A/HRC/36/50/Add.1 47. “Hybrid” courts, which are comprised of national and international staff, and combine national and international law and standards, emerged in the wake of reflection on some of the drawbacks of the ad hoc international courts. Critiques concerned, inter alia, their distance, impressions of partiality and the fact that they were not well positioned to build national capacity to try such cases. As a result, hybrid courts were put to work in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Lebanon, Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste,32 as well as in Kosovo.33 They were designed to leave a legacy of jurisprudential, practical and even physical (in the form of court buildings) contributions at the national level. 48. More recently, attention has turned towards the principle of complementarity — investing directly in national judicial systems in order to prepare them for the prosecution of complex international crimes. 49. Experiments with different venues for the realization of the right to justice have contributed to the development of jurisprudence that manifests progress in international criminal law regarding novel topics, including sexually based violations, command responsibility and, incipiently, the destruction of cultural property. Equally, the various venues instigated the development of expertise regarding international criminal law which, if appropriately harnessed, can translate into trials in national jurisdictions of increased sophistication and effectiveness. C. Advances in truth-seeking 50. Knowing the truth (and official recognition of it) is important for victims, their families and the public. Ultimately, it is difficult to think about the realization of rights if their violation is not even acknowledged, difficult to think about dignity in circumstances in which people do not have any control about what is said about them and their fate. Transitional justice has made indispensable contributions not only to the explicit articulation of a right to truth but to the operationalization of that right. 1. Right to truth 51. While there is no specific international convention on the right to truth, national courts and international judicial bodies have developed a set of decisions that provide a framework for satisfying the right of victims and their families to the truth, as part of victims’ broader right to a remedy. 34 At the international level, key references include the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law. At the regional level, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights,35 the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights36 and the European Court of Human Rights37 have all acknowledged aspects of the right to truth. At the national level, court cases in Argentina, Colombia, Peru and South Africa, among others, have affirmed a legal basis for the right to truth. 38 52. The right to truth entitles the victim, his or her relatives and the public at large to seek and obtain all relevant information concerning the commission of the alleged 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 A hybrid tribunal to try the former leader of Chad was also created in Senegal. All references to Kosovo in the present document should be understood to be in compliance with Security Council resolution 1244 (1999). Eduardo González and Howard Varney, eds., “Truth seeking: elements of creating and effective truth commission”, 2013. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Annual Report, 1985-86, AS Doc. No. OEA/Ser.L/V/II.68, Doc. 8 rev. 1 (26 September 1986), p. 193. The Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Fair Trial and Legal Assistance in Africa highlight that the right to an effective remedy includes “access to the factual information concerning the violations” (principle C (b) 3). El-Masri v. the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Application No. 39630/09), para. 191. González and Varney, “Truth seeking”, p. 5. 11