This report is the outcome of Hafıza Merkezi’s three-year interdisciplinary research project, Justice Heals. Focusing on violations of the right to life affecting children and youth in the context of the Kurdish issue between 2000 and 2015, the research examines violations caused by the use of lethal force by security forces as well as the state’s failure to fulfill its duty to protect, and within the political and legal context of the period, analyzes how these violations became persistent. 

As a continuation of Hafıza Merkezi’s earlier work on the 1990s, this study approaches demands for justice, truth and reparations from a legal perspective, examining them in relation to the state’s positive obligations and patterns of impunity. 

Demonstrating that violations of the right to life are not isolated incidents but the result of structural problems, the report offers recommendations with an emphasis on the need for legal, institutional and social transformation to prevent the recurrence of violations, while also laying the groundwork for a discussion of a justice-based future.

Law in the Shadow of Security: Violations of the Right to Life of Children and Youth in the Kurdish Region ... by Hakikat Adalet Hafıza Merkezi