Helping survivors of residential schools in Canada is not the same as the UN sending in peacekeepers to prevent the genocide in Rwanda. But both are a reflection of our culture and of our priorities. Where there is empathy there is always a solution, where there is apathy there is always an excuse.

Wounds simply won't heal if they are swept under the carpet.

In Yugoslavia we were told we were not only naive idealists in wanting war criminals to be prosecuted but that we were actually standing in the way of a ceasefire which would save more lives. The idea was that, by giving amnesty to these ruthless warmongers, you would give them an incentive to stop killing. I found that incredibly naive, never mind cynical. Having been on the ground and having met with these ruthless killers, I knew the only thing they understood was the language of force.

Criminal trials are fundamentally about individual accountability whereas truth commissions are less about the guilt of the perpetrator and more about the suffering of the victim. A criminal trial is only incidentally a therapeutic or cathartic process for victims. But truth commissions, as we saw in South Africa, have the advantage of giving tens of thousands of people the opportunity to tell their stories, and not only does that contribute to healing but it also contributes to reconciliation, especially when perpetrators also come and express contrition.

There are realities that one needs to deal with, but very often what we are told is political reality is merely cynicism. One could equally say that slavery is a reality, and misogyny too.

When we deconstruct how radical evil occurs we realize that it is anything but spontaneous combustion. You need pyromaniacs.

The reason why the war ended in Bosnia was not because of amnesty but because a combined Croat-Bosnian offensive defeated the Serbs on the battlefield. Sometimes naïveté belongs not to the human rights activists but to the politicians.