A/HRC/21/46 institutions, notwithstanding which they were not apt to prevent the gross and serious violations that occurred. Second, the measures that emerged were adopted as a response to a particular kind of violation, namely, those associated with the abusive exercise of State power through precisely those institutions. Therefore, part of the aim of the transitions in these post-authoritarian situations could be understood in terms of the recovery of both institutions and traditions that had been brutally disrupted. 16. More recently, the measures defined under the mandate have been progressively transferred from their “place of origin” in post-authoritarian settings, to post-conflict contexts and even to settings in which conflict is ongoing or to those in which there has been no transition to speak of. However, there are important differences between these types of contexts; whereas in the authoritarian settings the violations typically involve significant abuse of State power, in many conflict settings, in which institutions already find themselves under severe strain, the violations often come about as a result of generalized social conflict in which, among other factors, there is a plethora of violent agents. These settings, which are often marked not just by weak institutions but also by severe economic scarcity, generate challenges for the successful implementation of measures that were designed presupposing the feasibility of relatively easy attributions of responsibility and institutions that could plausibly administer those attributions and disclose the truth of what took place, that were strong enough to bear reform in the short term and that could feasibly avail themselves of the resources required to establish reparations programmes for victims. 17. To complicate matters further, the recent transitions in the Middle East and North Africa may require yet another extension of the domain of application of the measures under the mandate. While these transitions bear some important similarities to the transitions from authoritarianism as described, they have distinctive characteristics that need to be taken into account. For example, while most typical post-authoritarian transitions were led by previously existing parties and aimed at a “return” to temporarily interrupted traditions and institutions, the most recent transitions in these regions cannot be characterized as such. Moreover, a common feature of these recent transitions is the prominent role that claims relating to economic rights occupy in these transitions; claims against corruption and in favour of economic opportunities have been raised to a par in the regions with claims for the redress of violations of civil and political rights. 18. In view of the increasing trend to utilize the measures of truth-seeking, justice initiatives, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence without heeding the characteristics of the contexts in which they are applied, the Special Rapporteur underlines that it is crucial to clearly identify and assess the preconditions in any given country and address them in a manner fine-tuned, targeted and sensitive to context. C. Normative concept 19. Despite the rapidly accumulating stock of experiences in the implementation of the measures under this mandate, which, again, for short, will be referred to here by the use of the expression “transitional justice”, misconceptions about those mechanisms have remained. The Special Rapporteur stresses that these mechanisms are neither meant to be a “soft form of justice” nor should they be considered as a means of pursuing the aim of reconciliation bypassing the implementation of the four measures under the mandate. 20. The Secretary-General’s report on the rule of law and transitional justice in conflict and post-conflict societies (S/2004/616), to which the resolution refers, describes transitional justice as “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, serve justice and achieve reconciliation” (para. 8), enumerates the 6