Britain apologized for British responsibility in the nineteenth century Irish famine, Jacques Chirac for the deportation of French Jews to Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and Bill Clinton for the inaction of the United States government during the Rwanda genocide or for the support to dictatorships in Latin America.26 In the context of processes of transition from internal armed conflict to peace, these acknowledgments acquire special relevance and significance as an ingredient that strengthens and sustains the others. 36. Thus, according to the context derived from the conclusion of the armed conflict, societies can demand that mechanisms exist that are complementary to the obligation of criminal justice and that satisfy the aspirations of the victims to a greater or lesser extent. Truth commissions, instruments for integral reparation, mechanisms to provide care and attention, the protection of vulnerable populations, purges in the public sector, and institutional reforms are some of the options that legislators and leaders have when deciding State policies, in combination with the application of criminal justice developed within a framework of weighing the elements. 37. A negotiated solution to the internal armed conflict raises several issues regarding the weighing of these rights, within the legitimate discussion on the need to conclude the conflict and put an end to future serious human rights violations. States have a legal obligation to address the rights of the victims and, with the same intensity, the obligation to prevent further acts of violence and to achieve peace in an armed conflict by the means at its disposal. Peace as a product of a negotiation is offered as a morally and politically superior alternative to peace as a result of the annihilation of the opponent. Therefore, international human rights law should consider that peace is a right and that the State must achieve it. 38. Thus, in certain transitional situations between armed conflicts and peace, it can happen that a State is not in a position to implement fully and simultaneously, the various international rights and obligations it has assumed. In these circumstances, taking into consideration that none of those rights and obligations is of an absolute nature, it is legitimate that they be weighed in such a way that the satisfaction of some does not affect the exercise of the others disproportionately. Thus, the degree of justice that can be achieved is not an isolated component from which legitimate frustrations and dissatisfactions can arise, but part of an ambitious process of transition towards mutual tolerance and peace. Diego García-Sayán Judge 26 Ibid. 8