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ABSTRACT
In recent cases regarding Colombia, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has deferred certain components of reparations to domestic mechanisms. This article reflects on this new tendency with regard to the ability of the court to generate changes within the state parties that will ensure the long-term prevention of human rights violations. A thorough examination of the court’s decisions in various Colombian cases demonstrates the progression of how this new approach emerged and shows that it stands in sharp contrast with the approach the court had developed since 2000. The article then turns to exploring possible causes for and consequences of these changes in the Colombian context.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Professor Courtney Hillebrecht, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Professor Par Engstrom, University College London, for their valuable comments on this article. Thanks to the organisers of the Workshop ‘The Inter-American Human Rights System. The Law and Politics of Institutional Change’ held in London on 9–10 October 2015, for providing the opportunity for such fruitful discussions. Many thanks to all participants in this workshop for their inspiring contributions. Special thanks to Calla Barnett, School of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa, for her help editing this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Note on contributor
Geneviève Lessard is a PhD candidate at the School of Political Studies of the University of Ottawa.
Notes
1. Juana Inés Acosta López and Diana Bravo Rubio, ‘El cumplimiento de los fines de reparación integral de las medidas ordenadas por la Corte interamericana de Derechos humanos. Énfasis en la experiencia colombiana’, International Law Review-Revista Colombiana de Derecho Internacional 13 (2008): 326.
2. UN General Assembly, Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law, A/RES/60/147 (21 March 2005), paras 15–23.
3. Ibid. The five constitutive elements of integral reparation are: (1) restitution, which refers to the right of the victim to be restored to the situation that prevailed prior to the violation; (2) financial compensation, which serves as retribution for the harm done when restitution is not possible (which is most often the case with human rights violations); (3) rehabilitation, which is the help that is necessary for the victim to recover from the harm suffered (for example, psycho-medical care); (4) satisfaction, which is the series of remedies that the victim feels would put an end to the violations (revelation of the truth, public acknowledgement of responsibility, and justice, among others); and (5) non-repetition, which aims to enable the system as a whole to ensure effective rights guarantees.
4. Article 63.1 of the American Convention on Human Rights stipulates that the court shall rule that the ‘consequences of the measure or situation that constituted the breach of such right or freedom be remedied’ (emphasis added).
5. Indeed, the new tendency in the IACtHR’s approach to reparations analysed in this article plays a role in cases regarding other countries as well, such as Chile and Guatemala. See article by Clara Sandoval in this special issue.
6. There is a vast amount of literature on the unique character of reparations ordered by the IACtHR. See, among others: T. Antkowiak, ‘Remedial Approaches to Human Rights Violations: The Inter-American Court of Human Rights and Beyond’, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 46 (2008): 351–764; Laurence Burgorgue-Larsen, ‘The Right to Determine Reparations’, in The Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Case Law and Commentary, ed. L. Burgorgue-Larsen and A. Úbeda De Torres (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 224–31; Sergio García Ramírez, ‘Las reparaciones en la jurisprudencia de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos’, Anuario Iberoamericano de Justicia Constitucional 3 (1999): 329–48; Sergio García Ramírez, ‘El amplio horizonte de las reparaciones en la jurisprudencia interamericana de Derechos Humanos’, in El Control del poder. Libro Homenaje a Diego Valadés, coord. P. Haberle and D. García Belaúnde (Lima: Instituto Iberoamericano de Derecho Constitucional, 2012), 113–44; Elisabeth Lambert Abdelgawad and Kathia Martin-Chenut, ed., Réparer les violations graves et massives des Droits de ĺHomme: la Cour interaméricaine, pionnière et modèle? (Paris: Société de législation comparée, 2010); Letizia Seminara, Les effets des arrêts de la Cour interaméricaine des droits de l’homme (Bruxelles: Bruylant, 2009).
7. Rodrigo Uprimny and María Paula Saffon, ‘Reparaciones transformadoras, justicia distributiva y profundización democrática’, in Reparar en Colombia: los dilemas en contextos de conflicto, pobreza y exclusión, ed. C. Díaz Gómez, N. C. Sanchez, R. Uprimny Yepes (Bogota: International Centre for Transitional Justice, 2009), 34–5.
8. Case of González et al. (‘Cotton Field’) v. Mexico. Preliminary Objection, Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of 16 November 2009. Series C No. 205, para. 451.
9. Ruth Rubio-Marin and Clara Sandoval, ‘Engendering the Reparations Jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: The Promise of the Cotton-Field Judgment’, Human Rights Quarterly 33 (2011): 1062–91.
10. Seminara, des arrêts de la Cour interaméricaine des droits de l’homme, 52–3.
11. The specific wording of Article 63.1 of the ACHR gives the court extensive powers with respect to reparations. See Seminara, des arrêts de la Cour interaméricaine des droits de l’homme, 33.
12. See, for example, the following cases regarding Colombia: Case of the La Rochela Massacre. Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of 11 May 2007. Series C No. 163, paras 70–2; Case of Jesus Maria Valle Jaramillo et al., Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of 27 November 2008. Series C No. 192, paras 30h, 34, 66; Case of Manuel Cepeda Vargas. Preliminary Objections, Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of 26 May 2010. Series C No. 213, paras 19, 28, 29, 39, 44–6. In this article, all cases are v. Colombia, unless specified otherwise.
13. Judge Sergio García Ramírez offers a very insightful separate opinion on the importance of such contextualisation for the court. Case of La Cantuta v. Peru, Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of 29 November 2006. Series C No 162, paras 17–18.
14. In fact, the systematic use of the general guarantee stipulated in Article 1.1 (obligation to respect) in connection with the other articles has been the fundamental component of this preventive approach by the IACtHR.
15. A good explanation of this interconnected interpretation of Arts 8 and 25 and its implications for the construction of a ‘duty to investigate’ as a key component of the preventive approach can be found in Seminara, des arrêts de la Cour interaméricaine des droits de l’homme, 264–8.
16. Separate opinion (concurring) of Judge Antonio Cançado Trindade, Case of the Pueblo Bello Massacre. Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of January 31, 2006. Series C No. 140, para. 53.
17. Ibid., paras 63–5.
18. Ibid., para. 19.
19. Pueblo Bello Massacre, para. 143.
20. As Letizia Seminara explains, the IACtHR gives significantly more detailed indications about the steps that ought to be taken in order to comply with a specific decision than other international tribunals usually do (for example, the European Court of Human Rights, which has traditionally allowed states a much larger ‘margin of appreciation’ in choosing the means by which a prescribed general result will be attained). Seminara, des arrêts de la Cour interaméricaine des droits de l’homme, 36, 53.
21. Sophie Daviaud, ‘Les droits de l’homme, enjeux et principaux débats politiques dans le conflit colombien’, in Amérique latine. De la violence politique à la défense des droits de l’homme (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012), 57.
22. According to the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, paramilitaries are responsible for an overwhelming majority (1166 out of 1982) of the massacres perpetrated between 1985 and 2012: http://www.centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/micrositios/informeGeneral/estadisticas.html
23. Daviaud, Les droits de l’homme, 61–2.
24. The commission published reports on the general situation of human rights in Colombia in 1981, 1993, 1999 and 2013.
25. Colombian human rights organisations have been active at both the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and at the different United Nations forums, where they have denounced the human rights situation in their country. Inter-American bodies have been of particular significance since they provide for both immediate protection measures and judicial proceedings. Although the commission elevates the cases to the court, some Colombian organisations have played a key role in designing the strategic lines of litigation before the tribunal, where the representatives of the victims have been accorded deeper levels of access over the years.
26. See, for example, the manner in which the application of military criminal justice would lead to systematic violations of the rights of the victims to know the truth and obtain justice, Case of Las Palmeras, Merits. Judgment of 6 December 2001. Series C No. 90, para. 54; Case of the Nineteen Merchants. Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of 5 July 2004. Series C No. 109, paras 173–4; Case of the ‘Mapiripan Massacre’, Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of 15 September 2005. Series C No. 134, paras 199–206.
27. Case of the Nineteen Merchants, para. 84a–84h; ‘Mapiripan Massacre’, paras 96.1–96.20 and 116–123; Pueblo Bello Massacre, para. 95.1 to 95.20; Case of the Ituango Massacres, Preliminary Objection, Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of 1 July 2006. Series C No. 148, para. 125.1 to 125.5; La Rochela Massacre, paras 78–103; Jesús María Valle Jaramillo, paras 75–81.
28. Case of Escué Zapata. Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of 4 July 2007. Series C No. 165.
29. Case of Jesús María Valle Jaramillo et al.
30. Case of Vélez Restrepo and Family. Preliminary Objections, Merits, Reparations, and Costs. Judgment of 3 September 2012. Series C No. 248.
31. In the Manuel Cepeda Vargas case, the court considered that the violations of the victim’s rights had had intimidating effects on the collectivity of individuals who were members and sympathisers of his political party. Manuel Cepeda Vargas, para. 178.
32. La Rochela Massacre.
33. Manuel Cepeda Vargas.
34. Nineteen Merchants.
35. A particularly befitting example of the efforts made by Colombia to strategically handle international (and, as a priority, inter-American) litigation is the creation of a National Agency for the Legal Defense of the State by President Santos in 2011. The agency was put in place to provide the state with a coherent and independent (from specific interests of the different ministries and the army) legal defence strategy. Colombia invested significant resources in this superstructure charged with coordinating litigation, policy and communications regarding cases against the state.
36. Colombia is among the state parties that most readily pronounce acknowledgments of responsibility; however, these are always partial. The commission and the representatives of the victims have argued that they represent a reinterpretation of the alleged rights violations. See, for example, Jesús María Valle Jaramillo, paras 26–7; Manuel Cepeda Vargas, paras 19-21; Case of the Santo Domingo Massacre, Preliminary Objections, Merits and Reparations. Judgment of 30 November 2012. Series No. 259, paras 130–1.
37. ‘Mapiripan Massacre’, para. 192n; 192p; Pueblo Bello Massacre paras 41c, 166c, 166f; Ituango Massacres, para. 282(ii)a.
38. There are significant differences in the ways that the Uribe and Santos administrations would frame the argument. Álvaro Uribe would deny the existence of the armed conflict and portray the guerrillas as terrorists. Transition was associated with the demobilisation of the paramilitary. Manuel Santos publicly recognised the conflict and seeks the demobilisation of the guerrillas.
39. Especially after Law 975 was passed in 2005.
40. Law 1448 of 2011.
41. In this text, the term ‘contencioso administrativo’ is translated as ‘administrative jurisdiction’ or ‘contentious-administrative justice’ as in the English version of the IACtHR’s judgments related to Colombia.
42. F. Ferreira Rojas and I. M. Rivera, ‘Avances de la jurisdicción contencioso administrativo colombiana: hacia el reconocimiento de medidas de reparación integral a favour de las víctimas de violaciones de derechos humanos’, Debate Interamericano 1 (2009): 15–82.
43. Unidad para la Atención y Reparación Integral a las Víctimas.
44. Case of the Afro-descendant Communities Displaced from the Cacarica River Basin (Operation Genesis). Preliminary Objections, Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of 20 November 2013. Series C No. 270, para. 463 (and the court’s response at paras 470 and 472).
45. See for example public hearing in Case of Yarce et al. (Parte 3), ‘Alegatos finales por parte de los Representantes del Estado de Colombia la Señora Juana Inés Acosta López’, 109 periodo de Sesiones (26 June 2015), at min.: 58: 00. Video: http://www.corteidh.or.cr/index.php/en/court-today/galeria-multimedia
46. Ibid., at min. 59:00. See also min. 1:12:00 (‘Alegatos finales por parte de los Representantes del Estado de Colombia el Sr. Jonathan Riveros Tarazona’).
47. The concept of subsidiarity is at the nexus of two interacting principles. First, the responsibility of a public action shall fall upon the smallest unit of authority that could effectively undertake it; second, the higher unit of authority must assist or substitute the lower unit whenever the latter is insufficient or ineffective. In international human rights law, the concept derives from the conviction that the inherent worth of human beings has moral priority over any other social grouping. In this sense, it is a conceptual alternative to classic sovereignty. Here the responsibility of the international body is twofold: to abstain from intervening whenever the state is able to act on its own; and to intervene whenever the state fails to protect rights effectively. See Paolo G. Carozza, ‘Subsidiarity as a Structural principle of International Human Rights Law’, American Journal International Law 97 (2003): 78–9. What is interesting about the current change in the court’s approach to reparations is that it seems to shift the balance from the second duty – to assist and intervene whenever necessary – to the first – non-intervention.
48. In the previous (and first) case regarding Colombia, Caballero Delgado y Santana (1995), the court did not consider it necessary to order non-pecuniary reparations.
49. The interpretation of subsidiarity is further debated in the Separate Opinion from Judges Garcia Ramírez, Salgado Pesante and Abreu Burelli, Las Palmeras.
50. Las Palmeras, para. 33.
51. Nineteen Merchants, para. 114a.
52. Ibid., para. 158h. According to the principle of res judicata, the matter of a case in which there has been a final (not subject to appeal) judgment cannot be raised again in legal proceedings.
53. Ibid., paras 114c, 158 and 255a (state alleging sufficient character of domestic mechanisms); and at para. 246h (state asking the court to refrain from exceeding domestic standards).
54. Partially Dissenting Opinion of Judges Cançado Trindade and Pacheco Gomez, Las Palmeras, para. 3.
55. Ibid., para. 2.
56. Ibid., para. 4.
57. Ibid., para. 5.
58. Ibid., paras 8 and 9.
59. Ibid., para. 12. This quotation, along with the previous five, are from the Partially Dissenting Opinion of Judges Cançado Trindade and Pacheco Gomez in the Case of Las Palmeras.
60. ‘Mapiripán Massacre’, para. 214.
61. Pueblo Bello Massacre, para. 209; Ituango Massacres, para. 340; La Rochela Massacre, para. 220; Jesus Maria Valle Jaramillo, para. 167.
62. La Rochela Massacre.
63. Ibid., para. 240.
64. The court itself fully described this methodology in a subsequent Decision on the Interpretation of the Judgment. Case of the Rochela Massacre. Interpretation of the Judgment on Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of 28 January 2008. Series C No. 175, para. 19.
65. Jesús María Valle Jaramillo, para. 215.
66. Alier Eduardo Hernandez Enriquez was a judge from the Third Section of the Colombian State Council, which adjudicates controversies involving the responsibility of the state.
67. Jesús María Valle Jaramillo, exerpt quoted at para. 202.
68. Ibid., para. 215.
69. Manuel Cepeda Vargas.
70. Ibid., para. 246.
71. The deferral specifically concerned the determination of the compensation for loss of potential earnings. Manuel Cepeda Vargas, para. 246 and para. 15 of the Orders. In his partially dissenting opinion, Judge Pérez Pérez would note domestic provisions had been insufficiently assessed: ‘Here there is a clear petitio principii, because precisely what should have been determined, using convincing arguments based on the evidence, was that the criteria used by the Colombian administrative justice system had effectively been “objective and reasonable” and that “the amount established by these courts” was “reasonable in terms of [the] case law” of the Court, so that it could be assessed “positively”, [in lieu of] (…) only consider[ing] [it] decisive and final’. Cepeda Vargas, para. 9 of the Separate Opinion.
72. Separate Opinion of Judge Garcia-Sayán on the Case of Manuel Cepeda Vargas, para. 6.
73. Ibid., para. 7.
74. Ibid., para. 15.
75. See final paragraph of the Separate Opinion of Judge Ventura Robles, Case of Manuel Cepeda Vargas.
76. Separate Opinion of judge Ventura Robles, Case of Manuel Cepeda Vargas.
77. Ibid.
78. However, the state effort to defend the sufficient character of the domestic institutions has not been entirely coherent. See Massacre of Santo Domingo. See also n. 93.
79. Massacre of Santo Domingo, para. 28.
80. Ibid., para. 29. ‘Integral reparation’ is defined at n. 3.
81. Ibid., para. 38.
82. Ibid., para. 336.
83. Ibid., para. 337.
84. Case of the Massacre of Santo Domingo. Request for Interpretation of the Judgment on Preliminary Objections, Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of 19 August 2013. Series C No. 263, para. 30.
85. It is also worth noting that, except for references to two previous judgments and the reproduction of parts of the declaration by an expert proposed by the state, the court provides scarce reasoning as to why it proceeds to such a referral. See Operation Génesis, para. 472.
86. In other words, the court proceeded to the referral even though it had not been demonstrated that Law 1448 could function satisfactorily.
87. Case of Rodríguez Vera et al. (The Disappeared from the Palace of Justice). Preliminary Objections, Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of 14 November 2014. Series C No. 28 (hereafter Palacio de Justicia). See also public hearings on Yarce et al. (pending) (available on video at: https://vimeo.com/131930961).
88. Case of Palacio de Justicia, paras 584 and 585.
89. Ibid., para. 551.
90. Ibid., para. 590.
91. Washington Office for Latin America (WOLA), Colombia’s Military and the Peace Process, 24 January 2015, http://colombiapeace.org/2015/01/24/colombias-military-and-the-peace-process/
92. Juanita Leon, ‘A Qué Juega Pinzon?, La Silla Vacia, 11 October 2014; María Jimena Duzán, ‘¿En qué orilla juega Juan Carlos Pinzón?’, Revista Semana, 1 November 2014.
93. Over the course of the proceedings related to the ‘Palacio de Justicia’ case, the National Agency for the Legal Defense of the State decided to remove its acting state defender. Here the state opted not to recognise forced disappearances in cases where they had been proven under domestic proceedings, which contradicted the established state litigation strategy.
94. The ‘strengthening process’ is the common designation for a series of political discussions at the Organization of American States (OAS) that took place between 2011 and 2013, which led to a reform at the Inter-American Commission. Over the course of these discussions, the commission was criticised by different countries (Brazil and Ecuador in particular) for different reasons, with varying intensity and in many different forms, which ranged from harsh public criticism to economic punishment. See Camila Barretto Maia et al., Desafíos Del Sistema Interamericano de Derechos Humanos: Nuevos Tiempos, Viejos Retos (Bogotá: Antropos, n.d.).
95. IACtHR (Press Release), ‘Corte dio a conocer grave situación presupuestaria ante Consejo Permanente de la OEA’, 17 March 2016, http://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/comunicados/cp_06_16.pdf; Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (Press Release), ‘Grave crisis financiera de la CIDH lleva a suspensión de audiencias e inminente pérdida de casi la mitad de su personal’, http://www.oas.org/es/cidh/prensa/comunicados/2016/069.asp (accessed 23 May 2016).
96. Civil society organisations have expressed fear that the ‘strengthening process’ may induce the court to self-constrain. See Viviana Krsticevic and Alejandra Vicente, ‘¿Qué hace falta para fortalecer el Sistema interamericano de derechos humanos’, Aportes DPLF 19-7 (April 2014): 36.
97. Like that of all tribunals, the orientation of jurisprudential developments at the IACtHR is determined – although only to a certain extent – by the judges’ discretion in adjudication. For this reason, some civil society organisations have paid much attention to the nomination process of inter-American judges, who are elected by member states of the OAS. These organisations have insisted that to avoid the politicisation of the court, nomination procedures must be more transparent and rest on clear merit criteria. See, for example, Due Process of Law Foundation, Lineamentos para una selección transparente y basada en el mérito de magistradas y magistrados de altas cortes (Washington, DC: DPLF, December 2012), http://www.dplf.org/sites/default/files/lineamientos_para_seleccion.pdf; Viviana Krsticevic, Liliana Tojo, and Alejandra Vicente, ed., The Selection Process of the Inter-American Commission and Court on Human Rights: Reflections on Necessary Reforms (Working Paper No. 10, CEJIL: Buenos Aires, 2014).
98. See Courtney Hillebrecht, Domestic Politics and International Human Rights Tribunals: The Problem of Compliance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), especially Chapter 4.
99. In its 2013 report, the Inter-American Commission expressed its concern that impunity was a cross-cutting issue in all human rights violations in Colombia. IAHRC, Verdad, Justica y Reparación (Washington DC: IAHRC, 2013), para. 79.
100. Since the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) demobilised in the 2000s, former paramilitaries have formed criminal gangs (called Bacrims) and have pursued their activities in very similar ways. The ‘Bacrims’ are considered the most dangerous threat to a variety of groups and social actors. They are also a major obstacle to the implementation of the Ley de víctimas, especially with respect to land restitution.
101. This was argued by expert Carlos Rodriguez Mejia (testifying before the IACtHR at the request of the representatives of the victims) during the public hearings in the case of Yarce et al. (pending).
102. There have already been attempts by states such as Guatemala to persuade the court to defer reparations to domestic mechanisms. See the article by Clara Sandoval in this special issue.