Forces training establishments.
367. Neither the representatives nor the State made any specific mention regarding this
measure of reparation.
368. In the instant case, the State has acknowledged and the Court has determined that,
during the military operation in which the Atlacatl BIRI was the main participant, with the
support of other military units, including the Salvadoran Air Force, successive massacres were
perpetrated at seven places in the north of the department of Morazán (supra paras. 17, 19 and
151). In this regard, the Court considers it pertinent to recall that it is crucial that human rights
education programs are implemented effectively within the security forces and have an impact in
order to create guarantees of non-repetition of events such as those of the instant case. Such
programs must be reflected in results of action and prevention that demonstrate their
effectiveness, regardless of the fact that they must be evaluated by suitable indicators.527
369. Consequently, this Court considers it important to strengthen the State’s institutional
capacities by training the members of the Armed Forces of the Republic of El Salvador on the
principles and norms of protection of human rights and on the constraints to which they must be
subject. Therefore, the State must implement, within one year term of notification of this
Judgment and with the respective budgetary provision, a permanent and compulsory program or
course on human rights, including a children- and gender-based perspective, for all ranks of the
Armed Forces of the Republic of El Salvador. This Judgment and the case law of the InterAmerican Court on grave human rights violations must be included in the training.
5)
Other measures requested
370. The representatives submitted the following additional requests: (a) that the State adopt
measures to improve the monument erected to commemorate the victims in the square of the
village of El Mozote, “which includes ensuring the inclusion of the names of all the victims who
have been considered victims in these proceedings,” as well as that the said monument be
declared a national monument, and that, on this basis, the State be responsible for its
maintenance and protection; (b) that the State “acquire the houses in the village of El Mozote
where the women were murdered, in order to create in it a memorial, where objects and
documents relating to the massacre can be kept,” and (c) that the State establish a place in
each of the affected villages where the next of kin of the murdered victims may go to remember
them.
371. The State expressed its willingness to agree to and create spaces to recognize the dignity
of the victims and remember them, within the reasonable time required by its nature. In this
regard, the State indicated that it had begun the corresponding procedure to declare the site
where the massacre of El Mozote occurred as a cultural site, as a measure of moral reparation
for the victims and their next of kin and that, in addition, it would draw up a plan to create
different spaces in the affected villages to recognize the dignity of the victims, all this in
coordination with the communities concerned.
372. The Court assesses positively and takes note of the State’s willingness to agree to and
create spaces to recognize the dignity of the victims and remember them, and urges El Salvador
to comply with this undertaking, which will not be supervised by the Court.
373. The representatives asked the Court to order the State to eliminate the names of those
identified as responsible for the massacres from any public institution, as well as to prohibit any
means of honoring them. In this regard, they explained that a hall of the Military Museum of the
Armed Forces, and the Third Infantry Brigade are named after Domingo Monterrosa, and
527
Cf. Case of Goiburú et al. v. Paraguay. Monitoring compliance with judgment. Order of the Inter-American Court
of Human Rights of November 19, 2009, forty-ninth considering paragraph, and Case of the Las Dos Erres Massacre v.
Guatemala, para. 252.
115
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