CCPR/C/126/D/2773/2016 Annex Joint opinion of Committee members Tania María Abdo Rocholl, Arif Bulkan, Hernán Quezada Cabrera and Hélène Trigroudja (concurring) 1. The present opinion does not deal with the decision of the Committee on the merits – a decision we fully support – but with the remedies afforded to the author, who was the victim of grave breaches of the Covenant when he was a child. In his claim for reparations, the author requested, among other measures, “an official apology … on the occasion of a public ceremony” (see para 3.9). However, the majority of the Committee, while granting some of the measures requested, declined to order the State party to provide a public apology to the author. Our dissent concerns this refusal, since, in this case, we consider that a public apology is fully justified, given the totality of the circumstances. 2. We recall at the outset that public apologies have been recognized by the General Assembly as an efficient, necessary and complementary measure of remedies in cases of grave and massive violations of human rights. 1 More importantly, public apologies are also included in the guidelines on measures of reparation under the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights adopted by the Human Rights Committee in 2016, which also provide that that, in deciding on measures of reparation, the position of the parties should be taken into account (CCPR/C/158, para. 4). We note that, in the communication, the author specifically requested a public apology, a claim not contested or otherwise responded to by the State party. Furthermore, the guidelines indicate that, among the measures of satisfaction, the Committee may request that State parties issue a public apology, particularly in cases of grave or systematic violations where the injury cannot be fully redressed by restitution or compensation only (para. 11 (e)). Notably, the suggested criteria are not cumulative, but disjunctive. 3. Ordering apologies is a longstanding and uncontroversial measure of reparation in the Inter-American human rights system. 2 The justification for so doing is rooted in a number of reasons that serve both symbolic and practical ends. Where the human rights violation is large-scale, individual measures may be impractical or even impossible, and in such circumstances, a public apology can be useful in addressing collective harms. More profoundly, given that some human rights violations may result in losses that cannot be quantified and so redressed by mere monetary compensation, an apology may well be the most powerful, if not the only, means of assuaging the grief, pain and anger felt by victims. 3 These considerations clearly inform the guidelines on measures of reparation, in which the Committee specifically regarded apologies as warranted in cases of grave or systematic violations where the injury could not be fully redressed by restitution or compensation only. As we demonstrate below, the facts in this case meet the conditions of both grave and systematic violations. 4. In the present case, the condition of gravity is met for three reasons. First, the author was a child when he was tortured and ill-treated by the State agents. He was also a child when he was the victim of forced labor. Although the latter occurred at the instance of private persons, the Committee recognized that the State failed to prevent and protect the author from this grave violation and was therefore itself accountable for it. Moreover, under 1 2 3 Principle IX of the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right of Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law (General Assembly resolution 60/147, annex). For example, see Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Case of Durand and Ugarte v. Peru, judgment of 3 December 2001 (merits), paras. 38–39; and Case of Terrones Silva and others v. Peru, judgment of 26 September 2018 (preliminary objections, merits, reparations and costs), para. 254 and sect. F. Margaret Urban Walker, “Restorative Justice and Reparations”, Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 377–395. 15