How to Assess Responsibility?: Analysis of Argentina's Progressive Legal Trials, Human Rights Advocacy, and Global Rights Innovation in Response to the 1976-1983 Military Dictatorship

Between the years 1976 and 1983, the military dictatorship of El Proceso (Proceso de Reorganización Nacional) presided over in Argentina, resulting in thousands of victims of crimes against humanity ranging from forced disappearances, torture, murders, and the abduction of babies. Once the military dictatorship concluded, a series of human rights trials, from the Juicio a las Juntas (Trial of the Juntas) in 1985 to the trials in the early 2000s, and demands from human rights advocates and organizations took place with the aim of holding perpetrators responsible for their crimes. As trials and citizen demands produced favorable outcomes of holding the perpetrators of El Proceso accountable, today, individuals such as Vice President Victoria Villarruel attempt to challenge these decisions. Villlarruel argues that the military, especially its leaders, are not entirely responsible for the crimes committed during the dictatorship. Given Villarruel's stance, I aim to answer the following question: how can human rights activists and legal institutions address responsibility for human rights violations in hierarchical and collective systems that threaten accountability? In addition, what role does rejecting legal immunity play in preserving responsibility over time, and how do activists and institutions themselves assume responsibility? In my presentation, I answer these questions by arguing that responsibility for crimes against humanity can be sustained through the persistent rejection of legal immunity and continued demands for justice. I rely on the 1985 Juicio a las Juntas and the human rights trials conducted since the early 2000s to demonstrate how prosecutors, human rights organizations, and civil society pushed to hold perpetrators accountable while distinguishing civil responsibility to promote justice from legal responsibility of carrying out violence.