Breaking the silence: challenging legal limits to pursue human rights violations

Abstract

Forced disappearance represents one of the most serious violations of human rights. In order to fight this humiliating practice, international community adopted the Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Forced Disappearance. Nowadays, Spain is being confronted with its bloody past under Franco's era. His fascist dictatorship is marked with grave violations of human rights. When turning to democracy, Spain opted for forgetting past wrongs. This consensus between former foes was embodied in the so-called Pact of Forgetting. Today, it serves as an argument for domestic courts for denying justice to the victims of Franco's regime calling for justice. Yet, the victims have been desperately calling for justice at Spanish courts and European Court of Human Rights. The Spanish courts, however, found themselves 'between the mill wheels'. They have to balance between the will of Spaniards embodied in the Pact of Forgetting, and the International Human Rights Framework.