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In May 2001, newly elected President of Peru, Alejandro Toledo called
for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(CVR) to
investigate human rights abuses committed in the past two decades during
the democratically elected governments of Fernando Belaunde (1980-85),
Alan Garcia (1985-90) and Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000).
At the request of Javier Cuirlizza, Executive Secretary of the CVR, and
on behalf of the International Center for Transitional Justice,
Dr. Ball of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), then housed at the Science and Human Rights Program of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, visited Lima three times during 2003. His reports to the CVR
and ICTJ provided evaluations of the CVR technical work and
recommendations on the information management process and analytic
strategies. The final report used the CVR data and data from
other sources to calculate the total number of people killed, broken
down by various dimensions (alleged perpetrators, period, region, type
of victim, etc). AAAS Senior Program Associate Jana Asher collaborated
on the analysis and report-writing. CVR information systems director
David Sulmont and database expert Daniel Manrique also worked on the
report.
Dr. Ball and Ms Asher were present in Peru for the CVR's
public release of their findings (click
here for an English translation of the principal conclusions), which included startling new estimates
of the number of people killed in Peru during the 20-year conflict
between the governement forces and Maoist insurgents. For more
information and to view an English version of the report please see below.
Dr. Ball and Ms Asher were accompanied by HRDAG
advisor Dr. Fritz Scheuren, who helped the CVR explain and educate the
public about the methodology and subsequent results of the Commission's
research.
Funding for this project was provided to HRDAG by the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Additionally, the International
Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) sent Dr. Ball to Lima to
advise the Peruvian TRC on three occasions in 2003.
Click here to download the English version
of the report in PDF format (900K)
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