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The right to reparation of victims of human rights violations:
Over the last few decades in most parts of the world, but especially in Latin America, gross and systematic human rights violations called into question the very foundations of our societies. Political repression in the form of summary executions, torture, arbitrary detention, massive exile and displacement of populations and especially the more than 90 thousand persons detained and disappeared persons in Latin America, are just some of the more commonly used criminal methods of the governments in the region against their own populations. These tactics have caused immeasurable damage to the persons involved and represent a profound distancing from the democratic ideal and the rule of law in almost all of the countries in the region.
This situation has been perpetuated by a flawed justice system in which military and civil courts lacked independence and impartiality. Proclamations of Amnesty Laws (such as the Punto Final laws) have ensured full impunity for human rights violations. As a result of this legacy, the emerging democratic governments in Latin America have had to assume the political, ethical and judicial consequences of the past, especially in light of national and international pressure to punish these violations. In practice, however, given the denial of the basic right to justice and equality before the law, impunity has prevailed on both a judicial and social level.
In light of the serious institutional crisis inflicted by the
occurrence of massive human rights violations in the past and
the demand of the population
to reconstruct the foundations of peaceful coexistence, many emerging
democratic governments have created truth commissions in order
to solve the sometimes-competing demands of providing reparation
to victims of violations and promoting national reconciliation.
A further aim of these commissions, of course, was to ensure that
the past atrocities would never happen again - nunca más
-.
Recognizing that these commissions are best placed to gather and present a picture of the past, which has often been systematically denied and hidden; it is important to reflect upon the significance of these commissions in being an educating tool for the coming generations. It is for these reasons that we must consider that an improved understanding of the role that truth commissions have played in the democratization process will help us ensure that human rights violations do not repeat themselves in the future. It is fitting to note that most of the investigations have compared and analyzed the cases of Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala and South Africa, given that they are generally cited as classic examples of truth commissions.
