Global Processes of Justice, Truth–Telling and Healing

IARA is currently engaged in a three-year project, supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, to survey international examples of truth-telling and harm repair, including truth commissions and tribunals. The goal is to better understand what accountability looks like for these endeavors and what lessons we can learn going forward.

At IARA, we measure the impact and effectiveness of racial equity organizational transformation, in order to promote organizational capacity building. With funding from the Kellogg Foundation, IARA is assessing global practices of racial healing from inception to implementation and establishing guidelines based on this assessment. The main intent of the project is to create generalizable knowledge about the truth-telling, healing, and accountability processes that have been effective

Specifically, IARA is conducting an overview of historical and current practices in the field of racial healing with a lens on what has been shown to be successful and what the ongoing challenges are. IARA will provide a comprehensive body of knowledge on racial healing combined with recommendations for employing racial healing as a method of community and organizational transformation.

IARA’s goal is to delve into the impact of global historical truth and reconciliation work at the national and community levels. We are documenting components of the model that make it effective. We expect to answer the following key questions:

What makes the racial healing framework successful?
Where is there room for improvement?
What can this learning teach the racial equity/healing field?
What are the best means for sharing takeaways, resources, and practices with other countries, cities, and counties for scaling their own efforts in antiracist community-driven organizing?

To conduct this work, IARA is mapping organizations and their stakeholders and is using existing documents, publications, evaluation and learning data, community-driven models, and key informant interviews to analyze, understand and assess outcomes and impact. As a result of this project, IARA will produce a final knowledge product and disseminate these findings broadly, contributing to the racial equity space and the understanding of racial healing.

Meet the researchers

Large murals line the streets of a major road in Belfast, Northern Ireland where they justice icons including Frederick Douglas at center.
Public wall mural in Belfast, Northern Ireland depicting freedom fighters and activists from the United States and throughout the globe, including Angela Davis, Steven Biko, and Bob Marley.
Large scale mural in Belfast, Northern Ireland depicts Nelson Mandela alongside the Irish tricolour flag and the South African flag.
IARA team members Khalil and Erica meet with Godeliève Mukasarasi, social worker and women’s activist who pioneered community dialogue programs after the Rwandan Genocide.
IARA team member Erica interviews Dr. Eric Ndushabandi, Director of the Institute of Research and Dialogue for Peace (IRDP) in Kigali, Rwanda where his institute uses research to promote best practices for interethnic peacebuilding.
Aerial view of Kigali, Rwanda. The 1994 Rwandan Genocide resulted in the murder of approximately one million Tutsis, as well as Hutu and Twa allies and moderates.
IARA Director Khalil Gibran Muhammad photographs the Camp Kigali Belgian Memorial where 10 UN Peacekeepers were killed for protecting the sitting Hutu moderate President. The original bullet-sprayed building remains intact.
Camp Kigali Belgian Memorial.
Memorial located in the parking lot of Hôtel des Mille Collines where 1000 people took refuge during the 1994 Genocide, which the film Hotel Rwanda is based on.
More recent memorials erected in the Brixton neighborhood of London honor Black British, Caribbean and African men and women who served in World War I and World War II on behalf of the UK. These new markers recognize contributions of Black people to British history, and beyond those who arrived on England’s shores in 1948 on the Windrush ship from Jamaica.
The Black Cultural Archives in London, England is one of few British cultural institutions which documents, centers and archives Black British History, through cultural artifacts, artwork and robust library.
Len Kwesi Garrison, was an educationalist, community activist and historian who advocated for the preservation co-founded ACER (Afro-Caribbean Education Resource) and co-founded the Black Cultural Archives.
Interior of the District Six Museum in Cape Town, South Africa, which was created as a memorial to the 60,000 residents who were forcibly removed during the apartheid era. The floor of the museum is covered with a large map with handwritten notes of former residents, showing where their homes were located.
“List of Victims” wall at the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation exhibition in Cape Town, South Africa. The wall is inscribed with the names of more than 19,000 known victims of apartheid, as recorded in Volume 7 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report.
The Nelson Mandela statue on the grounds of the Union Buildings in Pretoria, South Africa. The towering statue, which is 29.5 feet (9 meters) tall and made of bronze, is the tallest figurative sculpture of the former President of South Africa.
The Wall of Names at the Freedom Park in Pretoria, South Africa is a memorial that includes a list of names of people who died during eight conflicts in South Africa’s history: the pre-colonial wars, slavery, genocide of Indigenous peoples, wars of resistance, the South African War, World War I, World War II, and the Struggle for Liberation (anti-apartheid movement).