Inter-American Court Orders Opening of Military Archives |
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Washington, D.C., January 24, 2023 - On Friday, January 20, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights set a new legal precedent for access to human rights information when it ordered the government of Bolivia to open historical military archives concerning a case of assassination and forced disappearance. The sentence in Flores Bedregal v. Bolivia, which found the State of Bolivia responsible for the 1980 disappearance of activist Juan Carlos Flores Bedregal, represents the first time the regional court has insisted that a member state has an obligation to guarantee the right to truth by releasing military documents. Today, the National Security Archive posts key documents from the case, including the Court’s ruling and the expert testimony of Archive senior analyst Kate Doyle before the Court in February 2022, addressing the right to truth and the right to information – including military archives – in cases of grave human rights crimes and crimes against humanity. The ruling has broad implications for the transparency of military records in the Americas, where many states have long opposed opening the archives of their security forces. In the case of historical human rights investigations, governments have routinely denied access to military and police records to families of the disappeared, official truth commissions, even state prosecutors. |
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