Breaking Cycles of Impunity: The Right to Truth as a Legal Tool to Confront Mass Atrocities
In this article, Gaitán Hairabedian explores the “right to truth”: the idea that victims, their families, and society have a legal right to know what happened in cases of mass violence and serious human rights abuses. Drawing on Argentina’s experience confronting the legacy of its military dictatorship, the article focuses on the Hairabedian Armenian Genocide Truth Trial before the Argentine federal courts. Through this case, the author shows how courts can play a crucial role in establishing historical facts and challenging denial through judicial processes. The article presents the right to truth not only as a way to address past atrocities, but also as a forward-looking legal tool that can help prevent future violence at a time when denial and weakened accountability mechanisms threaten global human rights protections.
Artículo (2026)
Bridging Histories: Argentina’s Transitional Justice Process and the Recognition of the Armenian Genocide
This article analyzes how the Argentine Transitional Justice Process (ATJP) enabled the judicial recognition of the Armenian Genocide through domestic mechanisms anchored in international human rights law. Argentina’s determination in the Armenian Genocide Truth Trial (2001–2011) constitutes the first and most rigorous judicial finding on the genocide by any national court, grounded not in memory politics or diplomatic pressures but in binding legal standards. The article examines how an Argentine federal chamber upheld the right to truth of a descendant of genocide survivors and applied the principle of inapplicability of statute of limitations to state-denied genocidal crimes, issuing an unprecedented ruling despite the absence of an accused before the court. This decision shows that when international or diplomatic routes are blocked, domestic courts can still give effect to international legal norms, especially when backed by sustained civil society engagement. The emphasis is on the transnational application of Argentine jurisprudence to historical atrocities, while selectively referencing Argentina’s broader experience in prosecuting crimes against humanity, including the 1985 Juntas Trial and the ESMA III-Death Flight Section Trial. The article asserts that Argentina’s definition of the right to truth as an independent legal obligation, conceptualized by Juan E. Méndez and implemented via truth trials, and the intertwined adoption of the five pillars of transitional justice mechanisms (truth justice reparations memory and guarantees of non-recurrence), provides a persuasive avenue for enhancing genocide recognition through legal innovation. The study posits that by positioning domestic adjudication as a venue for global norm creation, Argentina’s methodology bolsters the international human rights framework, challenges denialism, and underscores the legal importance of remembrance following mass atrocities.
Artículo (2025)
Justicia transicional. Expansión y consolidación democrática
La experiencia argentina de justicia transicional suele narrarse como una sucesión de etapas: la Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (CONADEP) y su informe Nunca Más (1984), el histórico Juicio a las Juntas (1985), el período de impunidad con las leyes de Punto Final y Obediencia Debida y los indultos presidenciales (1986–1990), y finalmente la reapertura de los procesos penales tras las sentencias Arancibia Clavel (2004) y Simón (2005). Esta periodización, es pedagógicamente útil, pero invisibiliza una lógica profunda: un continuum dialéctico en el que interactuaron Estado, sociedad civil e instituciones internacionales, produciendo un marco normativo sólido y progresivo contra la impunidad.
Este trabajo sostiene que la justicia transicional argentina no debe comprenderse como de “ciclos” desconectados, sino como un proceso continuo e inacabado, en disputa permanente por el sentido de la democracia, el derecho y la memoria. En este marco, la reapertura de los juicios durante la primera década del 2000 no fue un hecho aislado sino el resultado de luchas sociales, debates doctrinarios e innovaciones judiciales provenientes de la implementación del derecho internacional en el derecho interno que se desplegaron incluso en tiempos de clausura. El contraste entre las lecturas minimalistas –que recomendaron limitar los juicios en nombre de la estabilidad– y la praxis real de la sociedad civil muestra que la democracia argentina no se debilitó con más justicia, sino que se consolidó en su ejercicio.
Artículo (2025)
The Crime of Genocide: National and International Theories and Practices. The Judgment of Hierarchical Responsible in Genocidal Processes. Dialogues and Comparative Experiences: From International Criminal Court to Argentina ESMA Trial
Genocides and crimes against humanity may involve the highest political leaders and high-ranking military officials. These leaders can be far from the actual site of the crimes, and not engaging personally in any of the material elements of the crime charged. The present work will address theoretical and jurisprudential discussions regarding diverse forms of intervention in punishable acts, to analyze how to attribute individual criminal responsibility of the superior for the acts of their subordinates. Whether they are military commanders or not. I will compare the development of hierarchical responsibility or the responsibility of the Commander-in-Chief within international law, based on the Nuremberg judicial proceedings to the present with the International Criminal Court and the “ESMA Trial” about individual criminal responsibility in the Argentina Navy base between 1976 and 1983. To achieve this objective, I will analyze the distinct forms of how responsibility is assigned, and referenced in art. 25.3 (a) and art. 28 of the Roman Statute and the adaptation with the rules and regulations of decisions of the International Criminal Court.
Artículo (2023)
El juicio por el derecho a la verdad del Genocidio Armenio
Inspirado en la jurisprudencia de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (en adelante Corte IDH) y el creciente desarrollo del derecho internacional de los derechos humanos en torno al derecho a la verdad, tanto a nivel internacional pero fundamentalmente a nivel regional, a finales del año 2001 el hijo de sobrevivientes del genocidio armenio, Gregorio Hairabedian, con el patrocinio letrado de su hija Luisa Hairabedian, presentaron una demanda en la Cámara Federal de Apelaciones de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires solicitando que se iniciara una investigación judicial para establecer si efectivamente hubo o no un genocidio contra el pueblo armenio entre 1915 y 1923.
Artículo (2018)