translated from Spanish: CIDE proposes a transitional justice including amnesties

to achieve a model of justice response to violence in Mexico if could grant amnesties and for disarmament and demobilization, among other tools, according to a study plans prepared by the Center for investigation and economic teaching (CIDE) at the request of the National Commission of human rights (CNDH).
About amnesties, the report warns that they should not be generalized to all parties to a conflict regardless of their actions, but they must be well defined.
“The first criteria is material: under no circumstances are subject to Amnesty International crimes or serious human rights violations (including torture, forced disappearance, genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, etc.).” The second is temporary: only include crimes committed during the conflict in question. The third is personal: the Amnesty must define clearly the potential beneficiaries (belligerent groups, exiled politicians, etc.) “, explains.
In addition, beneficiaries must not again participate in acts of violence and Yes to provide information to clarify the truth about these activities.
Another instrument detailed by the study are disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programmes. In the world, this offer is usually so a militia fighters rejoin civilian life without falling into crime, for which includes legal employment opportunities. For the Mexican case arises that it could be not as a peace negotiated with leaders of organized crime groups, but on an individual basis.
“The benefits would apply first to the members satins and means of criminal groups.” As in other cases of transitional justice, such benefits they would receive in Exchange for confessions that patterns and contexts of victimization, clarify from which could identify those most responsible for and determine the responsibility State”, says the document.
CIDE exposes the usefulness of other tools such as the truth commissions, regardless of criminal proceedings, used to reconstruct the history of what happened against a backdrop of widespread violence in a country, or in specific cases – as the newly created for the case Ayotzinapa – and explain it to the society for a from there look for social reconciliation.
Transitional justice, what and where to start?
In the presentation of the report, human rights experts pointed out that the new Government has offered the “transitional justice” as the solution, but it should analyze the conditions of violence in Mexico to build the road to peace.
“Was generated among the population perception that transitional justice would be the recipe that would give solution to the country’s problems in the area of security and justice.” Transitional justice, must be said, can be a path that will allow to solve many of the challenges we face as a country, but is not a panacea or prescription only for such purposes. In fact, one of the challenges is generating the conditions that facilitate its implementation in Mexico”, said the national ombudsman, Luis Raúl González.
Mariclaire Acosta Urquidi, Counselor of the NHRC, explained that transitional justice is usually applied when there is a political transition, as in countries that went from a dictatorship to democracy, but in Mexico this time of regime change has passed and the attempt of creating a Truth Commission over the time of the dirty war was rather unsuccessful.
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It also applies at the end of an armed conflict, but here no sight will take place soon, he said. So the transition proposed is moving from a State of high impact and large-scale violence, to build a true democratic rule of law. “This document really clarifies a huge confusion we have and shows us very concrete roads,” he said.
The report identifies 2006 as the starting point of violence in the country, by the adoption of a State strategy to combat drug trafficking, with a deployment of the armed forces, and increasing, from that year, violent deaths, which went from 9.75 CAD 100 thousand inhabitants, to 25.13 deaths in 2017. For this reason, warns that the perpetrators of violence have been both actors of the State as criminal organizations without any ideological or political project, which is a peculiarity of the Mexican case.
Identify the victims and repair the damage the study proposes criteria to identify victims who should be served by a public policy of transitional justice. First, the gravity of human rights violations; Second, in cases of high-impact public and carrying the attempt to intimidate authorities and society, as in the attacks on journalists or candidates; and finally, by the excesses of the State committed in its drug policy.
Jacobo Dayán of the Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos, criticized in the presentation that in Mexico began for the last step, i.e. for damage repairs, before you have truth, justice, and guarantees of non-repetition, which are the other three axes of a transitional process.
So was created the Executive Committee’s attention to victims (CEAV), which is a kind of one-stop shop that attends to complaints of medical neglect or domestic violence, instead of focusing on cases of extraordinary violence.
In this sense, the document prepared by the CIDE proposes to create an administrative program for damages, in addition to compensation, include other actions that give satisfaction to the victims, as public apologies.
The proposal to create an independent organ for supervision, monitoring and evaluation of the measures taken; that joining international actors who can provide technical assistance in the process; and in three years will assess if the adopted tools have worked and there are results, or does need to change the model.
The report will be delivered by the CNDH to the Ministry of the Interior and will be added to other proposals that civil society groups have been working since September with the then transition team, a process in which the Commission has not participated.
 
 

Original source in Spanish