Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada released its 94 Calls to Action in 2015, institutions and communities across the country have developed programming to increase awareness of the residential school system. This is vital work. However, this is only part of what reckoning with truths about colonial injustices requires. Such reckoning is not only a moral obligation or societal responsibility; it is also a legal one.

In international law, investigation of the truth surrounding gross human rights violations is a state obligation. The communities impacted by these violations have a “right to truth.”

As a white settler, I view it as one of my responsibilities to develop a critical understanding of this right and to advocate for its fulfillment in Canada. The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on September 30 is an important time to engage in these conversations.

The “right to truth” emerged in international law during the 1970s in response to a rise in enforced disappearances in politically unstable nations. An early version of this right was articulated in the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions.

This right was further developed in the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2006. However, Canada has not yet signed this convention.

In these legal instruments, the right to truth is focused on families’ rights to know the fate of missing relatives in cases of armed conflict, enforced disappearance and other forms of extra-legal detention.

However, the 2006 “Study on the right to truth” by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that, in soft international law, this right “has been........

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