Back

Caribbean & Central America - November 2013 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Cicig enters final stretch

Last month Colombian jurist Iván Velásquez Gómez took over from Costa Rica’s Francisco Dall’Anese as head of the United Nations-backed international commission against impunity in Guatemala (Cicig), which is tasked with investigating connections between organised crime and State institutions. A respected anti-impunity campaigner who investigated links between paramilitary groups and legislators in Colombia, Velásquez becomes the third – and by all accounts the last – director of Cicig which began operating in the country in 2007. President Otto Pérez Molina has confirmed that Cicig’s mandate will expire in September 2015. With debate on-going as to just how much Cicig has achieved and how durable these achievements are likely to be, the constitutional court (CC)’s recent announcement that it was considering whether a 1986 amnesty law applies in the case of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983), whose historic conviction for genocide and human rights violations committed during the 1960-1996 civil war was overturned in May [RC-13-06], is raising fresh impunity concerns.

End of preview - This article contains approximately 1172 words.

Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article

Not a Subscriber?

Choose from one of the following options

Back

Articles in this issue