Fair Trials in Latin America
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From 2021 to 2024, Fair Trials carried out projects in Latin America in collaboration with local partners and organisations. Our activities in the region concluded in 2024. Fair Trials’ campaigning is now focused on Europe; the information below reflects our past work in the region.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, there has been a rapid expansion of the use of remote technology in criminal proceedings across the region. There is the risk that the use of video hearings will continue to expand and become the norm after the pandemic has ended, which would be a huge setback in the fight against torture.
How we work
As an international NGO, Fair Trials brought in-depth expertise from a comparative and international perspective to long-standing problems of torture and unfair trials across Central and South America. We worked with a network of leading lawyers from the region and abroad, non-profits including IDDD and CNJ, and academics and practitioners in forensic investigation, law enforcement and psychology. Our team included Latin American experts working in Spanish and Portuguese.
REDD
Together with the Instituto de Justicia Procesal Penal, Fair Trials created the Red de Defensores/as Democráticos/as (REDD), a network of defence lawyers and criminal justice and human rights experts in Mexico that fought against torture and developed litigation tools for excluding evidence obtained under torture or ill-treatment.
Fighting torture and pushing back on remote hearings
Fair Trials worked with partners across Central and South America to help legal professionals identify, expose and sanction human rights violations occurring in police stations, prisons and other institutions, where people are most vulnerable to torture used to extract confessions later admitted in court.
Remote hearings
During the COVID-19 pandemic, as the use of remote hearings expanded rapidly across the region, Fair Trials campaigned against video hearings becoming the norm, calling on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to ban videoconferencing in initial or custody hearings.
Plea bargaining
Drawing on its work in other jurisdictions, Fair Trials highlighted best practices and the risks of alternatives to trial, including plea bargains and abbreviated procedures, in the Latin American context.
Fair Trials’ work in Latin America concluded in 2024. To find out about our current work in Europe, visit Our Work or explore our campaigns.