NAME OF MECHANISM

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

http://www.cverdad.org.pe

YEARS OF OPERATION

June 4, 2001 – 2003 (two years)

MANDATE AND OPERATIONS

Mandate: Established by a government mandate to discover the root causes of the political violence; to aid the courts in clarifying crimes involving human rights abuse and determining criminal responsibility; to elaborate proposals for reparation for the victims and their families; to make recommendations for improving human rights protection; and to establish mechanisms to follow up implementation of its recommendations.

This was the first commission in the Americas to hold public hearings.

Staff: 12 commissioners and 1 observer

Structure: 5 working areas:

• National process of political violence
• Investigation of facts
• Reparations and reconciliation
• Communication and education
• Public hearings.

Results: Public hearings involving 318 cases and 422 testimonies, 15,220 testimonies registered, found 40,000 people were killed and over 6,000 "disappeared" between 1980 and 2000. 69,280 victims of human rights violations in total.

FINAL REPORT

Informe final de la Comision de la Verdad y Reconciliation, issued on August 28, 2003 containing 12 volumes and 7 annexes.

LATEST UPDATE

January 2008: In December 2003, President Toledo apologised to the state and indicates a policy measures for reparations. After two years of debate, the Integral Reparations Plan was approved by Congress on July 20, 2005.

Amnesty legislation to provide for the granting of amnesty to former government and military officials was dropped after public pressure mounted and the legislation was found unconstitutional. The High-Level Multi-secto Commission (CMAN, in Spanish), set up in February 2004 to develop policies on peace, collective reparation and national reconciliation, calculated that the programs require between US$45 million and $60 million annually on funding. Beneficiaries will include 200,000 people in 530 communities.

Alberto Fujimori, President of Peru from 1990 to 2000, is currently on trial in Lima for multiple charges including abuse of authority, for which he was sentanced to six years imprisonment in December 2007. Fujimori also faces charges of kidnapping, embezzlement and the sanctioning of death squads, at whose hands 25 people died in the early 1990s. Fujimori had fled to Japan, but was extradited from Chile in 2007. [BBC]

Peruvian opinion on the trial is mixed. Many consider that Fujimori's actions were necessary for the liberation of Peru from the terror of the Shining Path, the Maoist guerrilla group, and believe that Fujimori's transformation of Peru and its economy justifies his actions. Others argue that Fujimori used the state of emergency to his own advantage, maintaining an autocratic rule and making a large amount of money. [BBC] 

Updates on the Fujimori trial can be found at www.fujimoriontrial.org