A/HRC/5/7 page 7 of the Attorney General, such as the special prosecutor for enforced disappearances committed during the 1970s and early 1980s, also provide institutional arrangements conducive to upholding the right to the truth. Mexico also stresses that the lack of any preliminary investigations or negligence in the conduct of such investigations by the government officials responsible pose serious obstacles to exercise of the right to the truth. B. Right to justice and an effective remedy 27. The right to have access to justice also includes the right to an effective judicial remedy pursuant to international law and represents one of the means of seeking the truth. Finland states its view that criminal procedure also offers a means of ascertaining the truth regarding atrocities committed in the past and that amnesty measures evade the issue of the liability of perpetrators of gross human rights violations. 28. In November 2005, the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances adopted a new general comment, entitled: “Disappearances, amnesty and impunity: general comment on article 18 of the Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance” (E/CN.4/2006/56, para. 49). The Working Group recommended that: “States should refrain from making or enacting amnesty laws that would exempt the perpetrators of enforced disappearance from criminal proceedings and sanctions, and also prevent the proper application and implementation of other provisions of the Declaration.” It was of the view that “An amnesty law should be considered as being contrary to the provisions of the Declaration … if, directly or indirectly, as a consequence of its application or implementation, it results in any or all of the following: … Concealing the names of the perpetrators of disappearance, thereby violating the right to truth and information, which can be inferred from articles 4 (2) and 9 of the Declaration.” It also stressed that measures similar to amnesties were contrary to the obligations set out by the Declaration, particularly when they had the effect of making “the victim’s right to truth, information, redress, reparation, rehabilitation, or compensation conditional on the withdrawal of charges or the granting of pardon to the alleged perpetrators of the disappearance”. 29. In Chile the task of investigating violations of the right to life committed under the military regime, of ensuring accountability and of punishing the culprits has been entrusted to the courts. Over the last two years there have been significant developments in the process relating to the right of victims to justice, notwithstanding the practical problems posed by the decree on amnesty. From the end of the 1990s, there has been a shift in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, as it began overturning the judgements of military courts based on application of the amnesty decree. Another important development in the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court consisted in its decision to accord “disappeared detainees” the status of victims not of murder, but of abduction, which had the effect of voiding any request for amnesty or prescription until such time as the fate of the victim had been ascertained. 30. Mention here should also be made of a new trend in the country’s higher courts to rule that amnesty is inapplicable in their judgements, and to invoke, as the legal foundation, the obligation to abide by the international human rights treaties ratified by Chile.