Argentina's National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons: Contributions to Transitional Justice

¹This article examines the contributions to transitional justicemade by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons(CONADEP) in Argentina; a commission established in December1983 by then constitutional president, Raúl Alfonsín,to investigate the fate of the disappeared. In particular, thearticle analyzes how CONADEP's inquiry simultaneously servedthe functions of creating a new public truth about the crimes– which were based on secrecy, the destruction of evidenceand concealment by the state – and of collecting essentiallegal evidence necessary for the prosecution of perpetrators.Finally, it explains the success of the inquiry, which was aresult of the combined efforts of Alfonsín's democraticadministration and the Argentinian human rights movement.