SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties, in partnership with the Abductees Mothers' Association and with the support of the DT Institute, has issued an analytical study entitled
“The Chilean Experience of Transitional Justice and Prospects for Its Application in Yemen through the Role of Civil Society”, authored by Dr. Adel Dashela.
The study explores Chile’s post-dictatorship experience and examines how its lessons can inform the construction of a Yemeni transitional justice process that places victims at its core and lays the foundation for a peace built on truth and fairness—rather than political bargains.
The study highlights Yemen’s long history of political and regional conflicts that have produced a deep legacy of unaddressed grievances and violations. It traces the roots of the crisis to the pre-unification era, when repeated armed conflicts were followed by neither accountability nor genuine redress.
The 1994 civil war and the Saada wars between 2004 and 2010 marked critical junctures that entrenched a culture of domination and impunity, culminating in the institutional collapse of 2014 and the outbreak of a full-scale, multi-sided conflict with regional involvement.
According to the study, these periods saw widespread violations including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture, sexual violence, child recruitment, and forced confiscation of property. Judicial and security institutions failed to fulfill their functions, either due to politicization, fragmentation, or lack of competence.
Previous political efforts—such as the draft Transitional Justice Law and the National Dialogue Conference outcomes—remained on paper, never translated into institutional reality, as political will was lacking. Rival factions, the study notes, often treated justice as a threat to their interests, obstructing efforts to restore rights or achieve redress for victims.
The study concludes that justice in Yemen is not a technical issue but a structural one, deeply tied to the nature of the political system and its relationship with society. Any genuine transitional justice process, it argues, must begin with a fundamental reform of judicial institutions and a revival of national memory as the foundation of public trust.
The study presents Chile’s experience following the end of Augusto Pinochet’s military regime (1973–1990) as a successful model of gradual and realistic transitional justice. The first step was the establishment of the Rettig Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, which documented violations and marked the state’s first official acknowledgment of victims of repression.
This commission, the study explains, represented a turning point toward reconciliation grounded in truth rather than denial, fostering a new national discourse that recognized victims and granted moral legitimacy to the emerging democracy.
Civil society played a pivotal role. The Catholic Church and organizations such as the Peace Committee and Vicariate of Solidarity led extensive efforts to collect testimonies and document cases of torture and disappearance—creating a vast legal archive that later supported prosecutions. This civic initiative, the study emphasizes, served as the moral conscience that compelled the state to treat truth as a condition for the future, not a burden of the past.
Reparation was another pillar of success. Chile established the PRAIS Program to provide health, psychological, social, and educational care for victims and their families—restoring their sense of dignity. The state also enacted compensation laws and formally recognized victims as citizens harmed by state crimes, in what was described as “rebuilding citizenship on the basis of shared pain.”
In terms of memory, Chile transformed former sites of repression—such as Villa Grimaldi and the Santiago Stadium—into spaces of national remembrance, turning trauma into a source of collective awareness that redefined the relationship between citizens and the state.
The study stresses that the Chilean lessons should not be copied wholesale, but adapted to Yemen’s far more complex reality. It calls for a gradual, decentralized process driven from the bottom up, with civil society at its center.
It recommends establishing a national unified system for documentation and archiving, coordinating between the National Commission of Inquiry and civil society organizations to collect evidence and testimonies, and to store them securely according to professional standards. Documentation, the study argues, is the first step toward a credible national narrative that restores victims’ voices and forms the material basis for justice.
The study also proposes a comprehensive national reparations program inspired by Chile’s PRAIS model, extending beyond financial compensation to include healthcare, psychological support, education, and vocational rehabilitation—along with formal state recognition and social reintegration of victims. This requires a sustainable national fund supported by local resources and international aid focused on capacity building rather than external control.
On memory, the study calls for launching a national community memory project to document sites of violations and convert them into museums or educational centers that contribute to collective awareness and prevent recurrence. It highlights the importance of involving women and youth in leading this process, as they are both the most affected by war and the most capable of shaping a vision for peace.
The study notes that the stark differences between Yemen and Chile require caution against replication. Yemen’s fragmented armed landscape, complex regional interventions, and institutional collapse demand a locally tailored design, not an imported template.
Tribal culture—particularly concepts of revenge and mediation—poses a major challenge but can also serve as a positive tool for reconciliation if redirected toward restorative justice. The study emphasizes the need for a national approach that blends law, custom, and social reconciliation within an ethical framework balancing rights and interests.
It warns that transitional justice in Yemen must avoid political selectivity and ensure genuine participation of victims, independent of warring parties’ control. Institutional independence and transparency, it asserts, are essential preconditions for any credible outcome.
The study argues that national reconciliation cannot precede justice. Reconciliation built on forgetfulness is fragile; that built on truth and reparation produces genuine stability. The path toward a just peace in Yemen, therefore, begins with uncovering the truth and documenting crimes, followed by context-sensitive accountability, and finally, reparation and preservation of national memory.
These three pillars—truth, accountability, and reparation—constitute the moral architecture of transitional justice; omitting any of them renders the process meaningless. The study also urges integrating transitional justice into any future political settlement to prevent renewed violations and rebuild trust between state and society.
True peace, it concludes, cannot be achieved through force or temporary settlements, but through a long-term societal process that redefines the citizen–state relationship on the basis of dignity and fairness.
The study concludes that transitional justice is not optional—it is existential for Yemen’s peace. Ignoring it would only perpetuate the cycle of violence and repetition of tragedy. It emphasizes the historic responsibility of Yemeni civil society to lead this path through documentation, advocacy, and memory preservation, supported by coordinated international assistance that respects national sovereignty.
Drawing on Chile’s experience, the study ultimately affirms that nations can confront their past without fear, and that acknowledging pain is the first step toward collective healing.