This book examines how international judicial and non-judicial bodies in Europe address the needs of the families of forcibly disappeared persons. The needs in question are returning the remains of disappeared persons; the right to truth; the acceptance of responsibility by states; and the right to compensation. These have been identified as the four most commonly shared basic and fundamental needs of families in which an adult was disappeared many years previously and is now assumed to be dead, which is representative of the situation of the vast majority of families of disappeared persons in Europe. <br><br>The analysis covers the judgments and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Committee, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Human Rights Advisory Panel in Kosovo, as well as the activities of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus, the Special Process on Missing Persons in the Territory of former Yugoslavia, the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances and the International Commission on Missing Persons. In so doing, the book demonstrates whether, how, and based on what principles these four needs of the families of disappeared persons can constitute a claim based on international human rights law.
In recent years and decades, authoritarian regimes and illiberal democracies have passed and enforced punitive memory laws, intending to ban certain interpretations of past events or sheltering official versions of history against challenges. This comes with no surprise in countries whose governments undermine pluralism and assume the existence of a historical truth that is stable over time, invariable, and self-explanatory. But why do liberal democracies, committed to political pluralism and open debate, pass laws that penalize challenges to certain interpretations of the past and restrict freedom of speech? This article argues that liberal democracies may do so yielding to bottom–up pressure by courts and to regulate civil law disputes for which existing legislation and jurisprudence may not suffice. Based on case studies from Germany, France, Switzerland, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia, we also found punitive memory laws in liberal democracies narrower and more precise than in nonliberal states.
The "right to truth" relates to the obligation of the state to provide information about the circumstances surrounding serious violations of human rights. Despite its increasing recognition, the concept raises questions as to its scope and implementation as well as its existence as a free-standing right. Similarly, "memory laws" relate to the way states deal with their past. However, there are certain "memory laws" that, while officially serving as a guarantee for accessing historical truth, lead to its deformation. As a result, an "alternative" truth, based on the will of the legislators, is being imposed. In this article the authors elaborate on the general nature of the new legal phenomenon of the "right to truth", as a tool of transitional justice, in particular in the context of both providing and abusing historical truth by the legislators, through the instrument of "memory laws".
The article demonstrates how references to Nazi and Soviet past are perceived and evaluated by the European Court of Human Rights. Individual cases concerning Holocaust and Nazism, which the Court has examined so far, are compared here to judgments rendered with regard to Communist regime. The article proves that the Court treats more leniently state interference with freedom of expression when memory about Nazism and Holocaust is protected than when a post–Communist state wants to preserve a critical memory about the regime. The authors of the article agree with the attitude of the Court which offers a wide margin of appreciation to states restrictively treating references to Nazism and Holocaust, including comparisons to the Holocaust, Nazism or fascism used as rhetorical devices. At the same time they postulate that other totalitarian systems should be treated by the Court equally
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