Reparations for the Survivors of State Hostage-Taking

When survivors of state hostage-taking are eventually released they face a new set of hurdles to adjust back into their communities and resume their lives. This paper explains why reparations are so crucial to the recovery process yet so difficult to achieve in practice. It analyses the legal and procedural impediments which make reparations so challenging in state hostage-taking cases, including state immunity and the limited will of most states of nationality to take up the cases of their nationals after they have been released to the extent required. Drawing some parallels with the efforts to support families of victims of terrorism, it identifies some pathways for improvement. The paper also calls for greater use of survivor-centred approaches when crafting compensation schemes and support structures to meet survivors’ needs in both the short and longer-term.