Transitional Justice and Human Rights: Dilemmas in the Assertion of a Right to Forgiveness

The solutions idealized by different countries to overcome the challenge of redemocratization in spite of a recent past of human rights violations, has been systematized in what we nowadays call transitional justice. Recent experiences, especially in South America have been scrutinized by international courts, with decisions that sometimes adopt a different path regarding the juridical possibility of amnesty and forgiveness. In Brazil, the 6.683/79 Law, that amnestied crimes during the military dictatorship was declared constitutional by the Brazilian Supreme Court - but has been censured by the International Court of Human Rights, that proclaimed in the Lund Case it's incompatibility with human rights protection clauses. The question left unsolved - even in the Brazilian case - relates with the sense one can recognize to the central idea of the justice that should be offered in transitional moments - and after. Emphasize the penal persecution aspect reflects an assumption that justice can't be found in forgiveness or reconciliation; denying, those choices as valid ones - even though these behaviors are also an important part of the human condition.