Recent changes to local approaches are less about specific initiatives and more about a changing attitude toward who sets the agenda and takes the lead. Locally led processes are understood to have a range of benefits, particularly when national processes promote a singular vision of the past or are invisible or inaccessible to rural or marginalized communities. They are more likely to be perceived as legitimate and more culturally salient, with norms shared by a community, including indigenous, religious or spiritual values. Because they are being carried out closer to victims, these processes are often, although not always, more reflective of and responsive to their needs. Local truth-telling can also be a basis for reconciliation at the community level by collectively building a foundation for coexistence.

This is not to say that local approaches should replace national state-led processes. In many cases, survivors’ and victims’ families seek formal government acknowledgement of the truth about what they endured. State-sponsored spaces of memory are powerful contributors to developing a common historical narrative and recognizing survivors and victims. Similarly, formal justice institutions can provide accountability that might not otherwise be available where informal or traditional justice mechanisms neglect or silence women, children and LGBTQIA+ people. In most countries, the state is the key actor when it comes to determining what narratives feature in educational curricula, even if many children learn community history outside a classroom.

Taking a local approach to truth and justice reorients these concepts toward what a particular community needs rather than imposing a global model. In some cases, this means that countries or communities apply their own principles of morality and justice. Local approaches can also benefit countries that have long seen themselves as models for justice and accountability. In the United Kingdom, “poverty truth commissions” have sought to engage those who struggle against poverty by addressing poverty and simultaneously telling truths about its impacts.[i] In the United States, there is a nascent movement toward local truth and reconciliation commissions as a framework for confronting injustice and for policy change and reparations for harms done to minority communities.[1]

            Widespread access to mobile phones and other technologies has democratized documentation and data collection efforts, empowering individuals from anywhere in the world to engage in memory, justice and education related to human rights violations.[ii] In Bosnia and Herzegovina, for instance, participatory photography and photovoice projects have allowed women and youth to collect and share their experiences of conflict with a wider audience.[iii] Satellite imaging and new mapping technologies, paired with open source approaches to data collection, are facilitating investigations into violations, providing more opportunities for victims and CSOs to make violations visible and to pursue justice. Such data can provide not just a foundation for advocacy and justice but much-needed answers as well for families seeking information about missing loved ones.[iv]

However, perpetrators and governments can use these same new technologies to target human rights documenters or mobilize supporters for violence. Additionally, technological documentation methods rely on internet access or mobile service, which is not always reliable or which may be surveilled or constricted by state authorities. The assumption that all violations can be documented by local witnesses and put online can further isolate internet-poor communities that nevertheless suffer abuses. The persecution of Rohingya communities in Rakhine, Myanmar, and the conflict in Tigray, Ethiopia, are both examples of locations where violations have been committed on a mass scale but with relatively little online documentation.