Certifying Loss and Suffering
The process of political reconciliation in Morocco is part of a recent history, notably marked by the creation in 2004 of an Equity and Reconciliation Commission whose task is to repair the victims of the State violence. A comprehensive financial compensation and a medical rehabilitation are the two concrete aspects of this politics of reparation, in which medical certification takes on a significant evaluative value. In addition of being decisive in the estimation of the injuries and their compatibility with the endured violence, it is also decisive in assessing the nature of the psycho-medical recovery. It is this role assigned to the medical expertise that I wish to examine here. What does it say on the procedures of selection to define the repairable forms of loss and hence the very notion of « victim » ? What does it say about the notions of testimony, evidence and truth ? How do these approaches generally inform the relationship to the history of violence and to the suffering of victims ?