of targeting benefits flexibly so as to respond to a variety of victims’ needs. All other things being equal, “complexity” is desirable. Material compensation to individuals has received more attention than any other form of reparation, but other benefits are increasingly part of reparations programmes or are receiving more attention as possible elements of such programmes, for instance: • Symbolic reparations. As many recent reparations programmes have been proposed by truth commissions (which have broader mandates and goals than typical judicial instances), they are becoming less like mere compensation mechanisms and are increasingly proposing more complex reparations measures, including symbolic ones. Individualized letters of apology signed by the highest authority in Government, sending each victim a copy of the truth commission’s report and supporting families to give a proper burial to their loved ones are some of the individual symbolic measures that have been tried with some success in different contexts.40 Some of the collective symbolic measures that have been tried are renaming public spaces, building museums and memorials, rededicating places of detention and torture, turning them into sites of memory, establishing days of commemoration and engaging in public acts of atonement. Like other reparations measures, symbolic benefits are, at least in part, geared towards fostering recognition. However, in contrast to other benefits, symbolic measures derive their great potential from the fact that they are carriers of meaning, and therefore can help victims in particular and society in general to make sense of the painful events of the past.41 Symbolic measures usually turn out to be so significant because, by making the memory of the victims a public matter, they disburden their families from their sense of obligation to keep the memory alive and allow them to move on. This is essential if reparations are to provide recognition to victims not only as victims but also as citizens and as rights holders more generally. Symbolic benefits, both individual and collective, deserve to be encouraged and promoted. Nevertheless, they cannot carry the whole weight of a complicated transition and should always be thought of as one benefit among others. Furthermore, the participation of civil society in the design and implementation of symbolic reparations projects is perhaps more significant than for any other reparations measure, given their semantic and representational function.42 40 41 42 The Chilean Truth and Reconciliation Commission sent its two-volume report to the families of every victim it had identified. The reparations programme for Japanese-American internees during the War included a personalized letter from the United States President to each victim (along with a $20,000 cheque). The urgent interim reparations of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission gave support for tombstones. These measures seem to have been significant. See, e.g., Brandon Hamber, “Narrowing the macro and the micro: a psychological perspective on reparations in societies in transition”, in The Handbook…. The Human Rights Programme of Chile’s Ministry of the Interior provides both material support and technical advice to organizations interested in a variety of symbolic reparations projects, including memorials and memory sites. Such programmes are one way for States to take symbolic reparations seriously, without taking control away from civil society, including victims’ organizations. 23