In the preceding chapter we mentioned Sudan as a ‘forgotten country’. Although a fair amount of publicity has been given to the massive levels of human rights violations that have afflicted this country, no humanitarian intervention has taken place, and the UN peacekeeping force (UNAMID) was strongly rejected by Sudan as a foreign invasion. Still, some day the violence will stop and soon thereafter the world's attention will turn to another crisis. However, efforts to bring truth, justice and a stable government to Sudan in these difficult circumstances will most assuredly not be given anywhere near the same level of attention by the world's media as putting an end to the physical violence. Yet achieving these goals is vital to the long-term prospects for peace, and arguably this will be a much more difficult and a much more complicated undertaking than stopping physical violence.

In this chapter we focus on the way in which countries that have suffered gross human rights violations attempt to deal with their past. How can society be rebuilt and made functional in the wake of such abuses?