This paper explores the problem of the moral recognition of human suffering after mass violence. In post-conflict societies, truth commissions and trials have been used to address the legacy of violence and to form the basis for national reconstruction through truth-seeking, justice and reconciliation. However, in those countries that held trials and truth commissions more than 15 years ago, these rituals of political transition have not closed the door upon past atrocities. In South America and elsewhere, movements for the ‘disappeared’ continue to motivate human rights movements and individual victims to know the truth—even if justice itself must be suspended—producing transnational human rights alliances and prosecutions designed to challenge the impunity of perpetrators. This paper looks at the way in which truth commissions and trials have shaped post-transition politics of identity and national reconciliation by drawing upon material from Uruguay, Argentina, Bosnia, Rwanda and South Africa. It further considers the social and political consequences of the official framing of conflict through human rights hearings and legal cases—for example, in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) construction of the Bosnian wars as an ethnic conflict—for broader movements for justice. Of particular interest is the role of the legal and healing professions, which seek to translate individual suffering as a legacy of violence into claims of the right to challenge impunity. The paper argues that these ongoing movements for the moral recovery of victims are essential for anchoring justice and reconciliation in a more reflective public morality about the past and the present. Moreover, they point to fundamental cultural processes at the core of law-making: the role of the suffering victim as a primary source for institutionalization.