On 19 March 2026, the Team Europe Democracy (TED) Initiative published Supporting Implementation of the 2015 EU Transitional Justice Policy Framework drafted by UpRights’ Co-Directors Valerie Gabard and Asa Solway. Commissioned by the TED Secretariat in view of the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the framework, the report assesses how the EU and its Member States have supported transitional justice processes in partner countries, drawing on six case studies across Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a comprehensive literature review and interviews with EU staff, Member State representatives, civil society organisations and transitional justice experts. 

The framework sets out well-recognized transitional justice principles including calls for nationally owned, participatory, victim-centred and gender-sensitive approaches. While on paper this broad language provides a foundation to support transitional justice processes in partner countries, the report finds that implementation has been hindered by a lack of concrete guidance and a need to sensitise the UE and Member States on the ultimate goals and applicability of transitional justice.  

As such, the Report sets out concrete recommendations to ensure better implementation of the framework, including accurately assessing and promoting nationally and locally owned transitional justice processes, ensuring their legitimacy and genuineness and a commitment to meaningful participation of victims; 

• Ensuring support to non-governmental, informal processes, particularly those led by civil society and victim-driven initiatives; 

• While recognising the importance of criminal justice, avoiding an over-emphasis on such processes at the expense of a balanced approach that incorporates trauma healing, truth seeking, memorialization, reconciliation, reparations, security sector reform and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration; 

• Ensuring both early, and long-term, engagement regardless of whether national authorities have initiated formal processes; 

• Placing victims and affected communities – with particular attention to traditionally excluded and marginalised groups – at the centre of design and implementation of transitional justice processes; 

• Integrating mental health and psychosocial support to victims and affected communities, and gender transformative approaches, in programming to address the root causes of violence; 

The report recognizes that transitional justice remains a critical means for the EU and its Member States to address a global rise in instability, democratic backsliding and the proliferation of internal and external conflicts across the globe that present a significant challenge to fundamental EU values. 

Fundamentally, the report affirms that transitional justice is not a luxury for post-conflict societies but a precondition for stable, peaceful and rights-respecting societies that the EU’s own external action is committed to building.