A/HRC/36/50/Add.1 16. North Africa has also adopted transitional justice approaches. In Morocco, pressure from victim organizations and the political opening created by the ascension of a new King in 1999 led to the creation of an Equity and Reconciliation Commission to document the abuses that took place during the repressive “Years of Lead” in Morocco. More recently, during the Arab Spring, protesters linked current economic injustice with past repression; subsequently, a number of countries have implemented transitional justice. Tunisia, in addition to the adoption of a new Constitution, enacted a comprehensive transitional justice law establishing a Truth Commission to investigate human rights violations and also to settle cases of corruption.11 17. International criminal justice has played a more significant role in transitional justice in Africa than in other regions. The Security Council established the International Tribunal for Rwanda in 1994. 12 More recently, African countries have been the primary sites for investigations of the International Criminal Court, a fact that has spurred debate and critique.13 Since the International Criminal Court acts as a court of last resort, attention has turned to the issue of “complementarity”, referring to building the capacity of national courts to prosecute international crimes. 18. By the time many African countries adopted transitional justice, a formal, “template” approach already existed, filtering into negotiated peace agreements. The result is that African experiences provide important lessons about the challenges of implementation in the wake of peace settlements, and insights for global debates on the relationship between peace and justice. While debates on how justice should be approached in conflict-affected countries have been complex, 14 it would be a mistake to assume an intemperate opposition to criminal justice entirely: Africans have pursued justice in national courts in Eritrea, Rwanda, Tunisia and Uganda, and in hybrid courts in Chad and Sierra Leone. 19. The relevance of transitional justice is clear from recent initiatives of the African Union and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The African Union is developing a Transitional Justice Policy Framework and considering establishing a related mechanism.15 D. Asia 20. Although Asian experiences with transitional justice may not be as well known, the region has a long history, extending back to the trials in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East after the Second World War.16 More recently, countries like Bangladesh and Cambodia have sought to come to terms with large-scale human rights abuses that took place decades ago, while countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka are confronting more recent political conflict. Australia has used the tools to deal with the legacies of colonialism. 21. The initiatives of East Timor were innovative in many respects. After 1999, when the United Nations assumed administration of East Timor following massive violence around the referendum on self-determination, a Serious Crimes Process and a Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation were established. The former was comprised of two hybrid criminal justice mechanisms that focused on perpetrators of the most serious abuses. The Commission complemented this approach by dealing with the aftermath of 11 12 13 14 15 16 6 A/HRC/24/42/Add.1. See http://unictr.unmict.org/en/tribunal. See Elise Keppler, “AU’s ‘ICC withdrawal strategy’ less than meets the eye”, 1 February 2017, www.hrw.org/news/2017/02/01/aus-icc-withdrawal-strategy-less-meets-eye. African Union Panel of the Wise, “Peace, justice, and reconciliation in Africa: opportunities and challenges in the fight against impunity”, The African Union Series (International Peace Institute, February 2013). African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Resolution No. 235. Leigh A. Payne and Kathryn Sikkink, “Transitional justice in the Asia-Pacific: comparative and theoretical perspectives”, in Transitional Justice in the Asia-Pacific, Renée Jeffery and Hun Joon Kim, eds. (Cambridge University Press, 2014).