Maite Parejo Participates in Conference on The Fight against Impunity Committed During Francoism

On Wednesday 13 March, Maite Parejo, principal of G37–Despacho Internacional, participated as one of the main speakers of the conference “The fight against the impunity of the crimes committed during Francoism”. The event was organised by the Human Rights Institute of the University of Valencia and was hosted at the university itself.

The Human Rights Institute, founded in 2005, is a multidisciplinary investigation centre specialised in human rights. It is particularly devoted to training experts, academic research and raising awareness on human rights violations against individuals as well as vulnerable and threatened groups. In addition, it also fights for the accountability of international crimes along with defending the effective prosecution of any restriction of human rights whatsoever.

During her speech, Maite Parejo presented a thorough overview of the major initiatives of the civil society and of national and international human rights associations aiming at the effective materialisation of the rights to truth, justice, reparation and no repetition of the victims of the dictatorship. Commencing with the filing of the lawsuit before an Argentinean court in 2010 by several victims, Maite went on to focus on the most relevant current cases, specifically the investigation of the systemic child kidnapping and stealing. This crime was committed following a structural and repetitive pattern across the whole territory for around fifty years, from the beginning of the fascist regime until the decade of 1990, already committed deep into the democracy.

Together with Maite, the other public speaker was Carlos Castresana, a Spanish lawyer, prosecutor of the Supreme Court on voluntary leave, and member of the Directive Board of the Spanish Human Rights Association.