Truth commissions were originally designed to investigate serious human rights abuses but since the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation (1990–91) and, most famously, the South African TRC (1995–2000), they are also being asked to promote national reconciliation. The nature of that reconciliation, however, is never sufficiently outlined in their mandates. This leaves public expectations high and chances of failure, derision or dismissal even higher as creating national reconciliation is beyond a TRC's capacity. Later I will argue that truth commissions are best designed to promote national narrative reconciliation – public agreement that past violations occurred and that they were wrong – and to provide a diagnosis of what went wrong in the past and what needs to be changed in the future.

Partly because of high expectations and vague mandates, recent truth commissions have promoted reconciliation where they can, urging victims to reconcile with those who harmed them. For example, a Sierra Leone TRC poster read: “Save Sierra Leone from another war. Reconcile now. TRC can help.” And Sierra Leone TRC Commissioner Ajaratou Satang Jow asked a witness whose children were killed by rebel-allied soldiers, “Are you willing to be reconciled, for the sake of peace? Are you ready to forgive?”

This raises the question of how inter-individual reconciliation promotes national reconciliation. Surely victims and perpetrators need to commit to obeying the law and not taking revenge, but beyond that, is there a relationship between reconciliation at the two levels? If so, we need to be clear about how this relationship functions. If not, then perhaps we should not be pushing victims to forgive and reconcile with those who harmed them, given the severity of many human rights abuses and the fact that there oft en is no justice in transitional contexts.

Assessing reconciliation in post-conflict societies must therefore begin with understanding the ‘geography of reconciliation’: clarifying major levels and types of reconciliation identified in peacebuilding literature. In this way we can locate reconciliation goals and specify their qualities and relationships with each other.