an immediate aim or aims of its own, all of them can be utilized to pursue the goal of providing recognition to victims as individuals and as victims, but also, and most fundamentally, as holders of rights. 12 13 14 15 10 On the notion of recognition, see, among others, Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (Cambridge and Malden, Polity Press, 1995) and Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (Polity Press, 2007). Joel Feinberg, for example, argues that there are two different ways of understanding “harms”: harm as a setback to interests, and harm as a wrong to another person. Only the latter is relevant to the law. See Feinberg, Harm to Others, vol. 1, The Moral Limits of the Criminal (New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 31–36. Recognizing victims as rights holders obviously accentuates the normative dimension of recognition. See Jean Hampton, “A New Theory of Retribution” in Liability and Responsibility: Essays in law and morals, R.G. Frey and Christopher W. Morris, eds. (Cambridge University Press, 1991). See Lawrence Weschler, “Afterword” in State Crimes: Punishment or Pardon (Aspen Institute report).