The Reparations Proposals of the Truth Commissions in El Salvador and Haiti

Abstract

Alexander Segovia

As a result of political negotiations in both El Salvador and Haiti, truth commissions were created to investigate human rights violations. The commissions included in their reports recommendations designed to secure reparations for the victims. Despite the gravity of the events and the formal commitment of the governments, neither El Salvador nor Haiti has implemented these recommendations. These two case studies provide an opportunity to examine the economic, social, and political factors that explain noncompliance with truth-commission recommendations on reparations. This report examines the experiences of El Salvador and Haiti, and presents some conclusions and lessons learned. The first and most important conclusion of the study is that in order to ensure that reparations programs will be put into practice, a correlation of political forces that favors such programs is necessary. The report suggests that the construction of such a correlation critically depends on the existence of sufficiently powerful and influential players to promote and defend it.

The full text of this chapter appears in Pablo de Greiff, ed., The Handbook of Reparations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)