DPLF’s publication, the Digest of Latin American Jurisprudence on Reparations for Victims of International Crimes, systematizes 26 judgments issued by the courts of seven Latin American countries that have sought to ensure victims’ right to reparation of harm.
For a little over fifteen years, we at the Due Process of Law Foundation (DPLF) have been working on systematizing and analyzing Latin American court judgments through our three previous Digests (two on international crimes and one on the rights of victims), which address the main case law developments in the domestic prosecutions for these kinds of crimes. In this new Digest, we have focused on judgments that have sought to ensure victims’ right to reparation.
The recognition of victims’ right to reparation, on which there is now global consensus, has been one of the great developments of international human rights and international criminal law. Although no specific international convention regulates the issue, several norms recognize this right explicitly or implicitly, and in recent years, the issuing of individual reparations through judicial decisions, in addition to administrative reparations programs, has expanded. Our aim with this publication is to disseminate these decisions and their main standards in order to generate an exchange of knowledge on judicial reparations.
This Digest demonstrates how the application of international human rights norms at the national level, in addition to being an exercise in revising arguments, involves revisiting traditional legal practices that are resistant to the innovations taking place in this field. It also emphasizes the importance of including the perspective of survivors and family members, to ensure that reparation provides a sense of dignity and justice.
The judgments in this Digest were selected based on targeted searches of open databases as well as on suggestions or recommendations from specialists in the region and in each of the countries included. In the initial “List of Judgments” section we present the identifying data for each decision and a brief summary of the facts on which it is based. The selection is not intended to be exhaustive, but a sample that can provide useful and interesting input to the legal, social, and academic debate on the reparation of harm for the commission of international crimes in Latin America.
Ximena Medellín Urquiaga, a professor and researcher at the Legal Studies Division of the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) in Mexico, is the author of this Digest. Tatiana Rincón-Covelli edited the Spanish version and worked jointly with the author on comments about substantive aspects of this Digest.
