NAME OF MECHANISM

Comisión de la Verdad Para El Salvador - Commission on the Truth for El Salvador

YEARS OF OPERATION

1992-1993 (8 months)

MANDATE AND OPERATIONS

Mandate: Established by the United Nations, as part of UN moderated peace accord agreement, “to investigate ‘serious acts of violence’ that occurred since 1980 whose ‘impact on society urgently demands that the public should know the truth” through July 1991.

Staff: Made up of 3 Commissioners and approximately 20 additional staff members for the collection of testimony and an additional 25 in last months for date entry and information processing. None of the staff were Salvadorian as general consensus held that local individuals would be preceived as biased.

Funding: Administered and funded by UN member states (US and Europe)

RESULTS

Took 2000 testimonies, documented 22,000 cases of killings, torture and kidnappings (32 cases/events investigated in-depth)

FINAL REPORT

De la Locura a la Esperanza (From Madness to Hope), (March 15, 1993)

[Click here for the report]

The report's recommendations included the dismissal from the armed forces and civil service of those involved in the committing or covering-up of serious acts of violence, the disqualifying of those people from the holding of public office, and judicial reform. This would include the provision of a new system for the election of judges to the Supreme Court and an on-going evaluation system of the integrity, impartiality and respect for human rights of judges. The report emphasised the importance of judicial reform by noting that, at the time, the judicial system was not in a fit state to prosecute the perpetrators identified by the Commission.

It also recommended that a fund was set up for the payment of compensation to victims and the construction of a national monument bearing the names of those who died during the conflict.

On March 20, 1993, just five days after the Commission noted the desirability of prosecuting those responsible, an unconstitutional and deeply contested blanket amnesty was granted.

Critical reforms occurred including the removal of over 200 senior officials of the armed forces, but for the most part implementation of the, supposedly binding, recommendations was poor.