Estándares jurídicos y políticos sobre el derecho a la verdad

Abstract

Because it is fundamental, the right to the truth has become a public policy in Colombia, especially in cases of human rights violations and land restitution. Despite the fact that there are extensive regulations in this regard, the effective implementation of this right has been limited by various institutional, political and cultural barriers. Regarding the situation in Colombia, it is important to mention that the right to the truth is recognized in different legal norms. One of these is the Law on Care, Assistance and Comprehensive Reparation Measures for Victims of the Internal Armed Conflict, which establishes in Article 23 that "Victims, their families and society in general have the imprescriptible and inalienable right to know the truth about the motives and circumstances in which the violations were committed” (Congress of the Republic, 2016). Likewise, the Colombian Code of Criminal Procedure in its article 137 establishes that "Victims of the unjust, in guarantee of the rights to truth, justice and reparation, have the right to intervene in all phases of action" (Rama Legislative, 2004). However, the effective implementation of this right has been limited by various barriers. One of the most important barriers is the lack of resources, lack of responsibility and few technical capacities of the institutions in charge of carrying out the search for the truth. According to Fajardo (2012), there has not been a serious effort to investigate, build, and divide a consensual and in-depth account of the events that caused serious human rights violations, [therefore], the state can be declared responsible for violating (for action or omission) the right of people to the truth or to make what happened