The Struggle for Accountability for Past Human Rights Violations in Uruguay

Update: audio of this presentation available here.

‘’From Condor to MERCOSUR: The Struggle for Accountability for Past Human Rights Violations in Uruguay’

Since 1995, Felipe Michelini has been a member of the Uruguayan House of Representatives in Parliament, and in 2010 he joined the Uruguayan delegation to the MERCOSUR Parliament. Michelini has represented his government at the international level in various roles, including as the Uruguayan delegate to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations in 2009 and at the Conference of the Americas Justice Ministers in 2008. Since 2011, Michelini has been a Board Member of Parliamentarians for Global Action.

The discussion of amnesty in Uruguay is timely, in October last year the amnesty law that had prevented any trials for serious human rights violations committed during the military dictatorship was annulled and the country finds itself at a unique moment in which criminal trials are now a real possibility.

Michelini’s talk will be held in Seminar Room D in the Manor Road building at 5 pm this Tuesday 14 February and will be followed by wine and snacks in the Centre for Socio-legal Studies. I look forward to seeing you there.

Seminar: Amnesties and Human Rights Fundamentalism: What has Happened to Transitional Justice?

This week’s seminar will be held, as usual, in Seminar Room D in the Manor Road building at 5 pm Tuesday 24 January and will be followed by wine and snacks in the Centre for Socio-legal Studies.

Mark is an international lawyer and author of several leading texts on issues of political and post-conflict transition including Necessary Evils: Amnesties and the Search for Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Truth Commissions and Procedural Fairness (Cambridge University Press, 2006) which received the American Society of International Law’s top prize. Mark has extensive practitioner experience in transitional justice, having previously been involved in launching and directing the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York and Brussels.

ABSTRACT

The field of transitional justice is concerned with the manner in which states confront legacies of mass abuse following periods of conflict or authoritarian rule. The primary goal of justice in these settings is to contribute to the prevention of future mass violence – to the promise of “never again” – and to do so in a way that privileges the needs and interests of victims and survivors. But in such contexts, justice is necessarily an exercise in the “art of the possible.” Transitions are extraordinary times and involve a myriad of deeply challenging moral, legal, and political dilemmas that impose limits on the kind of justice that would otherwise normally apply. Theorists and practitioners of transitional justice long understood this. But a new rigidity has crept into the field of transitional justice – one which is largely tied to the evolution of international attitudes and positions on the issue of amnesty following the contrasting paradigms represented by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the one hand, and the International Criminal Court on the other. This presentation will trace that evolution and explain what is happening to the field of transitional justice as a result.