A Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is a form of restorative justice aimed at the reparation healing of a community broken apart by violence and oppression through creating a safe space in which perpetrators of that violence can make a clean breast of their actions and begin to be restored to full standing in the society in question. The establishment of a commission encourages a belief that “the truth will set us free.”

A TRC is theoretically based in the awareness that the events of the past will haunt the present and the future until injustices are brought to light, in an atmosphere in which reconciliation is at least theoretically possible. in order that a new consciousness be formed that condemns those actions. When grievances are addressed in this way, ventilating the need for vengeance and to some degree healing the alienation caused by the hostilities, a community may succeed in breaking the cycle, i.e. in interrupting the potential for future instances of those violent acts to flare up once again — without that kind of intervention an all-too-common experience.

The first widely known instance of a TRC was set up in South Africa to address the enormous violence that had been carried out in the name of racial segregation under the infamous apartheid regime. Since then, it has had diverse incarnations throughout the world, including Rwanda (where it is drawing upon a pre-existing indigenous system of courts called Gacaca); Liberia; Canada; Chile; and the United States. While its effectiveness to advocate for oppressed groups is debated (some think that some kind of restorative action, and not just expression of remorse, is necessary to effect real reconciliation), a TRC does manage to avoid retribution and encourage basic principles of nonviolence, such as rehumanization, the power of Truth, forgiveness, and returning good for evil.