Truth and Reconciliation: A Necessity for Trauma Healing in Post Conflict Restructuring

This paper contributes to the existing knowledge on the role played by truth, confession, and reconciliation as necessary ingredients for trauma healing in post-conflict restructuring. The article discussion shows to what extent these concepts are interconnected, and share a complex relationship with truth and reconciliation. It argues that the knowledge about past violence is hardly a canonical truth. It is at best a negotiated truth. This knowledge is inevitably a combination of facts and interpretations. This knowledge is sought and used for understanding past violence but also for paving the way toward the reconstruction of post-conflict societies. The article argues that confession offers a twofold opportunity; it provides knowledge of past violence, and acknowledgment of victims’ pain through perpetrators’ expression of remorse, although in a limited manner. Forgiveness is also discussed in relation to its essential meaning, the actors involved, and its purposes. Finally, reconciliation is built on two pillars, firstly, the proclamation of a seemingly achieved reconciliation; and secondly, the experiencing of reconciliation in everyday interaction between perpetrators and victim