NEW members of the Victims and Survivors Forum have spoken about how their different backgrounds will help deliver results for victims.
Among the 10 new faces is Paul Gallagher from west Belfast, who was seriously injured in a UFF gun attack on his home in 1994 when he and his family were held hostage.
Another is Shirley McMichael, widow of former senior UDA chief John McMichael who was killed by the Provisional IRA in a booby-trap bomb outside his home in 1987.
The appointments were made from a panel of 55 people who voiced interest in helping the commission widen its work and links to victims and survivors groups.
Commissioner Judith Thompson said the appointments were based solely on balancing the current forum, whose members had complained it was under-represented in terms of victims and survivors of state violence and people from the loyalist working-class community.
Mr Gallagher, who was 21 when he was left in a wheelchair following the sectarian attack on his home, said he had endured a "long recovery process".
"When I became a victim, it has brought me on this journey today was when my home was taken over by the UFF who came there to attack my next door neighbours," he said.
"We were home on a Thursday evening and they came in and held us hostage for an hour, waiting on our neighbours.
"And when they didn't arrive, they opened up on the room on the way out. I was shot six times and ended up in a wheelchair and severe injuries that I am living with to this day.
"It's been a long recovery process from that, I'm sure if this was 20 years ago I wouldn't be sitting here now."
He said over the years he had "taken an interest in issues that people like myself have faced", which prompted his decision to join the forum.
"I feel this is an opportunity to actually add something more and give something back," he said.
"There has been some good work done but we need to keep on top of it to make sure it lasts for as long as it's needed by individual victims for the rest of their lives to help them to recover and cope with the issues victims face."
Mrs McMichael, who lost her UDA leader husband in an IRA attack, said she believed her background would help her contribute to the forum.
"I was there on that night, I still live in the same house when a bomb went off under my husband's car and I was the first one there,"
"That is a picture that has stayed with me, my hurt and my loss and the grief to the family, his two sons - it has been with us so I can understand there are so many people coming from that perspective, through injury, through hurt, through grief."
Ms McMichael said it was important the forum represented "a good cross section of the community in Northern Ireland, otherwise it's not going to work".
"I know some people would think that because of my late husband's involvement with the UDA that I shouldn't be involved," she said.
"But I was never in a paramilitary organisation and I have worked in community development for many years, worked in various communities - both loyalist and republican.
"We all need all different sections of the community and not one should be left out if we want to move forward."
