ABSTRACT
The European Court of Human Rights gives effect to the norms of the right to the truth in three ways: enforcing a state duty of investigation, ordering reparations for breach of this duty and in making, in the course of judgment, its own authoritative findings of what happened. The right to the truth should have effect in the context of gross and perhaps systemic violations of human rights. There is a superficial contrast with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which grounds a similar investigative duty on the general right to legal protection for all American Convention rights. There is a contrast to be made with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights which, under the American Convention has felt able to order, as express provisions in the “operative paragraphs”, an investigation and also other steps relating to disclosure which states must perform.
