Human Rights, Global Justice and Accountability
“Jo-Marie Burt brings transitional justice processes to life by recounting eyewitness testimony she observed as a courtroom monitor.”
Forthcoming from University of California Press by Jo-Marie Burt: Seeking Justice in the Land of Impunity: Human Rights Trials in Post-Genocide Guatemala.
Seeking Justice in the Land of Impunity analyzes the groundbreaking war crimes trials that have taken place in the courtrooms of Guatemala. Guatemala was the first country to prosecute a former head of state for genocide and has been a leader in trials of cases of sexual violence, all in adverse political conditions and with limited resources. Jo-Marie Burt brings transitional justice processes to life by recounting eyewitness testimony she observed as a courtroom monitor. By analyzing yearslong attempts to adjudicate some of the country’s most horrific human rights crimes, Burt carefully takes the reader through these trials, which she ties to crucial issues in and beyond Guatemala. Ultimately, the book reveals the value of truth commissions and human rights trials, how “innocence” and victimhood are portrayed in legal proceedings, the importance of voice and testimony, and how the pursuit of justice can help reconfigure the collective memory of difficult pasts.
Peru Human Rights Trials
In 2009, Peru convicted former president Alberto Fujimori for a series of human rights violations that the Supreme Court of Justice determined in its verdict constituted “crimes against humanity.” Dr. Burt observed and analyzed the Fujimori trial and a number of other trials from mass atrocities committed by security forces that were adjudicated in Peruvian courts. The archive of material from this project, which was active from 2007 to 2016, can be accessed here.
Since 2013, Dr. Burt began to work in Guatemala. Her initial foray was as a member of a team of volunteer trial monitors who documented the landmark genocide trial against former dictator José Efraín Rios Montt. The archive of the reports on that trial can be viewed at the website of the International Justice Monitor. Dr. Burt later began to document and write about other war crimes trials for IJM; those reports are achived here.
