The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (Grupo Interdisciplinario de Expertos Independientes, GIEI) is a committee of jurists and doctors created by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to carry out a parallel investigation of the abduction and disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico. The group was established in 2014 and issued two reports by 2016. It was reactivated in 2020. [1]
Legal scholars described the Group as "the first experience of international monitoring carried out within a criminal investigation process of its kind. It can be replicated and contribute to the investigation of emblematic cases and regional settings where processes of mass victimisation have occurred." [2]
The Organization of American States is an international organization that was founded on 30 April 1948 for the purposes of solidarity and co-operation among its member states within the Americas. Headquartered in the US capital, Washington, D.C., the OAS has 34 members, which are independent states in the Americas. Since the 1990s, the organization has focused on election monitoring. The head of the OAS is the Secretary General; the incumbent is Uruguayan Luis Almagro.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States (OAS).
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is an international court based in San José, Costa Rica. Together with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, it was formed by the American Convention on Human Rights, a human rights treaty ratified by members of the Organization of American States (OAS).
An enforced disappearance is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person by a state or political organization, or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person's fate and whereabouts, with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law.
North Macedonia is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights and the U.N. Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and Convention against Torture, and the Constitution of North Macedonia guarantees basic human rights to all citizens.
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention(WGAD) is a body of independent human rights experts that investigate cases of arbitrary arrest and detention. Arbitrary arrest and detention is the imprisonment or detainment of an individual, by a State, without respect for due process. These actions may be in violation of international human rights law.
Problems related to human rights in Chile include discrimination against indigenous populations; societal violence and discrimination against women, children, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people; child labor; and harsh prison conditions and treatment. Additional human rights concerns in the country include use of excessive force and abuse by security forces, isolated reports of government corruption, and anti-Semitism. Authorities generally maintain effective control over the security forces. However, security forces occasionally commit human rights abuses. The government generally takes steps to prosecute officials who commit abuses. Nevertheless, many human rights organizations contend that security officials accused of committing abuses have impunity.
The record of human rights in Venezuela has been criticized by human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Concerns include attacks against journalists, political persecution, harassment of human rights defenders, poor prison conditions, torture, extrajudicial executions by death squads, and forced disappearances.
The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission was a commission of inquiry appointed by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in May 2010 after the 26-year-long civil war in Sri Lanka to function as a Truth and reconciliation commission. The commission was mandated to investigate the facts and circumstances which led to the failure of the ceasefire agreement made operational on 27 February 2002, the lessons that should be learnt from those events and the institutional, administrative and legislative measures which need to be taken in order to prevent any recurrence of such concerns in the future, and to promote further national unity and reconciliation among all communities. After an 18-month inquiry, the commission submitted its report to the President on 15 November 2011. The report was made public on 16 December 2011, after being tabled in the parliament.
The Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), also known locally in Bahrain as the Bassiouni Commission, was established by the King of Bahrain on 29 June 2011 tasked with looking into the incidents that occurred during the period of unrest in Bahrain in February and March 2011 and the consequences of these events.
Luis Leonardo Almagro Lemes is a Uruguayan lawyer, diplomat, and politician who currently serves as the 10th Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS). He also served as Minister of Foreign Affairs between 2010 and 2015 during the presidency of José Mujica.
Emilio Álvarez Icaza Longoria is a Mexican human rights ombudsman and activist serving as a senator in the LXIV Legislature of the Mexican Congress from Mexico City. He previously served as the president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Mónica Feria Tinta is a leading barrister, a specialist in public international law, at the Bar of England & Wales. She practises from Twenty Essex Chambers, London. "The Lawyer" magazine featured her in its "Hot 100" 2020 list, as amongst “the most daring, innovative and creative lawyers” in the United Kingdom. She has also been shortlisted as "Barrister of the Year" by the Lawyer's Awards 2020, alongside Lord Pannick QC, one of the UK's highly regarded advocates. In 2000 Monica Feria-Tinta became the first and only Peruvian-born lawyer to receive the Diploma of The Hague Academy of International Law in history, the year Professor Pierre-Marie Dupuy delivered the General Course. Her litigation work led to the first international human rights court decision ordering the prosecution of a former Head of State for crimes under international law. In 2006 she was awarded the Inge Genefke International Award for her work as an international lawyer and in 2007 she became the youngest lawyer to be awarded the Gruber Justice Prize, for her contributions advancing the cause of justice as delivered through the legal system; an honour she received at a ceremony chaired by US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Washington DC.
On September 26, 2014, forty-three male students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College were forcibly abducted and then disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico. They were allegedly taken into custody by local police officers from Iguala and Cocula in collusion with organized crime. The mass kidnapping has caused continued international protests and social unrest, leading to the resignation of Guerrero Governor Ángel Aguirre Rivero in the face of statewide protests on October 23, 2014.
Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College, best known as Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, is a higher level institution for men only, located in Ayotzinapa, in the municipality of Tixtla in the Mexican state of Guerrero. It is part of the rural teacher's school system that was created as part of an ambitious mass education plan implemented by the state in the 1920s. Moisés Sáenz was the head of the Secretariat of Public Education at the time of the college's creation. The project for rural teachers' colleges had a strong component of social transformation, which has made it a hotbed for social movements. In that sense, Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College is of high importance because it is where important figures like Lucio Cabañas Barrientos and Genaro Vázquez Rojas were educated and later on were the ones to lead important guerrilla movements in Mexico during the 20th century.
María Guadalupe Murguía Gutiérrez is a Mexican lawyer and politician of the National Action Party (PAN). She is a national senator for the state of Querétaro. She has held several public positions in Querétaro state government, and was the President of the Chamber of Deputies of Mexico from March to September 2017.
The 2019 Sacaba massacre occurred when Bolivian soldiers and police attacked and broke up a protest led by Bolivian coca growers at Huayllani, in Sacaba municipality, Cochabamba on 15 November 2019. It came in the first week of the interim presidency of Jeanine Áñez. Marchers intended to enter the town of Sacaba and proceed to the departmental capital of Cochabamba to protest the ouster of Bolivian president Evo Morales, but were stopped by the police and military. During the afternoon, police and soldiers clashed with protesters, and eventually soldiers opened fire on the crowd. Ten demonstrators were killed; an estimated ninety-eight people were wounded, including four journalists and eight members of the security forces. Two hundred twenty-three protesters were arrested, many of whom suffered mistreatment and at least nine of whom were tortured.
The 2019 Senkata massacre occurred when Bolivian soldiers and police broke up a multi-day protest that had blockaded the YPFB gas facility in Senkata, El Alto, Bolivia, on 19 November 2019. It occurred one week into the interim presidency of Jeanine Áñez and four days after a separate massacre in Sacaba, Cochabamba. The massacre marked the deadliest act by Bolivian security forces and deadliest day in Bolivian politics since the 2003 Gas War.
The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts is the title shared by a series of committees of human rights experts appointed by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights to investigate particular incidents or scenarios of human rights violations. Legal scholars described the first such group, focused on a mass "disappearance" in Mexico, as "the first experience of international monitoring carried out within a criminal investigation process of its kind. It can be replicated and contribute to the investigation of emblematic cases and regional settings where processes of mass victimisation have occurred."
The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts for Bolivia is a committee of jurists and human rights experts created by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to carry out a parallel investigation of human rights violations during the 2019 Bolivian political crisis, covering the period from 1 September 2019 to 31 December 2019. The group was established following discussions between the IACHR and the interim Bolivian government led by Jeanine Áñez in December 2019, and an agreement between the two in January 2020. Its four members were appointed on 23 January 2020. The Group was supported by a five-member technical team and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. The Group began its work in Bolivia on 23 November 2020 and issued its final report on 23 July 2021.