Timor-Leste Brings Global Voices Together to Advance Truth, Memory and Justice

Across three days, the conference examined how different societies have confronted difficult histories and explored how truth, memory and justice can contribute to lasting peace. Opening the substantive discussions, Prof. Bernard Duhaime, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, placed national experiences within the international framework for transitional justice, providing a common reference point for the discussion that followed.

Drawing on experiences from Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Cambodia, the Republic of Korea, Canada and beyond, participants exchanged lessons on preserving historical memory, supporting survivors, managing truth commission archives, and strengthening education to ensure difficult histories are neither forgotten nor repeated. These comparative experiences confirmed that no single truth and reconciliation model can simply be transferred from one country to another. Each process responds to its own political, cultural and historical context, but sustained regional cooperation helps institutions learn from one another's achievements, limitations and unfinished work.

Participants closed the conference by adopting a set of Recommendations calling for stronger legal and institutional safeguards for truth commission archives, survivor-centred reparations and psychosocial support, the integration of truth commission findings into formal and non-formal education, and sustained regional and international cooperation among truth commissions, memory institutions and educators.

Reflecting the conference's shared commitment to translating these recommendations into action, H.E. Mariano Assanami Sabino Lopes, Vice Prime-Minister and Coordinating Minister for Social Affairs, representing Prime Minister Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão, reaffirmed the Government's commitment to implementing the recommendations of the Chega! and Per Memoriam ad Spem reports.