Morocco’s National Human Rights Council (CNDH) has stepped into a sensitive public debate this week, defending the record of the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER), the body that carried out the country’s transitional justice process between 2004 and 2006. In a statement issued on Friday, the Council was responding to remarks made at the House of Councillors on October 21, which had reignited discussion over the commission’s legacy.
The CNDH is not disputing the public’s right to revisit this chapter of national history. Discussing, assessing and even questioning the limits of such a process is, in its view, a normal feature of democratic life. But the Council sets one condition: any such debate must rest on factual accuracy and respect for victims’ dignity, rather than on a corrosive skepticism that risks undermining achievements built over two decades.
The IER, the Council notes, did not emerge from an isolated administrative decision. It was the product of royal will, sustained advocacy by human rights defenders, demands raised by victims themselves, and a civil society momentum that unfolded over several decades. Measuring this homegrown model against other countries’ experiences, the CNDH argues, misses the point: each nation’s transitional justice reflects its own history and circumstances.
A central theme of the statement is equality among victims. Their rights, the CNDH insists, do not depend on political affiliation, intellectual position or geographic origin, a principle it says applies to every case the commission examined, including those tied to the Southern Provinces. Reparation, the Council adds, was never meant to be purely financial; it was also about restoring dignity and rights that had been denied for years, with particular attention to how violations affected women differently from men.
On the question of historical truth, the CNDH strikes a cautious note. Missing records, conflicting testimonies and competing interpretations of the past mean that establishing a definitive historical account falls to independent researchers and historians, not to the commission itself. The IER was never intended to close the book on historical inquiry or impose a single narrative. The Council is calling for easier access to archives, alongside safeguards protecting both victims’ testimonies and personal data.
Finally, the CNDH placed Morocco’s experience within the broader framework of international transitional justice, noting that United Nations special rapporteurs, including the rapporteur on truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, have referenced the Moroccan model in their reports. The statement closes by describing reconciliation as an unfinished process, one that depends on expanding freedoms, rebuilding trust in institutions, and permanently guaranteeing that such violations never recur.
