The Right To The Truth In International Law

The United Nations has established a right to the truth to be enjoyed by victims of gross violations of human rights. The origins of the right stem from the need to provide victims and relatives of the missing with a right to know what happened. It encompasses the verification and full public disclosure of the facts associated with the crimes from which they or their relatives suffered. The importance of the right to the truth is based on the belief that, by disclosing the truth, the suffering of victims is alleviated. This book analyses the emergence of this right, as a response to an understanding of the needs of victims, through to its development and application in two particular legal contexts: international human rights law and international criminal justice. The book examines in detail the application of the right through the case law and jurisprudence of international tribunals in the human rights and also the criminal justice context, as well as looking at its place in transitional justice. The theoretical foundations of the right to the truth are considered as well as the various objectives appropriate for different truth-seeking mechanisms. The book then goes on to discuss to what extent it can be understood, constructed and applied as a hard, legally enforceable right with correlating duties on various people and institutions including state agencies, prosecutors and judges.

In the past twenty years, international criminal law has become one of the main areas of international legal scholarship and practice. Most textbooks in the field describe the evolution of international criminal tribunals, the elements of the core international crimes, the applicable modes of liability and defences, and the role of states in prosecuting international crimes. The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law, however, takes a theoretically informed and refreshingly critical look at the most controversial issues in international criminal law, challenging prevailing practices, orthodoxies, and received wisdoms. Some of the contributions to the Handbook come from scholars within the field, but many come from outside of international criminal law, or indeed from outside law itself. The chapters are grounded in history, geography, philosophy, and international relations. The result is a Handbook that expands the discipline and should fundamentally alter how international criminal law is understood.

The volume revisits memory laws as a phenomenon of global law, transitional justice, historical narratives and claims for historical truth. It will appeal to those interested in the conflict between legal governance of memory with values of democratic citizenship, political pluralism, and fundamental rights.

After having ignored victims, only recently both domestic and international law have begun to pay attention to them. As a consequence, different international norms related to victims have progressively been introduced. These are norms generally characterized by a certain concept from the perspective of victims, as well as by the enumeration of a list of rights to which they are entitle to; rights upon which the international statute of victims is built. In reverse, these catalogues of rights are the states’ obligations. Most of these rights are already existent in the international law of human rights. Consequently, they are not new but consolidated rights. Others are strictly linked to victims, concerning the following categories: victims of crime, victims of abuse of power, victims of gross violations of international human rights law, victims of serious violations of international humanitarian law, victims of enforced disappearance, victims of violations of international criminal law and victims of terrorism.

Dr. Natasha Stamenkovikj offers a comprehensive account of the right to the truth as a right in international law and an element in delivering justice though European governance.

The present book addresses the right to truth in the field of international human rights law. The objective is to verify the outlines of this right that make it unique, and which justify its own (disputable) existence in the human rights scenario as a legally binding norm. Departing from a historical perspective of the emergence of this right in International Law, the intent is to analyze the multiple debates that have marked the development of the right to truth throughout the past decades. It is explored, therefore, how the a priori abstract notion of truth became a right and the strict relation this has with the social mobilizations of victims of gross violations of human rights. To accomplish this, the book spans across the struggle, in particular, of the relatives of disappeared victims during the 1970's and 1980's when the dictatorships reigned in Latin America. It follows on the expansion of the right to truth during what has been known as the fight against impunity, until it reaches the main human rights courts. To finalize, it discusses the inclusion of the right to truth in the International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and the measures more commonly used to realize such right. In the book, it is concluded that the right to truth carries a singularity that is crucial for the protection of victims of gross human rights violations.

This book considers the efficacy of transitional justice mechanisms in response to corporate human rights abuses. Corporations and other business enterprises often operate in countries affected by conflict or repressive regimes. As such, they may become involved in human rights violations and crimes under international law ‒ either as the main perpetrators or as accomplices by aiding and abetting government actors. Transitional justice mechanisms, such as trials, truth commissions, and reparations, have usually focused on abuses by state authorities or by non-state actors directly connected to the state, such as paramilitary groups. Innovative transitional justice mechanisms have, however, now started to address corporate accountability for human rights abuses and crimes under international law and have attempted to provide redress for victims. This book analyzes this development, assessing how transitional justice can provide remedies for corporate human rights abuses and crimes under international law. Canvassing a broad range of literature relating to international criminal law mechanisms, regional human rights systems, domestic courts, truth and reconciliation commissions, and land restitution programmes, this book evaluates the limitations and potential of each mechanism. Acknowledging the limited extent to which transitional justice has been able to effectively tackle the role of corporations in human rights violations and international crimes, this book nevertheless points the way towards greater engagement with corporate accountability as part of transitional justice. A valuable contribution to the literature on transitional justice and on business and human rights, this book will appeal to scholars, researchers and PhD students in these areas, as well as lawyers and other practitioners working on corporate accountability and transitional justice.

This book provides a comprehensive account of the emergence of the customary law of human rights. It examines a range of human rights norms, and provides a useful guide to identifying those which can be described as customary.