A combination of processes to resolve and remedy past human rights violations and other kinds of harm associated with an abusive former regime or conflict situation. With a focus on the rights of victims, cumulative experience has developed five principle types of processes, although in no rigidly prescribed order:

1. Remembrance, documentation and acknowledgement of the pain, suffering, loss, motivations, etc., in order to reconstruct the past to determine the duties and violations (including breaches and crimes), consistent with procedures and standards of evidence sufficient for adjudication;
2. Dialogue and reconciliation between and amongparties involved in an effort to uphold the other efforts of transitional justice and restore social cohesion;
3. Prosecution of the duty holders to ascertain personal liability, state obligations, state liability, state responsibility, war crimes, crimes against humanity, etc.;
4. Reform of corrupt or abusive institutions, including “vetting” or lustrations of operational personnel in ways that evaluate their competence and integrity,withoutresorting to arbitrary purges or mass dismissals;
5. Reparation, according to the elements defined in international norms.