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The Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR) convened in July 2001 to investigate human rights abuses that occurred between 1980 and 2000. The CVR's final report, issued in August 2003, found that insurgent violence and counterinsurgency tactics had caused an estimated 69,000 deaths and disappearances-mostly in indigenous communities. The Commission recommended a comprehensive reparations plan, prosecutions, institutional reforms, and other measures.

The ICTJ began working with local actors in Peru in early 2001. Senior Associate Lisa Magarrell led the ICTJ's Peru program from August 2001 to 2007. After providing initial comments on the draft terms of reference that ultimately became the Commission's mandate, the Center continued to provide substantive support and technical assistance as the CVR took shape and started work.

The ICTJ facilitated contacts among the Commission and other past and present truth commissions around the world. Between August 2001 and the close of the Commission's work in 2003, more than a dozen ICTJ consultants with experience in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, South Africa, and other countries provided input to the CVR and NGOs on database design, investigative methodology, international criminal law, human rights law, humanitarian law, public hearings practice, and reparations policy.

The Center also facilitated consultations for the Commission's public outreach director with communication experts and museums of conscience in New York and Washington, D.C. In June 2003 the ICTJ hosted a Commission delegation and photo exhibit, facilitating a public forum and meetings with UN officials, NGOs, and others in New York to discuss the Commission's final report and generate support for post-CVR activities. To make the CVR's final report more accessible the Center translated and distributed widely the report's table of contents, conclusions, and a summary of its recommendations.

The ICTJ provided input and advice to documentary filmmakers from Skylight Pictures for their award-winning 2005 film, State of Fear, portraying Peru's history as revealed by the CVR's findings.

Reparations

In March 2002 the Center and the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos APRODEH initiated a joint research project on reparations in Peru. Led by Magarrell and ICTJ Research Director Pablo de Greiff, it addressed conceptual and practical questions of concern to NGOs, the Peruvian government, and the CVR in devising a reparations program. The resulting report (Parameters for the Design of a Reparations Program in Peru) was presented to these sectors and victims' groups in October 2002 and circulated widely in a simplified version. Having helped define common ground for public and private debate on reparations and provided a framework for the Commission's recommendations on reparations, the report served as a reference for those working intensively on this issue.

Magarrell and ICTJ consultants continued to provide technical assistance to the CVR as it developed its reparations plan. She also met regularly with an NGO working group that provided support to the CVR in developing the plan, helped involve victims' groups in the process, and suggested civil society strategies to support implementation of reparations. In 2004 the Center and APRODEH published a policy paper on the concept of a National Victims' Registry (Insumos para el debate acerca del propósito y naturaleza de un Registro Nacional de Víctimas en el Perú), providing a starting point for debate and progress toward overcoming a key obstacle to the implementation of reparations.

In 2004 and 2005 Magarrell and Julie Guillerot, the ICTJ's in-country associate, supported efforts to draft and pass legislation creating the "absence by reason of disappearance" civil law status, a national reparations program, and a victims' registry. The Peruvian Congress passed reparations legislation in 2005. Guillerot and Magarrell continued to provide input to the planning process currently under way. From late 2006 to early 2008 Guillerot provided technical support to the president of the National Reparations Council. Guillerot and Magarrell coauthored a text on the Peruvian reparations experience (Memorias de un proceso inacabado-reparaciones en la transición peruana), which was published in August 2006 and launched in Lima. An English version of the text is forthcoming. Guillerot also wrote a chapter on gender and reparations in Peru in the ICTJ publication What Happened to the Women?

In early 2004 Peru's president created a High-Level Multisector Commission (CMAN) to provide follow-up on actions and state policies regarding peace, collective reparations, and national reconciliation. Composed of seven ministerial and four civil society representatives, this body is widely recognized as the follow-up commission to the CVR. During its first two years, however, its impact was limited because of lack of funding and its subordination to the Council of Ministers (PCM). The CMAN received some funding from the national budget in 2007 and implemented a collective reparations program. In early 2008 the National Reparations Council started  registering individual victims and communities affected by violence. This process will ultimately lead to the granting of individual reparations. The ICTJ continues to monitor these processes and provide support to the National Reparations Council. In association with APRODEH it has undertaken a project monitoring the CMAN collective reparations program.

Criminal Justice

In the post-CVR period criminal investigations and prosecutions (recommended by the CVR and favored by Inter-American jurisprudence on prior amnesty laws) have faced obstacles including uneven treatment and assertions of procedural impediments by defendants. Nevertheless, in important decisions that followed the public release of the CVR's report, Peru's Constitutional Tribunal confirmed the right to truth and the inapplicability of statutes of limitation in disappearance cases.

From 2002 through mid-2004 former Senior Associate Paul Seils provided information and expertise to NGOs and prosecutors on massive-crime investigation techniques and strategies. With APRODEH, ICTJ staff and consultants conducted workshops in June, July, and December 2002 and provided extensive materials to NGO attorneys, police, prosecutors, and judges on the investigation and prosecution of past human rights violations.

The Center also stimulated discussion among NGOs and provided written analysis of strategies for the prosecution of "system crimes" (planned and executed by those acting on behalf of the state). In 2004 and 2005 a consultant spent almost 20 weeks in Peru providing intensive technical support to APRODEH's legal team in its work on the domestic prosecution of crimes that are punishable under international law. The ICTJ's work in Peru continued in 2006 in the form of in-country missions and workshops with judges, prosecutors, and NGOs.

With the ICTJ's support APRODEH's work led to issuing of arrest warrants for several military officials under investigation for their role in the executions or disappearances of more than 50 people at the Cabitos military base in Ayacucho, Peru. This case is ongoing.

In accordance with the ICTJ's objective of stimulating research and writing on transitional justice in Peru, in 2005 and 2006 Magarrell and ICTJ consultant Leonardo Filippini coordinated a research project on the challenges of prosecutions in the context of the CVR. In collaboration with the Catholic University's Democracy and Human Rights Institute (IDEHPUCP), the project involved eight Peruvian authors whose six essays are collected in El legado de la verdad-la justicia penal en la transición, along with an article by editors Magarrell and Filippini. IDEHPUCP hosted the launch of the text in Lima in late April 2006; the book is available in Spanish and English as The Legacy of truth - Criminal Justice in the Peruvian Transition.

One aspect of Peruvian justice highlighted in El legado de la verdad is the difficulty encountered by rape victims who seek accountability of perpetrators through the criminal justice system. In 2006 the ICTJ's Gender Unit launched a project in coordination with the NGO Comisión de Derechos Humanos (COMISEDH) and the International Human Rights Law Clinic of the City University of New York Law School to provide analysis and information about rape as torture under international law. This work is ongoing.

In September 2007 Peru's former president, Alberto Fujimori, was extradited from Chile to be tried for his responsibility in the massacre of Barrios Altos, the disappearance of several people from La Cantuta University, and three kidnappings of political opponents, in addition to several charges of corruption. The trial for the three counts of human rights violations started on December 10, 2007. The ICTJ has been monitoring the trial through senior associates Susan Kemp and Michael Reed and in-country consultant Victor Quinteros. Kemp, Reed, and consultant Leonardo Filippini are preparing an amicus curiae brief to be presented to the court in late 2008. It details comparative jurisprudence on the responsibility of heads of states and senior civic officers involved in criminal acts. In coordination with APRODEH the ICTJ has invited former Inter-American Human Rights Commission Presidents Carlos Ayala and Juan Méndez (ICTJ's president) to the trial as international observers.

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Background

In November 2000 the public exposure of an extensive network of corruption at the highest levels of government and the ensuing public outcry from civil society led to then-President Alberto Fujimori's self-imposed exile in Japan. An interim government was put in place, and in late July 2001 newly elected President Alejandro Toledo was sworn into office. The fall of the Fujimori regime led to judicial and congressional investigations on both corruption and human rights abuses. At the regional level Inter-American Court decisions resulted in the rejection of amnesty laws for serious human rights violations and in settlement of a number of claims against the state.

The political space that opened at the end of 2000 also led to the local human rights community proposing creation of a truth commission; it was established by presidential decree in June 2001. The commission was charged with investigating human rights abuses and "terrorist violence" attributable to the state or subversive groups between May 1980 and November 2000. The mandate spans the regimes of former Presidents Belaúnde, García, and Fujimori, and actions of the Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement guerrilla groups.

In addition to clarifying events and responsibility, the commission was mandated to determine the conditions that gave rise to the violence, contribute to judicial investigations, draft proposals for reparations, and recommend reforms. President Toledo expanded the original commission to a 12-member body, renaming it the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR), and pledged to implement its recommendations. A 19-month mandate that was to end in February 2003 was extended to mid-July 2003 and again to August 31, 2003. The Commission delivered its final report to the government on August 28, 2003.

A number of criminal cases arising from past human rights abuses documented by the CVR are pending before prosecutors. In November 2005 an important human rights trial began of members of the military's Colina Group death squad.

In July 2006 newly elected President Alan García (whose first term, from 1985 to 1990, was investigated by the truth commission) was inaugurated. At the same time came important changes in the makeup of the Congress, where a number of legislators loyal to Fujimori took seats, as well as those aligned with the losing presidential candidate, Ollanta Umala. This change left the future of the CVR's recommendations in question, although the Garcia government took some steps early on to enact the reparations law. In August 2006 the PCM approved 15 million soles for reparations, as promised during the Toledo government, and earmarked another 30 million soles for reparations from voluntary contributions offered by the mining industry. Authority over CMAN was reassigned to the presidency of the PCM, and CMAN expanded to include additional ministries. In October 2006 the PCM named seven individuals to the Reparations Council.

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(Updated July 2008)