truth commission in the former Yugoslavia (REKOM) have failed due to political obstacles. Recent years have also seen proposals for truth and reconciliation commissions in conflict zones of the Middle East and it is likely that these transitional justice institutions will someday figure prominently in Israel and Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Kurdish regions. Another major institutional innovation is the appearance of the variety of lustration programs in Central and Eastern Europe since the 1990s. While most countries pursued programs based on dismissals of compromised personnel and comprehensive screening tools, other countries implemented more inclusive methods allowing discredited personnel a second chance. As a link between transition and justice, the concept of transitional justice transformed in the late 1940s to assume a broader perspective of comprehensive examination of the society in transition from a retrospective to a prospective position with democratic consolidation as one of the primary objectives. Scholars and practitioners of democratization have come to a common conclusion on the general principles of a transitional justice framework: that national strategies to confront past abuses, depending on the specific nature and context of the country in question, can contribute to accountability, an end to impunity, reconstruct state–citizen relations, and the creation of democratic institutions. According to the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) and the international Task Force on Justice, an integral element of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) includes the reduction of the "justice gap" The Working Group on Transitional Justice and SDG16+ said that "while the SDGs are universal", "massive and serious human rights violations create conditions in which extraordinary justice interventions are required to make progress toward sustainable peace and development." Definitions According to the ICTJ, the term "transitional justice" was coined by various American academics in the 1990s to "describe the different ways that countries had approached the problems of new regimes coming to power faced with massive violations by their predecessors." The ICTJ says that transitional justice "refers to the ways countries emerging from periods of conflict and repression address large-scale or systematic human rights violations so numerous and so serious that the normal justice system will not be able to provide an adequate response." Measures used include criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations and restitution programs, exhumation of mass graves, apologies, amnesty, memorials, film, literature, scientific research, rewriting school textbooks, lustration and vetting, and various kinds of institutional reforms to redress human rights abuses. Objectives