The right to the truth in international law: fact or fiction? (original) (raw)

A victim’s right to truth and the International Criminal Court (ICC) Summary Project Report

2014

This project seeks to identify and explore the practical and jurisprudential difficulties that may follow from attempting to integrate the ‘right to truth’ into the procedures of the ICC. Its main research question is: what are the central problems, practical and theoretical, of giving effect to victims’ rights to truth in the context of the juristic-forensic approach to transitional justice; specifically - the investigation, trial and remedial procedures of the International Criminal Court?

The Human Right to the Truth in International Law: On Some ‘Untimely Meditations’

In the second part of his Untimely Meditations, Nietzsche asserts that the motto of History raised to the status of a science in the nineteenth century is fiat veritas, pereat vita. Nietzsche draws a line between the right uses of History that serve life, and the wrong uses that jeopardise life. This text seems to capture or encompass if not all at least many of the criticisms now levelled at the right to the truth. Starting from this critical discourse, the paper tries to answer the following question: might not this ambition to establish the truth and to make truth a ‘human right’ – that is, a universal right deemed to be inherent in human nature – lead to blockages and dead-ends, or even completely jam the social machinery so preventing its renewal and reproduction, in other words preventing it from living? To try answering this question, the paper presents the right to the truth in context in the legal texts as an emerging human right in international law before trying to describe the main challenges that the right to the truth must take up. In conclusion, the paper looks at the role that international supervisory bodies must play in securing the right to the truth nationally.

The right to the truth of victims of a repressive regime in the international public law

Temida, 2016

The break-up with the repressive regime, and above all rehabilitation of the consequences for victims, includes determining the truth about the character, carriers and methods of systematic violation of basic human rights. Many international instruments, which deal with the problem of victims of repressive regimes and the state discontinuity with repressive governance, proclaim the concept of the right to the truth. The paper deals with the normative contents of the right to the truth and different aspects of this concept that international courts recognize in relation to victims of repressive regimes. The results of the analysis indicate that the concept of the right to the truth sets before the states requirements to try to provide institutional preconditions for individual and collective victims to find out and access the truth, but that the case-law does not recognize as enforceable any authorisation which stems from the right to the truth. Currently, the right to the truth pres...

Crafting a « Right to Truth » in International Law: Converging Mobilizations, Diverging Agendas?

Penal Field/Champ pénal, 2016

This genealogy of the “right to truth” explores the ambivalence of this new concept in international legal discourse. It argues that although various distinct mobilizations have coalesced around the idea of a “right to truth” as a resource to reform international law, the competition around its parameters has also acted as a constraint for certain truth activists. Given the diversity of interests at play, the institutionalization process of the “right to truth” before various bodies reveals strategies of alignment and misalignment among truth entrepreneurs that may reinforce or undermine each other’s cause. Although all these visions of the “right to truth” are presently celebrated as “complementary”, the advent of this multifaceted legal category thus conceals a range of conflicts around conceptions of justice and more generally, the social and political priorities given to the treatment of mass atrocities.

Truth and victims' rights: Towards a legal epistemology of international criminal justice

Mexican Law Review, del IIJ-UNAM, Vol VI, número 1, julio-diciembre, pp. 119-160, 2013

The author advances the thesis that the now well established international crime victims' right to know the truth creates an opportunity for an applied epistemology reflection regarding international criminal justice. At the heart of the project lies the author's argument that this victims' right -if taken seriously-implies both the right that the international criminal justice system's normative structures or legal frameworks and practices feature a truth-promoting profile, or in other words, that they be designed, specified, and harmonized so as to enable the system as a whole to regularly lead to the formation of (fallible, though more likely) true beliefs about the world (both when it convicts and when it acquits); and a duty for the international community to implement the best epistemically-suited set of procedural and evidentiary rules and practices when it engages in the enterprise of engineering and setting in place international criminal tribunals, panels, chambers, or special courts. The author suggests that the research of the epistemologist Larry Laudan is quite relevant to the aims of the above project in that it outlines the general contours of a truth-promoting profile applicable to all instances of empirical systems of investigation. By contrasting Laudan's guidelines with the legal frameworks and practices of some international criminal tribunals, the author holds (though of course more research is needed) both that the victims' right to know the truth is being systematically transgressed at the international level in that these international institutions do not seem to possess an acceptable truth-promoting profile as one of their attributes; and that endowing them with such a profile is one of the ways in which the international community can pay its respects to victims' concerns.

A Right to Truth: Victims and the ICC

2014

Mass graves were the key topic of the Feb-April issue of this magazine. It was pointed out there, how important it is for families of victims to know what happened to their loved ones. This need to know the truth is mirrored in international law through the emergence of 'the right to truth'; this right is the focus of the following contribution. In particular the question is whether victims participating in the proceedings at the International Criminal Court in The Hague can argue for the realisation of this right. Originally based in the Geneva Conventions and relating specifically to the issue of missing persons during both international and internal armed conflict, the right to truth was developed in the 1970s through the case law of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the work of intergovernmental bodies as a response to the problem of enforced disappearances, and in particular, to the need of the families of the missing to know the fate or whereabouts of relatives or loved ones. The right of victims and their families within this context has been widely recognised by regional and international bodies, including the Inter-American Court of Human

A Case-Law Study of the Truth as Human Right

Global Jurist, 2016

We consider the right to the truth an essential human right that should be recognized and guaranteed by the Law. Allowing all humans access to the truth is a human good permitting the achievement of a higher degree of human perfection and realization and, consequently, there are strong reasons to affirm that the Law should recognize and guarantee as much as possible access to the truth. Considering that it has been the international recognition of the right to the truth which has provided the basis for domestic regulations it is logical that we should focus attention on the international sphere of human rights protection and it is for this reason that we have carried out a case-law method investigation to describe the concept of “the right to the truth”.

Transitional Justice and the Right to Truth

This dissertation explores the challenges of proclaiming truth as an international human right and instigating it in the field of transitional justice. The approach draws on a combination of critical legal studies and post-modern deconstructive theories. The discussion examines the legal and historical basis of a ‘right to truth’ and mechanisms for its implementation, observing historical shifts between formal and informal procedures. Critique is focused on questioning the consequences of codifying truth as a ‘right’. It finds that those who define the law have the power to reconstruct transitional societies, determining their relationship with the past and the future. Human rights are revealed not as passive mediators but active agents of change. An analysis of the relationship between truth and power concludes that a right to truth can override competing local narratives. This ‘meta-narrative’ is not controlled by rights victims but by human rights practitioners fluent in their own vocabulary. In this way human rights discourse brings about its own ‘regime of truth’. The discussion is ultimately cautious about formalising a right to truth. Whilst recognising its potential power for weak societies, the right may also diverge from its original aim of empowering victims to seek truth, justice, and redress, on their own terms.