Justice for Atrocities: Dialogues and Encounters between Latin America and Europe

This book examines how national and international regional courts in Europe and Latin America address justice for serious human rights violations, comparing approaches across these distinct regions. It analyzes judicial responses to gross violations of international human rights law and humanitarian law―including genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes―through the lens of regional institutional frameworks.

The comparative analysis explores decades of significant case law addressing atrocities such as murder, torture, sexual offenses, and enforced disappearances in both conflict and peacetime settings. The book contrasts Europe’s experience with mass atrocities during the World Wars, Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, and recent violations in the Caucasus and Ukraine, against Latin America’s widespread abuses under dictatorial regimes and internal armed conflicts in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, and Peru during the latter decades of the 20th century.

This volume is essential reading for legal scholars, human rights practitioners, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and policymakers working in international criminal justice. It also serves as a valuable resource for graduate students and researchers in law, political science, international relations, and peace and conflict studies who focus on accountability mechanisms for serious human rights violations across different regional contexts.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of Human Rights.

Marco Longobardo is Reader in International Law at the University of Westminster, UK. He undertook his doctoral studies at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. He is the author of The Use of Armed Force in Occupied Territory (2018), for which he was awarded the 2021 Paul Reuter Prize. For his scholarship on general international law, the law of occupation, peace and security, and the protection of community interests, he has received prizes from the American Society of International Law, the Asian Society of International Law, and the Italian Society of International and EU Law. He is the Reviews Editor of the Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies and a member of the advisory boards of the International Community Law Review and the Journal du Droit Transnational.

Juan-Pablo Perez-Leon-Acevedo is currently pursuing a second doctoral degree of DPhil in Law at the University of Oxford, UK. He is also a tutor in international law and tort law at the University of Oxford as well as a tutor in the Stanford in Oxford program. He holds a PhD from Abo Akademi University, Finland, an LLM from Columbia University, USA, and an LLB from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. He has also served in different capacities at, inter alia, the International Criminal Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the United Nations, the University of Oslo, etc.