Human Rights and Transitional Justice in Chile

This book offers a synthesis of the main achievements and pending challenges during the thirty years of transitional justice in Chile after Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. The Chilean experience provides useful comparative perspectives for researchers, students and human rights activists engaged in transitional justice processes around the world. The first chapter explains the theoretical foundations of human rights and transitional justice. The second chapter discusses the main historical milestones in Chile’s recent history which have defined the course of the process of transitional justice. The following chapters provide an overview of the key elements of transitional justice in Chile: truth, reparations, memory, justice, and guarantees of non-repetition.

Chapter 1: Human Rights and Transitional Justice.- Chapter 2: Chilean recent history.- Chapter 3: Searching for the Truth.- Chapter 4: Reparations for the victims.- Chapter 5: Memorialising and Commemorating.- Chapter 6: Investigating and condemning the perpetrators.- Chapter 7: “Never Again” and guarantees of non-repetition.

Hugo Rojas is Professor of Sociology of Law and Human Rights in the Faculty of Law, Alberto Hurtado University, and Researcher in the Millenium Institute on Violence and Democracy Research (VIODEMOS), Chile.

Miriam Shaftoe is Research Assistant on Human Rights and Transitional Justice in the Faculty of Law, Alberto Hurtado University, Chile. She studied Social Sciences in Conflict Studies and Human Rights at the University of Ottawa, Canada.