(CNN) -- As Iraqi officials speak loftily of ethnic and political reconciliation, Abu Wissam seethes.



In April 2006, two Iraqis mourn a relative slain in sectarian violence in the city of Falluja.



He wants cold, hard justice for the killers of his son, Raed, a 25-year-old business school graduate, "cut to pieces" by Mehdi Army militia members in their Baghdad neighborhood.



The Wissams are among the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis caught in the maelstrom of the militia violence that rippled across Iraq after the 2006 bombing in Samarra of the Askariya Mosque, a Shiite shrine.



The kind of trauma and pain endured by the Wissam family is kindling an interest in a social healing process adopted by countries around the world -- truth commissions. They are bodies across the globe that have provided a forum for victims and perpetrators to give cathartic public testimony on human rights abuses and come up with policy recommendations to correct the root cause of the abuses.



"Iraq, like many Arab cultures, is an intensely rich narrative culture," said Miranda Sissons, Iraq director of the International Center for Transitional Justice, which helps countries pursuing accountability for past mass atrocities and human rights abuses. "The idea of standing up and witnessing is tremendously appealing, the kind of act and mechanism they can understand."  Watch how the "business of death" continues to thrive »



The U.S. Institute of Peace -- one of the independent agencies behind the all-important Iraq Study Group report in 2006 -- is backing an initiative in Iraq to generate understanding and "spark public dialogue on the usefulness of the truth commission process."



The institute is teaming up with Iraq's Ministry of Human Rights to screen a USIP film across Iraq about the work of four different commissions.



Called "Confronting The Truth: Truth Commissions and Societies in Transition," the film -- produced by York Zimmerman and Peter Ackerman -- explores the workings of such commissions in South Africa, Peru, Morocco and East Timor. The film is getting some good reviews among Iraqis.



"The truth commission process is one in which you encourage folks to directly confront that past and how to get behind it," said Sermid Al-Sarraf, the executive director of the International Institute for the Rule of Law, a group that manages USIP's rule of law programs in Iraq.



Truth commissions and other conflict-resolution strategies have been on Iraq's radar for years.



Oral history projects have emerged, one being the Iraq History Project -- which "gathers and analyzes personal narratives from victims, their families, witnesses, perpetrators and others" about the "torture, massacres, assassinations, rape, chemical weapons attacks, disappearances, and other acts of systematic repression" during the Saddam Hussein regime. That project is managed by the International Human Rights Law Institute of DePaul University College of Law in Chicago and is run by an all-Iraqi in-country staff.



Last year, Nobel Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari's Crisis Management Initiative and a conflict-resolution initiative at the University of Massachusetts Boston were behind an effort to forge the so-called Helsinki agreement -- a statement of reconciliation principles among a wide range of Iraqi politicians. That process was notable because former antagonists in Northern Ireland and South Africa worked with the Iraqis.



Padraig O'Malley, a UMass conflict-resolution professor involved in the Helsinki process, is planning a three-day forum in April for "divided cities," where officials from ethnically tense Kirkuk in Iraq will discuss common problems with officials from Derry/Londonderry and Belfast in Northern Ireland, Nicosia in Cyprus, and Mitrovica in Kosovo.



The International Center for Transitional Justice says Coalition Provisional Authority officials initially proposed a "truth-seeking commission" for Iraq in 2003 but eventually decided to "delay the process" in order for Iraqis to rigorously study other truth-telling efforts, as advocated by the center. In 2005, the center also discussed the establishment of a center for the missing and disappeared.



As for truth commissions today, some observers say there hasn't been the political will on the part of the national government to pursue one.
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