antee implementation, as the case of El Salvador shows. The temporary nature of truth commissions also means that, unless specific provisions are made in advance, there may be little or no follow-up on their recommendations, including those on reparations.21 Finally, and perhaps more problematically, the drawing-up of the mandate of truth commissions, as well as some narrower decisions, for instance, on the internal structure and division of labour within commissions, obviously takes place long before the work on reparations starts. But the terms of a commission’s mandate, including the way it defines victims, the types of crimes that it will investigate, and even the limit of its term, can all have a significant and not always positive impact on the reparations programme that the commission can propose. So can decisions of a more particular kind. Those involved in drawing up the mandates and designing the internal procedures of a commission are rarely familiar with the issue of reparations and therefore have no notion of how these early but fundamental decisions can affect an eventual reparations programme. Not all reparations efforts stem from the recommendations of truth commissions. Some countries have established self-standing reparations commissions or procedures (e.g., Brazil, Malawi, Morocco22 and Guatemala). Others have established their reparations efforts as a result of ordinary legislative initiatives with no particular institution being in charge of their overarching supervision (e.g., Argentina) and, as a consequence, in these cases, different programmes have come about as a result of discrete, independent legislative initiatives. This confirms that there is no single approach to the question of reparations. These efforts have enjoyed different degrees of success. Self-standing reparations commissions or procedures naturally find it harder to establish significant links between whatever benefits they distribute and other justice measures. This, in turn, makes it more difficult to endow the benefits with the sort of meaning that distinguishes effective reparations from purely financial compensation. Compensation is important but, if reparations are to be considered as a justice measure, they work best when seen as part of a comprehensive justice policy, rather than as an isolated effort. The situation is worse when this is the only redress on offer, with no truth-telling, criminal prosecutions or significant institutional reforms. This may give the impression that the reparations are a bribe to buy the silence or acquiescence of the victims. Furthermore, self-standing reparations commissions or procedures tend to focus on financial compensation and pay significant attention to financial issues in their proceedings. Some victims then complain that, whereas they were interested in talking about what happened to them, the officials on the other side of the table wanted to talk solely about numbers. (This problem is exacerbated when these commissions try to tailor reparations payments to the situation of each beneficiary. When they do, an additional complication arises, namely, that victims of the same human rights violation divide over the unequal payments they receive, even if these payments are relatively large.) 21 22 Two cases in point: although El Salvador’s Truth Commission did not propose a reparations plan as such, it did make a few concrete recommendations, including dedicating 1 per cent of foreign assistance to reparation. Guatemala’s Commission for Historical Clarification made even more ambitious recommendations. When the two commissions finished their mandates these recommendations were ignored. The Independent Arbitration Commission, which functioned in Morocco from 1999 to 2001, provided compensation to some 3,700 victims of various human rights abuses. 12