History of International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims

The International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims is recognized every year on 24 March.

On 21 December 2010, the United Nations General Assembly announced 24 March as the International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims.

The date was picked because on 24 March 1980, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero of El Salvador was killed, after denouncing violations of human rights.

In a study led in 2006, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reasoned that the right to reality with regards to net human rights violations and serious violations of human rights law is inalienable and autonomous, connected to the duty and obligation of the State to secure and ensure human rights, to direct powerful investigations and to ensure viable remedy and reparations.

The study affirms that the right to reality infers realizing the complete truth with regards to the events that happened, their particular conditions, and who partook in them, remembering knowing the conditions for which the violations occurred, as well as the purposes behind them.

In a 2009 report on the Right to the Truth, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recognized accepted procedures for the successful implementation of this right, specifically works on identifying with archives and records concerning gross violations of human rights, and programs on the protection of witnesses and different people associated with preliminaries associated with such violations.

The Commission on the Truth for El Salvador was set up as per the Mexico Agreements of 27 April 1991 to explore serious acts of violence that had happened since 1980 and whose sway on society was esteemed to require an urgent public knowledge on reality. In its report of 15 March 1993, the Commission archived the realities of the death of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero by pro-government forces, the purported “death squads”. He was shot dead by a professional killer as he praised mass on 24 March 1980.

This annual recognition pays tribute to the memory of Monsignor Óscar Arnulfo Romero, who was killed on 24 March 1980. Monsignor Romero was actively occupied with denouncing violations of the human rights of the most defenseless people in El Salvador.