One of the most profound issues confronting societies emerging from periods of violent human rights abuse is how to move beyond the collective and personal scars inflicted by these legacies of repression. This website explores such collective practices as truth commissions, judicial prosecutions of perpetrators of mass violence, and the establishment of human rights memorials and museums as ways to recall and deal with national episodes of force and brutality.
The goals of the project are to help us understand how historical memory is embodied in these venues and to explore the variety of ways that societies have developed to seek justice in the present, express remorse for barbarism from the past, and transcend violence and hate for the future.