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Committee of the OAS Permanent Council Held Special Meeting on the Right to Truth

The Committee on Juridical and Political Affairs (CAJP) of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) organized a special meeting to discuss the “Right to the Truth,” during which it heard a presentation of the Report of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on the subject, and presentations by the delegations of Brazil and Argentina on their experiences with the issue.

Upon opening the meeting, the Chair of the CAJP and Permanent Representative of Jamaica to the OAS, Ambassador Stephen Vasciannie, explained that the meeting was convened in compliance with a resolution of the General Assembly titled “Right to the Truth,” which instructed the Council to hold a meeting to receive the Report of the IACHR and to exchange national experiences.

The Assistant Executive Secretary of the IACHR, Elizabeth Abi-Mershed, recalled that the meeting took place just 24 hours after the celebration of International Human Rights Day, and in the same week in which the report of the Truth Commission of Brazil on the period from 1964-85 was presented, the decision of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the events at the Palace of Justice in Colombia in 1985 were announced, and the Report of the Senate Intelligence Committee of the United States on the CIA program of detention and interrogation following the attacks of September 11, 2001 were revealed. “These three examples represent the importance of truth telling, which is a function not only of obtaining justice in individual cases but also of the relevance for society of the collective dimension of the right to truth,” said Abi-Mershed.

The report of the Commission “The Right to Truth in the Americas,” said the Assistant Executive Secretary, is “aimed at sharing standards on the right to truth as well as the diverse, innovative and important experiences in the region in the area of truth telling.” “Through the Report, the Commission intends to contribute to the Inter-American System’s efforts to develop this right, and to support states efforts to consolidate laws, policies and practices to respect and protect this right,” she added.

Among the conclusions of the report, Abi-Mershed highlighted four in particular. First, the document urges states “to eliminate the obstacles of law and fact that obstruct the institution and pursuit of judicial proceedings concerning serious human rights violations, including any amnesty laws that remain on the books.” Second, it calls for the elimination of the use of military criminal justice for cases involving human rights violations. Third, that states take the measures necessary to ensure the collaboration of all state institutions in de-classifying and providing information in judicial and non-judicial investigation processes. Finally, Abi-Mershed mentioned the report´s recommendation that “states adopt the measures necessary to classify, systematize, preserve and make available historical archives concerning serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.”

The Chair of the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS, for its initials in Spanish) of Argentina, Horacio Verbitsky, explained the importance in the Argentine experience of the participation of civil society and of victims. “These resolutions of the Inter-American system, both those of the IACHR and the mandatory opinions of the Inter-American Court, have a general validity for all the countries of the region, for all the member countries of the Organization. However, the advances made in the right to truth and in achieving the identification and punishment of the perpetrators of the most serious human rights violations have been unequal in the various countries of the region,” he warned.

The Chair of CELS said that, this week in Argentina, for the first time, “in a trial, one of the perpetrators, one of the repressors, admitted having taken part in murders, something that he had until now denied.” “This is a triumph of the struggle of Argentine society, with the support of international organizations like the IACHR to achieve the right to the truth and the punishment of those responsible. And it is a very important validation of the Argentine model of accountability,” a model in which information is obtained through a criminal trial, he explained.

In his conclusion, Verbitsky quoted the Argentine poet Juan Gelman: “For the Athenians of 25 centuries ago, the antonym of forgetfulness was not memory, it was truth. The truth of memory is the memory of the truth. Both are forms of extreme poetry, that which always demands to unravel riddles. Someone said that poetry is the shadow of memory. I think, actually, that poetry is memory of the shadow of memory. That is why it will never die.”

For his part, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and former IACHR Commissioner, Juan Méndez, spoke of the historical process of the recognition of the right to the truth in the international arena, both the Inter-American System, and the United Nations. “In international law, the right to the truth has been broadly accepted and also in other jurisdictions, and not only in the Inter-American,” said Méndez.

Rapporteur Méndez also discussed the interrelationship between the normative developments on the issue in the last 20 years and social struggles, “which have received feedback from the decisions of the IACHR, the Inter-American Court, and from other normative developments.” Moreover, he referred to the importance of the participation of victims, not only so that that they “be heard,” but also “in the design and implementation of programs of research and dissemination of the truth,” in the cases of Truth Commissions.

The participation of victims, as an essential condition in the compliance of the obligation of states, continued Méndez, extends to the delivery of justice, because “it is important that the victims also have the juridical capacity to take part in the criminal processes and also in the design and execution of programs of reparations and rehabilitation.”

Next, the Advisor to the National Truth Commission of Brazil, Carolina de Campos Melo, presented the Brazilian experience, and the conclusions of the Final Report of the Commission, published in Brazil on December 10. The Report, said the Advisor, “concludes that the serious human rights violations that happened in Brazil during the military government were systematic, and constituted a state policy for the military and police forces that used them to remain in power.” In addition, she said the National Truth Commission recommends that “the officials implicated in these crimes be processed,” without the protection of the amnesty law.

The Report consists of “three volumes, eight parts, and 4,400 pages,” said Advisor de Campos Melo, and was presented by the President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff, “as a demonstration of the independence of the results obtained.” In concluding, the Advisor reiterated the important role played by the Hemisphere in general and the Inter-American System of Human Rights in particular, in many of the achievements of the National Truth Commission.

A gallery of photos of the event is available here.

For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.

Reference: E-559/14