On May 31st, The Human Rights Observatory (Observatorio de Derechos Humanos) of the University Diego Portales released a list of military and police officials serving prison sentences for human rights abuses in Chile committed during General Pinochet’s dictatorship.The list includes name and rank of those convicted, names of victims, length of prison sentences, and locations of the prisons.
Individuals Serving or Having Completed Prison Sentences for Human Rights Violations 1973-1990 (in Spanish)
Branch and Armed Forces Rank of Perpetrators Currently in Prison: Chile (in English)
Descriptive statistics and graphs compiled from the list of convictions.
Resource List: Donor Organizations, Other Democracy Support Organizations and Election Assistance and Observation Organizations
Annex: International Human Rights Law
From the description:
The Diplomat’s Handbook is a project commissioned by the Community of Democracies, and produced by the Council for a Community of Democracies (CCD). The First Edition was produced with the financial support of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, Freedom House, the Princeton Project on National Security, the US Department of State, the Governments of Chile, India, and Morocco, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade of the Government of Canada.
The Handbook project was conceived by Ambassador Mark Palmer. Preparation of the Handbook has been a partnership between Project Head, Ambassador Jeremy Kinsman (jeremykinsman@diplomatshandbook.org), who has been principally responsible for the text of the Handbook itself, and the Director of Research, Kurt Bassuener (kurtbassuener@diplomatshandbook.org), who has been principally responsible for producing the Handbook’s case studies
The text which follows and the case studies benefit from the generous contributions and advice of many former and current diplomatic practitioners, scholars, members of policy centers and nongovernmental organizations, and development experts. The case study on China was drafted by Chantal Meagher, the case study on Cuba by Jeremy Kinsman, and the case study on Egypt by a variety of experts, including Stephen McInerney, Moataz El Fegiery, Michele Dunne and Issandr El Amrani. The Belarus and Ukraine case study updates were undertaken with the assistance of Iryna Chupryna of the Democratization Policy Council.
Julienne Grant, FCIL librarian at Loyola University Chicago, has created a wonderful research guide to Chilean Law, in Libguide format. The guide concentrates on English language sources, but also includes many important Spanish language resources. The guide includes books, journals, databases, Web links, and translation resources.
Many thanks to Julienne for building this excellent useful tool.
This paper explores the current state of public interest lawyering in three Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Based on a series of open-ended interviews with lawyers, judges and social movement activists, it compares public interest lawyering in these countries now with how it was practiced when the author interviewed some of the same individuals in the early to mid 1990s. Its analysis is set within the context of important geopolitical and socio-legal phenomena: the current global economic crisis and the judicialization of politics and constitutionalization of rights that has swept across the region over the past two decades. The paper explores how these developments have influenced public interest lawyers, particularly in their interactions with various social movements. It also highlights the opportunities and challenges that these developments pose for public interest lawyers throughout Latin America.
Over the past few years, The Latin American and Caribbean Journal of Legal Studies has published annotated bibilographies of legal literature from a number of Latin American countries. Bibliographies exist for Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, and Mexico. The bibliogaphies are written by prominent jurists and professors from the U.S. and the region.
Latin American and Caribbean Journal of Legal Studies
On May 23, 2008, 12 South American countries signed a treaty creating the South American Union of Nations. Although no formal institutions are functioning at this time, the treaty does envision a Secretariat in Quito, Ecuador (article 10) and a Parliament in Cochabamba, Bolivia (article 17). It will be interesting to see what documents are produced by this new transnational body and how it affects Mercosur and the Andean Community. The nations involved are: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uriguay and Venezuela. The South American Union of Nations Constitutive Treaty is available in English, Spanish, Portuguee and Dutch from the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Realtions: http://www.mre.gov.br/portugues/imprensa/nota_detalhe3.asp?ID_RELEASE=5466
