Haiti’s dilemma is hardly unique. From Rwanda to Yugoslavia, from South Korea to South Africa, from Chile to Ethiopia, countries emerging from periods of war and dictatorship are groping for answers to the same questions: How does one satisfy the demands of victims without deepening the divisions that led to violence in the first place? Where does one draw the line between justice and revenge? Dealing with these issues has become one of the world’s central human rights challenges. There are no magic formulas. In South Africa, where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission begins public hearings on apartheid-era repression next week, the focus is on restitution, not retribution. Meanwhile, in Rwanda, where the International War Crimes Tribunal begins its prosecution later this month, the aim is to track down and prosecute the leaders of the ghastly 1994 genocide.

All these experiments share one thing: a desire to uncover the truth. For many Americans, such a commitment to unearth the past might be hard to understand. Why is it so important to investigate a massacre that took place more than a decade ago, such as in El Mozote, El Salvador? Can’t the dead be left to rest in peace? The answer, whether it comes from El Mozote or Srebrenica, is that violence and repression are often built on a fabric of lies and secrets. Exposing the truth about atrocities can redeem not just the victims but the whole society–and can have, as Vaclav Havel once wrote, “a singular, explosive, incalculable political power.”

Even so, truth is not always enough. Victims are not always satisfied with redemption and compensation; most want their repressors brought to justice. In the worst cases, such as in Rwanda or Bosnia, there is little dispute that trials must be held. “There cannot be peace without justice,” says M. Cherif Bassiouni, the United Nations’ former chief investigator in Yugoslavia. “When people feel aggrieved, they cannot reconcile.” In South Africa, many people, particularly whites, fear that truth–without more than a few show trials–may only increase the thirst for vengeance. Even Chile, one of the originators of the idea of the truth commission, is haunted by its decision not to prosecute, as the military–led, as before, by Augusto Pinochet–still plays an oversize role in political life. “When there are cycles of dictatorship, the only cure is letting the military know that it is not above the law,” says journalist Tina Rosenberg, who has explored this issue in Latin America and Eastern Europe. “Trials are key steps in proving that democracy can establish itself.”

Trials have their own dangers, however. During the 1980s, Argentina’s civilian government boldly put the military on trial for the calculated savagery of the “dirty war”–only to back down after a series of military revolts. Equally worrisome are cases, such as in Ethiopia and Rwanda, where new governments engage in “victor’s justice,” taking their former tormentors to trial without due process or the tradition of an independent judiciary. Rwanda, like Bosnia, is incapable of handling these prosectutions on its own. Ideally, the trials would be held in Kigali and Sarajevo, to sensitize the local populations and help build the legal institutions that could prevent such atrocities from happening again. But this is not a perfect world, as the atrocities themselves attest. The international community–particularly the war-crimes tribunals–must sometimes step in. It is easy to question whether foreign jurists working in a glassed-in hearing room in The Hague can have any impact on a vicious reality so far away. But the 57 indictments that the court has handed down in the Balkans send a clear message: you are all responsible for your actions. As Richard Goldstone, the tribunal’s chief prosecutor, has said, that is “the only hope of having a credible deterrent” to crimes against humanity. And it may be the only way to make truth serve as more than a paperweight.