NAME OF MECHANISM

Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación)

PERIOD OF OPERATION

13 April 2010 – present. Established on 13 April 2010, the commission began its work on 4 May 2010 and was expected to complete it in eight months.

MANDATE AND OPERATIONS

Mandate: Section 6 of the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord of 2009 recommended the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CNR) in the first half of 2010. The commission was officially established by the Executive Decree PCM-011-2010 on 13 April 2010.

The commission is mandated under Article 1 of the decree to clarify the events that occurred “before and after” 28 June 2009 “in order to identify the acts that led to the crisis situation and to give the Honduran people information that will help them to prevent such events from recurring in future.”

Article 10 of the decree outlines the specific tasks of the commission, which include making recommendations and suggesting methods to follow up on the proposals made to promote reconciliation; formulating recommendations that will strengthen the country’s institutions and democracy, as well as the defence and guarantee of human rights; and issuing a final report with information aimed at preventing similar crises from happening in the future.

Staff: The commission has both local and international members. It is chaired by former Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein Barillas. The other four commissioners are former Canadian diplomat Michael Kergin, former Peruvian Minister of Justice María Zavala, Honduran legal expert Jorge Omar Caso and the president of the National Autonomous University of Honduras, Julieta Castellanos. The commission also has a technical and administrative secretariat, which is directed by Executive Secretary Sergio Memreño Cedillo.

Budget: The commission is funded by the international community. The donors are the Swedish Embassy in Honduras, the governments of Canada, United States, Germany, Spain and Japan, as well as the United Nations and the European Union [CNR].

RESOURCES

Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s official website (in Spanish)
Executive Decree PCM-011-2010 [2010]
Tegucigalpa-San José Accord [2009]

RESULTS

The CNR was originally expected to submit its final report to the government in January 2011, but is currently expected to release it in mid-2011. The commission has visited 25 cities and held 330 meetings since the beginning of its operations in May 2010 [CNR].

The commission has faced severe criticism both nationally and internationally. It has been accused of being biased and lacking transparency, as it was formed behind closed doors without public discussion and its commissioners were selected by the government [Huffington Post | 4 May 2010]. Chairman Eduardo Stein’s April 2010 statement that not all of the facts uncovered would be made public because some of them contain “sensitive information which will be classified” has caused further concern [IPS News | 19 Apr 2010]. Some critics regard the commission as an attempt by the Honduran government to gain full recognition from the international community and to regain its membership in the Organization of American States [IPS News | 5 May 2010].

BACKGROUND

In the 1970s and 1980s, Honduras became a staging ground for the United States’ clandestine war against communism in Central America. During this time, a special branch of the Honduran army known as Battalion 316 committed serious human rights violations, including torture, extrajudicial killings and disappearances, against civilians [CJA]. In 1986, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights referred the situation in Honduras to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In 1987 and 1988, respectively, the court found Honduras responsible for the forced disappearance and extrajudicial killings of Saúl Godínez Crúz and Angel Manfredo Velásquez Rodríguez, perpetrated by Battalion 316. In 2000, the Honduran Supreme Court ruled that laws granting amnesty for human rights violations to the armed forces were unconstitutional. In the same year, the government announced that it would pay reparations to the families of victims of political violence [CJA].

Nonetheless, compensation has been provided to relatively few victims and prosecutions have been slow and limited to a small number of perpetrators. Attempts to counter impunity were further stalled by the coup. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established by the government in an effort to satisfy the public’s calls for accountability in a controlled manner.

In response to mounting criticism of the official commission, an alternative Commission of Truth was launched by the Human Rights Platform of Honduras on 28 June 2010, the one-year anniversary of the coup. This commission aims to investigate human rights violations through in-depth interviews with victims and to provide a full analysis of the causes of the coup [Center for Constitutional Rights | 2010].

SOURCES

[Center for Constitutional Rights | 2010]
[Center for Justice and Accountability]
[Huffington Post | 4 May 2010]
[IPS News | 19 Apr 2010]
[IPS News | 5 May 2010]
[Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights | 2009]