A/HRC/36/50/Add.1 fears of a coup. Since then, Argentina found ways to circumvent and eventually annul its amnesty law. “Truth trials” — judicial procedures attributing guilt or innocence, but with no actionable sentence attached to them — have been followed by regular trials leading to 176 decisions sentencing 695 members of the armed forces and the police, and absolving 74.1 Even with no official vetting programme, citizens and the State have found other ways to indirectly vet security forces. Moreover, popular expression about the authoritarian past is common in the public sphere. 7. In Chile, the transition away from Augusto Pinochet’s rule in 1990 was also facilitated by an amnesty, the effects of which have been circumvented despite the fact that it stays in the books. With prosecutions foreclosed by the 1978 Amnesty Decree Law, the Government focused initially on truth-seeking and administrative reparations programmes for victims. Indeed, Chilean reparations programmes have been particularly successful. The programmes are increasingly comprehensive, providing benefits for an increasing number of violations, not just those leading to death. They also combine material and symbolic benefits, including access to victim-sensitive health care, long-term pensions rather than “one-off” payments and many other benefits.2 Chile has experienced a “war of attrition” against impunity, as judicial opinions on the 1978 Amnesty Decree Law have limited its effect. 3 Chilean civil society has been a catalyst for truth-seeking and accountability, through meticulous documentation of abuse, unrelenting activism and cultural expression about the past. 8. Many other Latin American countries have adopted transitional justice measures, including Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. Among these, a number of countries have created comprehensive strategies for truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, rather than narrower, one-off approaches. Latin American approaches to transitional justice have been greatly helped by the existence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, whose decisions have shaped jurisprudence at the national level across Latin America. The Court’s reiterated position on the inadmissibility of amnesties has also been an essential part of the region’s transitional justice story. Additionally, Latin American countries have benefited from inter-State cooperation on archiving, forensics, and other issues, an example of which is the MERCOSUR (Southern Common Market) Acervo Documental Cóndor. 4 B. Europe and North America 9. Europe and North America, particularly the former, have extensive experience with transitional justice measures, albeit not necessarily under this name. Experience with the Second World War, colonialism, military dictatorships and post-communist transitions led Europe to establish many approaches to dealing with the past. In North America, Canada and the United States have adopted some of these measures: reparations from the United States to Japanese-Americans interned during the Second World War, and the recent Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada addressing the horrific history of residential schools for Aboriginal children. 10. The long struggle in Germany to deal with its past is particularly worthy of attention. Following the Second World War, the first international tribunal was held in Nuremberg, Germany. Subsequently, the Allied Powers and the German Government took other steps, including institutional reforms (not limited to denazification), intended to prevent the recurrence of Nazism. Domestic trials were pursued against Nazi perpetrators, and massive reparations were paid to victims of the Nazi regime. The German experience is perhaps most far-reaching in unofficial truth and memory efforts as citizens have debated 1 2 3 4 4 See www.cels.org.ar/web/estadisticas-delitos-de-lesa-humanidad. Elizabeth Lira, “The reparations policy for human rights violations in Chile”, in The Handbook of Reparations, Pablo de Greiff, ed. (Oxford University Press, 2008). Cath Collins and Boris Hau, “Chile: incremental truth, late justice”, in Transitional Justice in Latin America, Elin Skaar, Jemima García-Godos and Cath Collins, eds. (Routledge, 2016), p. 134. See www.ippdh.mercosur.int/acervo-documental-condor-10/.