Amnesty in this report will be generally understood to be 'an official act that provides an individual with protection from liability – civil, criminal or both for past acts'.35 Reconciliation, a difficult term to define, is generally taken in this report to be 'a cancellation of enmity … achievable only when perpetrators and beneficiaries of past injustice acknowledge collective responsibility for wrong-doing and when victims, through the same process, regain their self-respect'.36 Truth as described by Crocker quoting Alex Boraine is knowing about 'whose moral and legal rights were violated, by whom, how, when and why'.37 Transitional justice will shape how the past violations are handled and how the future is mapped. The question of transitional justice, is how should a fledgling democracy reckon with severe human rights abuses that earlier authoritarian regimes, their opponents, or combatants in an internal armed conflict have committed? Sometimes the term transitional justice is used to refer exclusively to penal justice and even to retributive interpretations of trials and punishment. The term in this report is used more broadly to cover in addition such concerns as compensatory, distributive, and restorative justice. The challenge for a new democracy or countries trying to break with the past is to respond appropriately to past evils without undermining the new democracy or jeopardizing prospects for future development. A central factor in the transitional justice debate is the importance of balancing the need for 'restorative justice' with solemn principles pointing to criminal trials and 'retributive justice'. In the former, the focus is beyond simply ensuring formal accountability for wrongs; the focus is on the vindication of the victim, not the punishment of perpetrators. Restorative justice approaches also emphasize a need to focus on 'bottom-up' processes founded in ordinary people's experiences and concerned with taking steps that they feel would set things right. This is to be contrasted with processes involving only some elites – whether peacemakers, truth commissioners, prosecutors, or indicted persons. A restorative justice approach does not, however, discount the value and effectiveness of criminal punishment, including as a means of affirming the dignity of victims and preventing vengeance. Trials in criminal courts in transitional settings cannot easily be dismissed as merely backward-looking: they may be essential to ensuring a sense of 'justice', avoiding self-help measures, and to deterring future abuses. 35 RC Slye, 'Amnesty, Truth and Reconciliation: Reflections on the South African Amnesty Process' in R Rotberg and D Thompson (eds), The Morality of Truth Commissions Truth v. Justice (Princeton University Press United Kingdom 2000) at 171. 36 R Bhargava, 'Restoring Decency to Barbaric Societies' in R Rotberg and D Thompson (eds) The Morality of Truth Commissions Truth v. Justice (Princeton University Press United Kingdom 2000) at 60. 37 DA Crocker, Truth Commissions, Transitional Justice, and Civil Society in R Rotberg and D Thompson (eds), The Morality of Truth Commissions Truth v. Justice (Princeton University Press United Kingdom 2000) at 100 18