Este reporte fue elaborado por Oswaldo Ruiz-Chiriboga.
El Center for Civil & Human
Rights de la Universidad de Notre Dame publicó un working paper de Luigi Crema, titulado “Are
Amnesties Still an Option? A Non-Policy Based Critique of the Inter-American Approach". Este es
el resumen del trabajo:
"Between 2010 and 2012 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights upheld
three decisions that evaluated the legitimacy of amnesties under the American
Convention on Human Rights by discussing a set of concepts. These concepts have
a longstanding tradition, rooted in the precedent of the Inter-American
Commission and Court on this issue. The present paper aims to investigate the
legal profiles delineated by those institutions to challenge the validity of
amnesty laws. In order to do this, it goes back to all the cases in which the
question of amnesty legitimacy has been discussed. All the reasoning can be
grouped into three major concepts: the legitimacy of the democratic process
responsible for the amnesty; the seriousness of the crimes committed and/or the
violated rights; and the incompatibility of the amnesty with the Convention.
However, two issues emerge: the first is that the effective weight of these
factors, and their place in the overall reasoning, are not clearly organized
and defined; the second is that the seminal cases decided by the Court were
discussed in the unusual circumstances of agreement between the parties and the
court. The latest cases that dealt with amnesties in an organic way have seen
an impoverishment of the legal reasoning that challenges amnesty laws, reducing
it to a strict reading of the Convention. This choice of the Court can be
criticized on several grounds, in particular: for not taking into account the
possible conformity of an amnesty to the Convention as a necessary step for the
full enjoyment of human rights; for having originated in a distorted concept of
the nature and goals of law".
