In 2005, five children lost their lives in a fire at a juvenile detention center in a Latin American state. For years, the victims’ families sought answers and justice.
 
The state failed to take meaningful steps to investigate those who were responsible for the care of the children who died, including the prison authorities. They wanted to silence inmates who had denounced mistreatment and human rights violations within the prison.
 
Out of options, the victims’ families sought recourse before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In 2014, White & Case began collaborating with the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice and a local organization on this matter. Over the next six years, the legal team filed numerous briefs for the families and pushed for justice. The team stressed the continuing impact on the victims’ families and the ongoing deterioration of conditions and safety within the state’s prisons.
 
As our lawyers would uncover, the juvenile detention center lacked basic safety protocols and equipment. There were no fire alarms, extinguishers or sprinklers. Flammable and dangerous materials were allowed inside the building. Cells were overcrowded. There was no escape plan or emergency lighting in case of fire. The fire department lacked basic equipment and, on the day of the fire, arrived without water.

In 2018, the Inter-American Commission issued a report favorable to the victims. It confirmed that unsafe conditions at the detention center had contributed to their deaths and noted the impunity of those responsible. It also elevated the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2019. Before the Court, our lawyers made multiple submissions continuing to stress the ongoing suffering of the victims’ families, as well as the serious danger faced by those detained.

This resulted in a remarkable outcome. The state admitted liability before the Inter-American Court and dropped any challenge to the underlying facts. It also accepted its breaches of the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights. However, it decided to dispute the remedies sought by the families, including monetary compensation for the family members. It also questioned institutional and regulatory changes designed to bring about significant safety reforms to its prisons, including fire safety.

The White & Case legal team was led by partners Rafael Llano of Mexico City and Jonathan C. Hamilton of Washington, DC, with Mexico City associates Paulo Maza and Sabina Hidalgo, Washington, DC associates John Dalebroux, Alvaro Peralta, and legal assistant Audrey Vivas; Paris associates Fabiana Pardi, Katya Hartl, and legal assistant Adrian Hernández; and New York associate Vivi Méndez.

Our lawyers persisted in pushing for a fundamental restructuring and improvement of conditions in the prisons to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring again. The state resisted, and a hearing was scheduled for spring 2020, which would have provided the victims’ family members with their first day in court since the tragedy—some 15 years before. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, stood in the way, and the hearing was cancelled.
 
But the legal team refused to settle and pushed forward, stressing the families’ right to access to justice and to have their day in court. The Court agreed and scheduled one of the first virtual hearings following the start of the pandemic. After so many years, the victims’ family members were finally able to tell their stories in a court of law, before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
 
In December 2020, the Court reached an extraordinary final judgment in the case, ordering the government, among other things, to:

• Continue and conclude the local criminal investigation and/or judicial proceeding and to determine local disciplinary measures for those responsible
• Implement a protocol for fire safety in adolescent detention centers nationwide
• Provide psychiatric or psychological treatment to the victims’ families
• Pay more than US$1 million to the victims’ families, among other measures

Photo by Juan Manuel Herrera  © OAS/OEA
The Hall of Heroes at the headquarters of the Organization of American States