A/HRC/45/45/Add.3 dialogue and peacebuilding. A Reconciliation Unit and a Reconciliation Committee were established to fulfil this role. In addition to helping victims deal with their personal selfhealing, the Commission has identified its role in facilitating individual reconciliation for victims and perpetrators where perpetrators have admitted to having committed human rights abuses and are willing and ready to apologize to victims, who have also accepted this request from the perpetrator.16 It further focuses on peacebuilding and integration within divided communities and, ultimately, on the promotion of national healing and reconciliation. 58. In meetings with victims, civil society and the international community, concern was expressed at the perceived attempt by the Government, including through the work of the Commission, to force reconciliation and forgiveness – including upon victims – and to prioritize this aspect over accountability. Several social actors have indicated that they felt that Gambians are being pressured to do so despite their convictions – including their traditional and religious beliefs – to the contrary. In this regard, many interviewees, including victims, noted that reconciliation will not be possible insofar as there is impunity, and that justice would be essential for any reconciliation effort. 59. The Special Rapporteur would like to stress that forgiveness is a matter of personal conviction, which cannot, and should not, be imposed on victims or members of society. Whether a person has forgiven a crime or not, the State remains obliged to sanction it. Moreover, reconciliation is not equal to forgiveness, but rather the reconstruction of trust between the State – the guarantor of individual rights – and society, and consequently, among members of society. This trust can only be achieved when the State upholds its legal and institutional obligations. The enforcement of criminal sanctions is a vital tool for the reconciliation of society with the State, and it does not hinder the personal forgiveness of victims. 60. This holds particularly true for the Gambia, which, as underscored by a victim, “is a harmonious society, where only a few State-affiliated perpetrators attacked the rest of the society”. 61. The need to prioritize reconciliation over accountability has long been a political argument (usually intentionally misguided) in countries where the risk of recurrence of violence is believed, whether rightly or not, to be related to efforts to sanction perpetrators who still have a grip on armed or political power. Fortunately, the perpetrators in the Gambia do not seem to have a great deal of political or armed support, which makes any debate about the need to choose between reconciliation or justice futile and misleading. 62. The stated aims of the National Healing and Reconciliation Committee include to engage Gambians in a national discourse about their recent past and to promote unity and a common overarching national identity. The Special Rapporteur wishes to share a word of caution in this regard. While it is laudable and vital to engage society in a country-wide dialogue about its abusive past, it is often considerations of common identity and national discourse that create a breeding ground for future exclusions and associated violence. 63. The mandate of the Special Rapporteur and that of other United Nations experts, including the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, have previously underscored that processes of social debate, memorialization or history teaching about past events should not be aimed at unifying views nationwide in an homogenous, fixed discourse or identity. They should instead be aimed at providing those affected – notably victims but also the rest of society – with the spaces necessary to articulate narratives, share perspectives, and promote interaction and understanding between people and communities, where respect for human rights and the embracement of diversity constitute the cornerstone of shared identities.17 E. Access to and preservation of documentation and evidence 64. Numerous reports indicate that the Government has made insufficient efforts to archive, secure and preserve documentary and on-site evidence and crime scenes of past 16 17 12 www.trrc.gm/our-mandate/. A/HRC/25/49, para. 48; A/HRC/30/42, paras. 92–95.