National Commission for the Investigation of Disappeared Persons (Comisión Nacional para la Investigación sobre la Desaparición de Personas CONADEP) (1983 to 1984)

Final Report: Nunca Mas: Informe de la Comision Nacional sobre la Desaparicion de Personas. (in Spanish)

How the Commission was created: Presidential act (Spanish), President Raul Alfonsín

Mandate of TRC: To document past human rights violations (individual cases and structural causes)

Type of Human Rights Abuses Investigated Covered most prevalent types of abuse

Period Investigated: 1976 to 1983

Geographic Area Investigated: Covered all regions

Legal powers of investigation: No subpoena/no judicial powers, but supportive evidence for courts

Access to state-military files and other sources of info: Full access according to mandate

Number & Nationality of commissioners: Thirteen all nationals

Budget: Unknown, no concrete numbers provided by the government  (no financial difficulty reported by government)

Perpetrators of the conflict: State armed forces and the secret service   

Number of victims: Several thousand victims 

Number of cases presented to Commission: 8,960+ cases presented, none investigated in-depth, no individual cases included in report

Number of public hearings: None

Naming names: Yes (only after names were leaked to press)

Reparations offered: No clear definition of reparations in commission but does give social importance to reparations. Law 23.466 granted a pension equal to 75% of the minimum lifetime salary to the next-of-kin of the disappeared. Act No. 24.043 and a decree signed by President Menem provided that persons who had been detained for political reasons during the period 1976-83 would be eligible for financial assistance. People who took reparations felt them to be a source of shame, moral dilemmas tied to taking reparations. Litigation before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has resulted in payments to families as well as to those wrongly detained or exiled

Follow-up activities after Commission: Yes (assistance in search for disappeared relatives)

Compiled from:

Justice: The First Casualty of Truth. Brody, Reed. The Nation, 30 April 2001.

Las Comiciones de Verdad en America Latina. Cyua, Esteban. Derechos Human Rights, KO'AGA ROÑE'ETA, Series III.

Rights, Reparations and Reconciliation: Some Comparative Notes. Edelstein, Jayni. Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, Seminar No. 6, 1994.  

Strategic Choices in the Design of Truth Commissions. European Centre for Common Ground & Program on Negotiation, 2002. 

Truth Commissions: A Comparative Assessment. Interdisciplinary Discussion. Harvard Law School, 1996. 

Truth Commissions Digital Collection. Jeannette Rankin Library Program & The United States Institute for Peace, 23 April 2004.

Truth Commissions: An Uncertain Path? Cuevas Espinoza, Victor; Ortiz Rojas, Maria Luisa; & Rojas Baeza, Paz.Corporacion de Promocion y Defensa de los Derechos del Pueblo & Association for the Prevention of Torture, 2002.

"Truth Commissions, Transitional Justice, and Civil Society." Crocker, David A.Forthcoming in Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson, eds. Truth v. Justice: The Moral Efficacy of Truth Commissions: South Africa and Beyond (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) 

Truth Commissions and Transitional Justice: A Short Guide. Bronkhorst, Daan. September 2003.