Democracy and Rights in Gelman v. Uruguay

Abstract

On 24 February 2011, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) issued its decision in Gelman v. Uruguay , condemning Uruguay for the forced disappearance of María Claudia García Iruretagoyena de Gelman and the kidnapping of her daughter Macarena Gelman during the military dictatorship. In the decision, the Court ordered Uruguay to remove all obstacles that enabled those responsible for the crimes to go unpunished. Accordingly, it declared that Law 15848 on the Expiry of Punitive Claims of the State (“Expiry Law”), a 1986 amnesty law that prevented the prosecution of people who had committed serious human rights violations during the military dictatorship, was incompatible with the American Convention on Human Rights and the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons, and therefore lacked legal effect. That the law had been passed democratically and subsequently reaffirmed two times by popular referendums did not change the Court’s evaluation or impede the Court from annulling it.