Inocencia Luca de Pegoraro et al. v. Argentina

In 1977, while Argentina (defendant) was controlled by a military dictatorship, government agents abducted and detained Susana Pegoraro, who was pregnant. Susana gave birth while detained at a military facility. In 1999, the baby’s biological grandmothers, Inocencia Luca Pegoraro and Angélica Chimeno de Bauer (plaintiffs), filed a complaint against Policarpo Luis Vásquez and Ana María Ferra, alleging that they had abducted Susana’s baby and that their 22-year-old daughter, Evelin Karina, was that baby. Vásquez and Ferra confessed that Karina was not their biological child but claimed they did not know her origin. Karina did not want Vásquez and Ferra to get in trouble and refused to consent to genetic testing. Eventually, Argentina’s supreme court ruled that Karina was not required to submit to genetic testing. Because this ruling essentially ended any official investigation into the abduction of either Susana or her baby, the grandmothers and others filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleging that Argentina had violated the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR). Using the convention’s friendly settlement processes, the commission mediated a voluntary settlement between the parties. This proposed settlement stated that Argentina agreed with the grandmothers that additional official measures were appropriate to promote justice in cases involving identifying children abducted by the military dictatorship. To that end, Argentina’s executive branch agreed to: (1) submit bills to the legislative branch that would improve laws on genetic testing, improve access to the courts, and provide abduction victims with nonmonetary reparations; (2) ask the attorney general to implement better procedures for investigating and prosecuting allegations that the military dictatorship abducted children; (3) train the judiciary on issues specific to these crimes; and (4) create a task force to monitor these activities and otherwise promote the goal of improving the country’s handling of this somewhat unique category of offenses. The parties submitted the settlement to the commission for approval. Argentina’s executive branch also began submitting the bills to the country’s legislative branch as promised.