Francesca Lessa writes opening chapter of Uruguay human rights report
Francesca Lessa, Departmental Lecturer in Latin American Studies and Development, was invited by Uruguay's Peace and Justice Service (SERPAJ) NGO to write a chapter for its prestigious annual report on the human rights situation in the country.
SERPAJ was founded in 1981, when Uruguay was still a military dictatorship; it was the first NGO in the country to work on the defence of fundamental human rights. It has published a yearly report on the country's human rights situation since 1988.
Dr Lessa wrote the opening chapter of the 2020 report, in which she discusses the significance of the historic sentence handed down by Rome’s Appeals Court in the so-called Operation Condor trial in 2019, in which 13 former Uruguayan civilian and military defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Read the full chapter here.
The launch of the report (in Spanish) can be watched here.