Joint Declaration by the Attorney General’s Office, the Ombudsman’s Office, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Human Rights National Coordination Entity

Joint Work Platform for the Investigation on Common Burials

The undersigned institutions, in the framework of their respective mandates and attributions, state they shall work in coordination to investigate the common burials, fundamentally aiming at contributing to the clarification of truth, the restitution of the dignity of victims and their families and the promotion of access to justice. This work will follow the parameters below:

1. Work in clandestine burials shall be permanently consulted through a coordination entity made up by the Attorney General’s Office, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Ombudsman’s Office and the Human Rights National Coordination Entity. The former will promote the participation of the victims’ relatives. The legal procedures related to this work will be led by the Prosecutor Specialized on Force Disappearances, Out-of-Law Executions and Clandestine Burial Exhumations.

2. The procedure for working in burials will be guided by the international standards established in the relevant agreements and recommendations. To that effect, the institutions will work to adapt the procedure to said standards.

3. The technical and scientific works shall include professionals from different specialties required, including doctors, pathologists, dentists, anthropologists, archeologists and forensic photographers among others. The Legal Medicine Institute and the Criminology Division of Peru’s National Police shall participate in this multidisciplinary team, together with Peruvian and foreign forensic experts.

4. Independent experts shall be proposed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and appointed by the Attorney General’s Office. Their participation will be within the Attorney General’s Office team, in a framework of professionalism and transparency.

5. The undersigning institutions will work in coordination to prepare a National Exhumation Plan to guide mid and long term work in clandestine burials. Likewise, they will prepare any standard proposal required. They also state their will to settle any disagreement based on dialogue and good faith.

6. The implementation mechanism for this agreements will be part of the coordinated work among institutions signing this declaration.

Lima June 2002

Nelly Calderón Navarro, Attorney General; Salomón Lerner Febres, President of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Walter Alván Peralta, Ombudsman; Francisco Soberón Garrido, Executive Secretary of the Human Rights National Coordination Entity.