Truth commissions (TCs) have become a recurrent mechanism for states to deal with and address past human rights violations in the aftermath of conflict or state repression under authoritarian rule. This article will argue that TCs generate accountability relations at three different stages. Before their establishment, TCs generate vertical accountability relations between civil society and the state. During the period between its establishment and the release of the final report, TCs hold state agencies horizontally accountable. In their final reports, TCs put forward recommendations susceptible of generating horizontal accountability, between the governing regime and the state agencies towards which the recommendations are
directed; and vertical accountability as civil society pushes the governing regime to implement these recommendations. The article will put forward a framework to evaluate how truth commissions contribute to promoting accountability.
