ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on key concepts covered in the book. The book shows how criminal trials acquire some specific characteristics that help to distinguish them from ordinary criminal proceedings, resulting in a more integrated perspective that includes retributive and restorative aspects for the victims. It analyses how prosecutions can operate as a mechanism of reparation for victims of human rights violations. While impunity tends to deepen the damage generated by violence and excludes victims from the justice system, prosecutions tend to create favourable institutional and social premises for their inclusion, empowerment and redress. Both modalities generate specific conditions that give rise to what can be defined as either a framework of exclusion, where impunity prevails, or a framework of reparation where prosecutions are undertaken. The book also shows how human rights trials in Argentina have produced important changes in the victims' lives.
