A/HRC/24/42 report judicial reform measures and economic assistance for the family members of victims.42 In this way, the commission acquired two additional functions, a victim-redress function, and a preventive function, largely centred on institutional reform proposals. It is important to note, however, that in contrast to the fact-finding and victim-tracing powers, the victim-redress and preventive functions are merely potentialities; commissions typically cannot reform institutions or provide reparations, they can merely make recommendations. The subsequent history of truth commissions speaks of the growing complexity of these four functions and of the attribution to commissions of new ones, as well as of the omission of the difference between actual functions and mere potentialities. 39. Even the fact-finding function has become significantly more complex: while the Argentinean commission’s task was limited to clarifying the facts regarding the disappearance of persons, the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation in Chile was mandated “to clarify in a comprehensive manner the truth about the most serious human rights violations committed in recent years in our country” 43 and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa was asked to establish “as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human rights”.44 The decree establishing the truth commission in Peru (before it became a truth and reconciliation commission, which involved the attribution of yet another function) continued this process of expansion by requiring the commission “to analyse the political, social and cultural conditions, as well as the behaviours, both within society and by State institutions, that contributed to the tragic situation of violence experienced by Peru”.45 The pattern continued with the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was to investigate “the nature, causes and extent of gross violations and abuses of human rights, including the root causes, circumstances, factors, context, motives, and perspectives which led to such violations”.46 Finally, there is no better illustration of such expansion than the Act establishing the Kenyan truth commission. With respect to an already all-encompassing catalogue of violations, it describes the commission’s task in terms of “establishing an accurate, complete and historical record of violations and abuses of human rights and economic rights inflicted on persons by the State, public institutions and holders of public office, both serving and retired … including the (i) antecedents, circumstances, factors and context of such violations; (ii) perspectives of the victims; and (iii) motives and perspectives of the persons responsible for commission of the violations”, as well as “establishing as complete a picture as possible of the causes, nature, and extent of the gross violations of human rights and economic rights”.47 40. Hence, fact-finding has ceased to be an effort aimed at clarifying cases, the fate of individual victims, and (when mandated and possible) the identities of those responsible for those violations, and has become an undertaking to understand comprehensively root causes, circumstances, factors, context and motives of countrywide situations of repression and/or violence. There is of course much to be said in favour of wide analysis, but it must be clear (a) that even deep analysis is not the same as transformation, and (b) that given 42 43 44 45 46 47 12 The Report of the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared (CONADEP), Nunca Más (1984), ch. 6; available at: http://www.desaparecidos.org/nuncamas/web/english/library/nevagain/nevagain_001.htm. It is worth pointing out that all recommendations of the commission fit in a single page. Supreme Decree No. 355, 25 April 1990, Art. 1. Act 95-34 (fn 34), art. 3, para. 1 (a). It should be noted that this phrase, mostly without any changes in the wording, recurs in the mandates of many subsequent commissions. Higher Decree (Decreto Supremo) No. 065-2001-PCM, art. 2 a. TRC Act of Liberia (fn 37), art. VII, section 26 a (ii). TJRC Act of Kenya (fn 38).