The President of the Institute of National Remembrance, Dr. Łukasz Kamiński, has been invited to take part in the international conference inaugurating Tunisia's Truth and Dignity Commission by the Minister of Human Rights and Transitional Justice. Dr. Kamiński introduced the Polish experience and spoke about the challenges related to coming to terms with the totalitarian past.
The Tunisian National Constituent Assembly has approved 15 members of the Truth and Dignity Commission. They will investigate human rights breaches in Tunisia since 1955. IPN experts have assisted in the drafting of the act on transitional justice.
The IPN is consequently supporting the democratisation process in Tunisia. In 2012, the first study visit of Tunisian public administration and NGO representatives to Poland has been organised. The second study visit was organised in April 2014. In the meantime, IPN experts visited Tunis, holding workshops for representatives and experts of the office of Prime Minister of Tunisia, ministries and institutions responsible for the preparation of reforms in sectors crucial for Tunisia's transformation. The workshops were a joint project of the Institute of National Remembrance, Solidarity Fund PL and the Tunisian NGO Labo Democratique. IPN representatives were also invited to seminars and international conferences in Tunis, where they introduced the subject of Communist dictatorship in Poland, Poland's transformation experience, coming to terms with the past, the role of vetting procedures and access to archives in a democratic country.
Commissions similar to the Tunisian one, the role of which is examining the past, exist in over 40 countries around the world, e.g. in Argentina, Chile, South Africa, Liberia, Kenya, Morocco or Ivory Coast, but also in Canada, where a local commission investigates cases of violations of indigenous population's rights. The speech of the IPN President in Tunis was preceded by the one of Desmond Tutu, the icon of the fight against apartheid in South Africa and head of South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The international conference inaugurating Tunisia's Truth and Dignity Commission, co-organised, among others, by the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights aims to show how important the Commission is to Tunisians. It will be attended by the President and Prime Minister of Tunisia and by Pablo de Greiff, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, as well as representatives of numerous institutions and organisations from around the world working in this field.