La Oroya and Inter-American Innovations on the Right to a Healthy Environment
In La Oroya v. Peru, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights declared Peru responsible for violating several rights, including the right to a healthy environment, due to the environmental degradation and health crises in La Oroya—one of the world’s most polluted cities. Regarding the right to a healthy environment, the Court addresses for the first time pollution in air, water, and soil—marking a departure from previous cases that primarily focused on communal property rights and deforestation—and even goes as far as to refer to the right to a healthy environment as jus cogens. Such innovations would have not been possible without the ever-expanding horizon of Inter-American case law and approaches.
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Der lange Schatten der Autokratie
Am 4. Dezember 2023 entschied das Verfassungsgericht der Republik Peru, dass der ehemalige Präsident Alberto Kenya Fujimori Inomoto unverzüglich aus der Haft zu entlassen sei. Dies ist inzwischen geschehen. Fujimori verbüßte seit 2009 eine eigentlich 25-jährige Gefängnisstrafe wegen Menschenrechtsverletzungen während seiner Amtszeit. Es war zum Zeitpunkt der Verurteilung der einzige Fall weltweit, in dem sich ein demokratisch gewählter Staats- oder Regierungschef wegen solcher Rechtsverstöße strafrechtlich verantworten musste. Die verfassungsgerichtliche Entscheidung steht am vorläufigen Ende politischer und rechtlicher Auseinandersetzungen um das Schicksal von Alberto Fujimori. Auch wenn es sich bei der Haftentlassung nicht formell um eine Aufhebung der Verurteilung handelt, so ist sie doch eine Niederlage für die Menschenrechte in Peru und ganz Lateinamerika.
Continue reading >>The Rule of Law in Peru: Beset by Corruption and the Pandemic
It has now been a year since the beginning of this prolonged pandemic, the state of emergency (decreed on March 15, 2020 and extended throughout this entire time), the various levels of confinement and restrictions on civil liberties such as freedom of movement and the right of assembly, and a severe economic recession. At this point, our balance sheet is in the red. This is not only because we reached an official death toll of 52,000 and some 1.5 million cases of infection by March of this year, but also because there has been a severe weakening of institutions, which would explain—in part—why Peru is one of the countries in Latin America that has been hardest hit by COVID-19.
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History, Memory and Pardon in Latin American Constitutionalism
Do pardons have an effect on crimes against humanity? For the last few days, Peruvian society has been debating the pardon of its former president Alberto Fujimori, who has been convicted of crimes against humanity in 2009. On February 20 at the Max Planck Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte, the Legal Historian and member of the Constitutional Court of Peru, Dr. Carlos Ramos Núñez, presented a crucial intervention on the problems that face the current constitutionalism in Latin America.
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