Diaspora influence on the thin sympathetic response in transitional justice.

Thin sympathetic engagement is a basic, cognitive understanding of the needs of the other. It played an important role in how elites from the Montreal Haitian diaspora were able to influence an NGO in their adopted country, Canada, the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, to work with the diaspora to secure a truth commission in Haiti. That commission ultimately became the Commission Nationale de Vérité et de Justice. The aims of the diaspora were advanced by its engagement with neutral outsider groups in their adopted country and their ability to persuade these groups toward a thin sympathetic response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]