Boraine,19 former vice-chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa conceptualized the “truth” in this type of situation at three levels: factual truth, personal truth, and social truth. The “factual” truth gives the family specific information on the whereabouts of the mortal remains of the victim or on what happened. The “personal” truth seeks a cathartic effect on the person who expresses or manifests that truth. The “social” truth is that which is adopted by society through dialogue and debate. In pursuit of this “social truth”, an important role is played by measures such as access to the documentation held by the State, the revision of scholarly texts, and the construction of museums or memorials relating to what happened. 26. With regard to the element of justice, the State’s legal obligation to investigate and punish the most serious human rights violations is - as the Court has repeatedly stated – an obligation of means and forms part of the obligation of guarantee established in the Convention. Thus, States must make adequate remedies available for victims to exercise their rights. However, armed conflict and negotiated solutions give rise to various issues and introduce enormous legal and ethical requirements in the search to harmonize criminal justice and negotiated peace 27. This harmonization must be carried out by weighing these rights in the context of transitional justice itself. Thus, particularities and specificities may admittedly arise when processing these obligations in the context of a negotiated peace. Therefore, in these circumstances, States must weigh the effect of criminal justice both on the rights of the victims and on the need to end the conflict. But to be valid in international law, they must abide by certain basic standards relating to what can be processed and implemented in several ways, including the role of truth and reparation. 28. It can be understood that this State obligation is broken down into three elements. First, the actions aimed at investigating and establishing the facts. Second, the identification of individual responsibilities. Third, the application of punishments proportionate to the gravity of the violations. Even though the aim of criminal justice should be to accomplish all three tasks satisfactorily, if applying criminal sanctions is complicated, the other components should not be affected or delayed. 29. The right of the victims and of society to access the truth of what happened acquires a special weight that must be considered by an adequate assessment in order to delineate the specifics of justice in such a way that it is not antagonistic to the transitional justice required in peace and reconciliation processes. In that context, specific guidelines can be designed for processing those responsible for the most serious violations, opening the way, for example, to giving priority to the most serious cases as a way to handle a problem which, in theory, could apply to many thousands of those held for trial, dealing with less serious cases by other mechanisms. 30. In this context, it is necessary to devise ways to process those accused of committing serious crimes such as the ones mentioned, in the understanding that a negotiated peace process attempts to ensure that the combatants choose peace and submit to justice. Thus, for example, in the difficult exercise of weighing and the complex search for this equilibrium, routes towards alternative or suspended sentences could be designed and implemented; but, without losing sight of the fact that this may vary substantially according to both the degree of responsibility for serious crimes and the extent to which responsibility is acknowledged and information is provided about what happened. This may give rise to important differences between the "perpetrators" and those who performed functions of high command and gave the orders. 19 Boraine, Alex. A Country Unmasked: Inside South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Oxford University Press. Oxford and New York, 2000. 6