HRC submitted an amicus curiae to the Constitutional Court of Guatemala
On the 29th of December 2020, twenty-four years after the signing of the final peace agreement, the Human Rights Center of the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Ghent University submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Guatemalan Constitutional Court on the international standards on reparations and victims’ rights. The amicus curiae was submitted within an amparo action filed by the COCOP community, located in Santa María Nebaj, Quiché. According to the Historical Clarification Commission, in 1981 the Guatemalan army executed 67 members of the COCOP community in the context of the internal armed conflict in Guatemala.
On November 2020, the COCOP community filed an amparo action with the support of the Centro de Análisis Forense y Ciencias Aplicadas (CAFCA) and the Bufete Jurídico de Derechos Humanos (BDH) due to the impact that the recent closure of the Peace Secretariat caused in their ongoing reparations proceedings before the National Program of Reparations. The closure, which was decided without consulting the victims, not only curtails their right of access to justice and integral reparation, but it also poses serious threats to the safety of the personal information granted to the National Program of Reparation in guarantee of confidentiality.
The amicus curiae, available in Spanish, can be found here as pdf.
