[4] Memorials are also a form of reparations, or compensation efforts that seek to address past human rights violations.
[5] They aim to provide compensation for losses endured by victims of abuse, and remedy prior wrongdoing.
For instance, in northern Uganda, monuments, annual prayer ceremonies, and a mass grave were created in response to the war conducted by and against the Lord’s Resistance Army there.
They are thus difficult to shape, and international relief workers, peacekeepers, and NGOs risk being drawn into disputes about the creation or maintenance of memorial sites.
[9] Guy Beiner has introduced a concept of decommemorating in reference to hostility towards acts of commemoration that can result in violent assaults and in iconoclastic defacement or destruction of monuments.