A public apology is a component of

reparation Reparation(s) may refer to: Christianity * Restitution (theology), the Christian doctrine calling for reparation * Acts of reparation, prayers for repairing the damages of sin History *War reparations **World War I reparations, made from G ...

as stipulated in the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmonizi ...

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, commonly known as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) or the United Nations Human Rights Office, is a department of the Secretariat of the United Nat ...

resolution proclaiming the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law. It is also defined as a restorative process intended to heal and to generate forgiveness on the part of the offended party, for the improper behavior or action of the offender. The process consists in three components: acknowledgment of wrongdoing, admission of responsibility and the action of the wrongdoer to compensate damages produced. Besides the role of healing and bringing forgiveness on the part of the offended party, public apologies have the function of restoring the health of the social interaction and “publicly acknowledging a shared commitment to some moral values”. According to Cohen (2016) "In order to restore or create moral relations among transgressors and their victims, transgressors …. need to admit their wrongdoing, commemorate or memorialize history, and, most notably, provide an apology."

Examples

* 1995, 2012, 2017: France's apology for the 1942 Vel d'Hiv Roundup, a Nazi-directed raid and mass arrest of Jews in Paris by the French police. * 2008:

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

's Apology,Statement of apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools.

Stephen Joseph Harper officially apologized to the 80,000 former students of residential schools that had been in Canada. In the 1870s, federal government forcibly sent over 150,000 aboriginal children to residential schools as part of assimilation policy which aimed for eliminating
first nation Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
culture and language and let them learn Canadian official language both English and French. While first nation students in residential schools, they did not receive enough amount and quality of housing, food and clothing.

Stephen Harper expressed official apology as follows:

“The burden of this experience has been on your shoulders for far too long. The burden is properly ours as a Government, and as a country. There is no place in Canada for the attitudes that inspired the Indian Residential Schools system to ever prevail again. You have been working on recovering from this experience for a long time and in a very real sense, we are now joining you on this journey. The Government of Canada sincerely apologizes and asks the forgiveness of the Aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly.

Nous le regrettons

We are sorry

Nimitataynan

Niminchinowesamin

Mamiattugut.

* 2017:

's Apology, compensation to former Guantanamo Child Detainee

Omar Khadr Omar Ahmed Said Khadr ( ar, عمر أحمد سعيد خضر; born September 19, 1986) is a Canadian citizen who at the age of 15 was detained by the United States at Guantanamo Bay for ten years, during which he pleaded guilty to the murder of U ...

. * 2017:

's Apology, Statement of Apology on Behalf of the Government of Canada to Former Students of the Newfoundland and Labrador Residential Schools.

Justin Pierre James Trudeau formally apologized to first nation student of Newfoundland and Labrador residential schools on Nov.24, 2017. Canadian government forced first nation people to send them to the residential schools for oppressing first nation language including Beothuk, Mi’kmaq, Innu-aimun, and Labrador Inuktituk and their cultures. Justin Trudeau officially admitted that there were frequent physical and sexual abuses against residential students. As a result, Trudeau government offered $50 million dollars for former students who were not included in the apology given by Stephan Harper in 2008.

* 2018:

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

's Apology,

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), of ...

apologises for Facebook's 'mistakes' over

Cambridge Analytica Cambridge Analytica Ltd (CA), previously known as SCL USA, was a British political consulting firm that came to prominence through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. It was started in 2013, as a subsidiary of the private intelli ...

References

*Slocum, D., Allan, A., & Allan, M. M. (2011). An emerging theory of apology. Australian Journal Of Psychology, 63(2), 83-92. doi:10.1111/j.1742-9536.2011.00013. *Cohen, A. I. (June 1, 2016). Corrective vs. Distributive Justice: the Case of Apologies. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 19, 3, 663-677.

External links

*{{commons category-inline International criminal law Reparations

Examples

See also

References

External links