In late October 2024, Professor Cath Collins began a 6-week training course for staff members of Chile's newly-created Search Plan for the Disappeared .Centro de Derechos Humanos UDP - Universidad Diego Portales | Resultados de la búsqueda | plan-nacional-de-busqueda
The weekly sessions ran until early December and featured input on design of search plans; sensitive restitution of persons or their remains; management of identification processes and associated errors, and challenges of investigating disappearances that began long ago and follow macrocriminal patterns. Guest speakers from Peru, Syria, Colombia, Canada, Uruguay and Mexico will shared insights with the multidisciplinary Chilean team, which included journalists and forensic specialists as well as former detectives and archivists.
On Wednesday 6th November Professor Collins appeared at the invitation of the Committee on Human Rights of Chile's lower legislative chamber, to provide an expert opinion on a draft legislative bill suggested by a far-right member of parliament, that would affect how identification of Chile's still-missing disappeared persons is carried out by removing direct judicial oversight from the process.
On Tues 12th November, the most recent annual report on Transitional Justice in Chile was launched in Santiago, Chile; the Observatorio de Justicia Transicional which Prof Collins co-ordinates has now produced twelve consecutive editions of this report, which maps trials and other truth, justice, reparations and memory developments in some detail and evaluates them in the light of Chile's international duties.
The report has been be available to download from 12 November for free - initially in Spanish only.