Latin American Transitional Justice Network
First meeting of the constitutive members of the Rede Latino-Americana de Justiça de Transição (RLAJT) – Latin American Transitional Justice Network
Available at: http://www.rlajt.com (accessed May 5, 2015).
NINA SCHNEIDER
“Against impunity and forgetting” – that was the topic of the day, when on June 1, 2015 the founding members of the Rede Latino-Americana de Justiça de Transição (RLAJT, The Latin American Transitional Justice Network) came together for the first time at the National University of Brasília (UNB), Brazil. Representatives from ten different Latin American countries exchanged their experiences of striving for the punishment of former human rights violators in their respective countries. They also discussed the possibilities and challenges of the politics of archives ranging from Paraguay to El Salvador. All talks are available online and can be accessed at: http://www.rlajt.com/evento/235.
In his opening speech Paulo Abrão, the Director of the Brazilian Amnesty Commission and key driving force for the founding of RLAJT, left no doubt about the network’s objectives: to combat impunity, to remember the human rights crimes of the past, and to publish more expert literature in the Spanish and Portuguese language. Currently, English publications clearly dominate the field of transitional justice scholarship. In the opening and closing ceremonies, the current members of the executive board (secretaria executiva), José Otávio Nogueira Guimarães and Cristiano Otávio Paixão Araújo Pinto, encouraged the RJLAT members to get involved in the network, for example, by using the new blog as a platform for critical discussions and as a blackboard for sharing experiences and strategies. Members were also asked to send reports to the secretary in order to compile systematic reports on human rights developments in the Latin American region. At this point, for example, the RJLAT executive team is collecting data on this meeting’s twin-topic – “justice and archives.” The Network is open to Latin American institutions acting in the field of human rights and memory, as well as to individual members.
The Rede Latino-Americana de Justiça de Transição (RLAJT) or Latin American Transitional Justice Network was established in 2011 by the Brazilian Amnesty Commission, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), in cooperation with the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ). While still in its constitutive phase, the institution’s stated key objective is to facilitate and promote the communication and expertise in the field of transitional justice and spread knowledge about the Latin American experience. This new network may play an increasing role in the field of transitional justice studies. Its webpage provides a series of resources on transitional justice in Latin America including publications, video and audio material, and weblinks to important Latin American institutions such as truth commissions. In the future the RJLAT webpage is going to host the organization’s yearly reports.
The host institution of the Latin American Transitional Justice Network (RLAJT) changes every two to three years. Presently, it is hosted by the National University of Brasília (Universidade Nacional de Brasília, UNB). As of May 2015, RLAJT included the following members: The Center for Legal and Social Studies (Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, Argentina), the Amnesty Commission (Comissão de Anistia, Brazil), the Law Department of the University of Rosario (Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad del Rosario, Colombia), the Study Group of the Internationalization of Law and Transitional Justice (Grupo de Estudos sobre Internacionalização do Direito e Justiça de Transição, Brazil), the Institute of Democracy and Human Rights of the Pontifical Catholic University of Perú (Instituto de Democracia y Derechos Humanos de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Peru), the Institute of Human Rights of the Centroamerican University (Instituto de Derechos Humanos de la Universidad Centroamericana, El Salvador), Open Memory (Memoria Abierta, Argentina), the Nucleus of Preserving Political Memory (Núcleo de Preservação da Memória Política, Brazil), and the Human Rights Observatory of the University of Diego Portales (Observatorio Derechos Humanos de la Universidad Diego Portales, Chile).
More information available at: http://www.rlajt.com.