A new set of 94 declassified U.S. government documents have been added to the UW Center for Human Rights’ El Salvador FOIA Collection maintained by UW Libraries. The documents in the new tranche cover a wide range of topics, shedding light on the depth of the U.S.’s role in Salvadoran military operations and revealing a previously unknown cache of intelligence records, of which the UWCHR is now seeking declassification.

In recent years, human rights work related to wartime crimes against humanity has accelerated and intensified in El Salvador. While it’s still an uphill battle, the possibility of securing justice in key cases before the courts seems closer than ever before—generating hope among victims, but also more palpable resistance among those accused of crimes.  In

Recent days have brought new developments in the University of Washington’s long-standing lawsuit against the US Department of Defense for access to records pertaining to wartime atrocities in El Salvador. In this case, originally filed in December 2017, the University of Washington seeks the declassification of US documents pertaining to the armed conflict, focusing particularly

Newly declassified U.S. Government documents show American Embassy’s support for the El Mozote massacre trial and other cases of wartime abuses, and provide new insight into wartime dynamics and atrocities such as the assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero, UN involvement in El Salvador, and the alleged corruption and crimes against humanity committed by U.S.-trained Salvadoran Armed Forces and former Defense Minister García.

The University of Washington Center for Human Rights has received the first major cache of newly-declassified documents from our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the US Department of Defense, filed in December 2017. The documents, which are publicly accessible via UW Libraries, reveal key operational details about military operations, deeply relevant to many families’ ongoing search for basic information about the context in which loved ones were victimized or abducted. Sadly, they also reveal frustrating limitations to agencies’ compliance with FOIA, underscoring the need for greater transparency across the board.

UW Center for Human Rights research intern Grace Sorenson reflects on a trip to El Salvador, where she observed workshops in which survivors of the El Mozote massacre presented their interpretations of declassified U.S. government documents about the U.S.-backed counterinsurgency in their country.

In November 2017, UWCHR director Angelina Godoy, accompanied by UW students Emily Willard, Angie Tamayo, and Clare Morrison, traveled to El Salvador to attend the National Assembly of Armed Conflict Victims. The assembly was the first to be held following the 2016 repeal of an amnesty law which had blocked efforts to investigate crime against

Decades after the infamous massacre of El Mozote, the fight for accountability continues. The massacre of El Mozote was committed during “Operation Rescue,” a counterinsurgency operation spearheaded by the US-trained Atlacatl Battalion in December of 1981 in the department of Morazán in northeastern El Salvador. Over several days, the Salvadoran military killed at least 978

Español On Monday, December 11, the University of Washington Center for Human Rights filed a lawsuit in federal district court against the U.S. Department of Defense and two of its subagencies – the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) – under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The UWCHR is seeking

In the New York Review of Books, journalist Jonathan Blitzer profiles UWCHR Director Angelina Godoy and draws on research by our Unfinished Sentences project documenting retired Salvadoran Colonel Sigifredo Ochoa Pérez’s command of army units implicated in war crimes: Godoy is the director of the university’s human rights center, a small, interdisciplinary body run by a few