Gender and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

This submission is intended only as a starting point to aid the Commission in understanding how gender forms part of the truth and reconciliation process. We have explored some of the issues that need to be looked at further and we certainly do not believe that this is the final word on any aspect covered in the submission. We have drawn upon comparative literature in an endeavour to provide a framework within which to understand how gender has affected women's experience during the three decades that form the review period of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We have drawn upon the work of people who have written about their own or other people's experiences of human rights abuses. We have also interviewed a number of women whose experience we believed would be useful in helping us to draw out possible trends during the three decades which are the concern of the TRC. This framework will need to be further developed and refined as more evidence of this gendered experience becomes available in the course of the Commission's hearings.