A/HRC/24/42 Additionally, more thought has been given to appointment procedures than to the underlying crucial criteria for selection. 99. As temporary bodies, truth commissions are, in general, not the implementing agencies of their own recommendations. This responsibility lies primarily on governments. Since attempted institutional fixes to the follow-up problem have not guaranteed the implementation of the recommendations, efforts should concentrate on the underlying function, which is to increase the accountability of governments. 100. However, the likelihood that ex post, commission recommendations will be heeded would improve if commissions strengthened their capability to frame recommendations in actionable terms. Furthermore, as experience has shown, in the end, the fate of recommendations depends largely on the leadership, advocacy and persistence of civil society organizations. Commissions should engage with such organizations as early as possible, and do whatever is in their power to strengthen them. 101. Commissions can significantly increase their impact by making contributions to the establishment of reliable and accessible archives – both those of truth commissions themselves as well as national archives. Finally, commissions are well placed to encourage and support cultural manifestations, art exhibits, memorials and museums, which enhance society’s understanding of the plight and the strength of victims, empower them, and foster the formation of a culture of rights. B. Recommendations 102. On mandates, the Special Rapporteur urges States and other actors responsible for the design of mandates, including, when applicable, international actors, to exercise prudence in the drafting of mandates of truth commissions, which involves: (a) Heeding basic considerations of functional adequacy: commissions should not be laden with objectives which they have no means to satisfy. The trend of moving away from assigning commissions discrete, specific functions, towards assigning to them open-ended objectives that cannot be satisfied needs to be stemmed; (b) Paying renewed attention to the victim-tracing function, recalling the significant contribution that earlier truth commissions made to this task, and recent advances in forensics; (c) Ensuring that truth commissions continue to dedicate specific attention to women’s rights and adopt a gender-based approach in their design and functioning; (d) Recognizing that reconciliation is not a function commissions can bring about on their own. In particular, perpetrator-victim pardon procedures place undue burdens on victims and cannot redress the systemic and structural dimension of atrocities, which constitute an attack against the very principle of the rule of law; (e) Treating with caution the assignment of arbitration functions to a truth commission, and inviting States instead to consider establishing functionally differentiated, albeit significantly coordinated, bodies dedicated to corruption cases and other economic crimes. 103. On the selection of commissioners, the Special Rapporteur: (a) Recalls the importance of making correct choices, given that the authority and legitimacy of truth commissions depends heavily on the qualities and standing of commissioners. At the same time, he notes that there is no currently 27