‘Death opens the eyes of the living’

Secret mass graves in Mexico, daily bombings and a mounting death toll in Syria, 30,000 “disappeared” people in Argentina. What does the fight for truth and justice mean in terrible contexts like these where impunity persists? A Swiss research project hopes to provide an answer. “What does ‘right to the truth’ actually mean when criminal proceedings are not possible due to amnesty laws, state denial, systematic disappearances of bodies or the deaths of those responsible?” ponders Sévane Garibian, a law professor at Geneva and Neuchâtel universities. She is leading a project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation entitled “The Right to Truth, Truth(s) through Rights: Mass Crimes Impunity and Transitional Justice”. This looks at how the right to truth is implemented in contexts where penal justice is inaccessible. For the high-profile project she has partnered with institutions such as the Swiss foreign ministry, Swisspeace, Oxford and Columbia universities ...