A/HRC/25/49 42. Departing from the norm of physical monuments, some commissions have sponsored artistic events. For example, the commissions in Peru and Timor-Leste organized photo and poster exhibitions.21 43. Many commissions have recommended transforming places of detention into places of memory or, alternatively, called for the construction of memorials. However, national authorities have not always complied with such recommendations. For example, one of the first commissions of inquiry in Africa, in Chad from 1990 to 1992, called for the building of a memorial to the victims of repression under Hissène Habré and required that the second Sunday of December be declared a day of prayer and contemplation for those victims. It also recommended that the former headquarters of the Direction de la Documentation et de la Sécurité (the political police) be transformed by making the underground prison into a museum to remember the dark reign.22 In Morocco, the Equity and Reconciliation Commission in its final report recommended the transformation of the old centres of illegal confinement or detention into productive projects, able to preserve memory.23 44. Recommendations by truth and reconciliation commissions are important landmarks, helping civil society organizations to keep memorial issues on the agenda. Those recommendations often limit the choice of action by a Government, which might otherwise be tempted to destroy places of suffering and, in doing so, erase the memories attached to it. E. The cultural rights angle 45. Civil and political rights are the human rights mostly referred to in the development of transitional justice policies and memorialization processes. This may be due to the fact that the violations mostly invoked through memorial practices relate to the right to life, physical integrity and liberty. Memorialization processes also involve exercising the rights to freedom of opinion and expression, religion and belief, peaceful assembly and association (articles 18 to 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights). 46. Such a distinction between categories of rights is always misleading, however. Gross violations of human rights during conflicts include violations of economic, social and cultural rights. The particular targeting of schools, cultural institutions, cultural symbols and cultural heritage during wartime is to be recalled. Moreover, insofar as the broader and cultural norms also play a role in enabling systematic violations of human rights, their role must also be addressed.24 47. Actions in the field of culture have an unparalleled potential to contribute significantly to transitional processes precisely by enabling spaces where identities can be tried out, including the identity of a rights claimant.25 Cultural interventions help to make the victims visible by providing safe spaces for articulating their experiences.26 Memories are subjective processes anchored in experiences and the material and symbolic markers of 21 22 23 24 25 26 10 Pablo de Greiff, “On making the invisible visible”. See Mahamat Hassan Abakar, Chronique d’une enquête criminelle nationale. Le cas du régime de Hissène Habré, 1982–1990, (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2006), p. 110-111. Equity and Reconciliation Commission, final report, Truth, Equity and Reconciliation, vol. 1, see for instance pp. 92 and 99, available from http://www.ccdh.org.ma/IMG/pdf/rapport_ang_1.pdf. Bickford, “Memoryworks/memory works”. Ibid. Pablo de Greiff, “On making the invisible visible”.