Unit for Global Justice event

Bringing Justice Home: The Human Rights Trial of Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori

Deptford Town hall, Room B9
10 March 2009
4pm-6pm

Prof. Lisa J. Laplante
Marquette University Law School
Deputy Director, Praxis Institute for Social Justice

Lisa Laplante will discuss the significance and developments in the human rights criminal trial of Alberto Fujimori, president of Peru from 1990-2000. The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) findings have indicated that there were systematic human rights violations during the Fujimori presidency, often instigated as part of Fujimori’s publicly declared war against terrorism. In his campaign against local subversives, Fujimori erected draconian anti-terrorism law which in effect terrorized local populations. His trial for two massacres and the abduction of a journalist and businessman also responds to the TRC’s call for accountability. The trial of the former president is one of the first domestic proceedings for such abuses against a former head of state, and thus an important landmark in the development of human rights law and international criminal law.

Lisa J. Laplante received her law degree from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern merit scholar. She participated in Peru's political transition in various capacities for six years, beginning as a researcher with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission under a grant from the Notre Dame University Transitional Justice Program. She co-founded and is deputy director of the Praxis Institute for Social Justice. She was a member at the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study (2007-2008), and now serves as a visiting assistant professor of law at Marquette University Law School (U.S.A).