 Good afternoon to everyone, everyone who's joined us today. In the name of the U.S. Institute of Peace, you step from the and from the Institute of Washington. It is a pleasure to welcome you today to talk about the Bolivian reconciliation or search for reconciliation today. My name is Steve Heggy. I am the Director, the Deputy Regional Director for Latin America at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Thank you so much for your interest. Please know that this is being transmitted in life and feel free to listen to the interpretation. We have several speakers here that will be sharing several topics today. We all hope that our proposals for justice within the expert group will contribute an important part so that we can see reconciliation in Bolivia, especially after the turbulent times in 2019 and for structural changes to also be carried out within Bolivian politics. I'm grateful to the panelists. Thank you for joining. We value their perspectives and we understand that they have a lot to do and that they're very busy. So thank you so much. For those that are not familiar with USIP, the U.S. Institute of Peace, it is a separate entity that informs the U.S. government and focuses on international topics. We are especially focusing on the consensus, the political consensus in Bolivia and it is a pleasure to converse and sit down to conversations on several political topics, including drugs and arms as well. I will now give John the floor so that he can also introduce Catherine Medebir, who is our moderator today. John, thank you so much. It really is a pleasure and an honor to collaborate with USIP on this important event, important for Bolivia and I think important for folks in the United States to understand Bolivia and the challenges it faces. I'm honored by the high caliber of the participants in the panel today and I'm really looking forward to the discussion. Wola is a non-profit whose mission is to promote human rights and social justice in the Americas. It's been my pleasure to work now for more than two decades with my colleague Catherine Medebir, who's joining us from Bolivia today, where she directs the Andean information network. She will be moderating our panel today and I'll be putting all of the other introductions and the run of the show in her very capable hand. So thanks again to all the panelists, thanks to USIP, to Catherine for moderating and thanks to the audience for joining us today. We look forward to a fabulous discussion. Thanks so much John for the introduction and thanks so much to Wola and the US Institute for Peace for the invitation to moderate this event. Also thank you to the Embassy of the Plurinational State of Bolivia who coordinated with this event. I'm very very pleased to have such prestigious panel to present. I think we have Bolivian experts and key members of the interdisciplinary expert group that made such an important contribution to peace building in Bolivia. Our first speaker is Juan Mendes. He's a professor of human rights law in residence at the American University, Washington College of Law, where he's faculty director of the Anti-Torture Initiative. He was the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel and humane degrading treatment or punishment between November 2010 and 2016. He is also the author with Marjorie Wentworth of Taking a Stand, The Evolution of Human Rights. He has also been elected a commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva, Switzerland. He was also named a member of the selection committee to appoint magistrates of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace and the Truth Commission set up as part of the Colombian Police Accord. Juan now will explain the shea mandate, the methodology and the conclusions and recommendations. He will be followed by Patricia Tapataba-Aldez, by Jaime Vidal Melero, who was the former executive secretary of Independent Interdisciplinary Expert Group, Patricia Arce Guzman, the first secretary of the Bolivian Senate Justice Commission, Eduardo Rodriguez Velce, former president of the Bolivian Supreme Court and former Bolivian president, and Alejandro Bilbao La Vieja, who is the charge of affairs at the embassy of the Plurinational State of Bolivia in Washington, DC. Welcome Juan, we appreciate your comments, you can go ahead. Thank you Catherine for the introduction. I also want to thank the United States Institute for Peace and the Washington Office of Latin America for the opportunity to recall our report and engage on a discussion of its findings and recommendations as well. It's also a pleasure to see again my dear colleagues, Patricia and Jaime, to share this presentation with all of you. I think it's an important occasion, five months after we published and delivered our report in La Paz to keep the debate open about our findings and about our recommendations. Today in Bolivia, there are still some episodes of confrontation. Unfortunately, only a few of them are turning into violence, but they're always accompanied by harsh rhetoric that we hope can subside and we hope our report contributes to an attitude from all sides to debate politically without falling into violence. We're also concerned because there are still criminal charges of sedition and rebellion that are used that we criticize very strongly in our report because the described offenses of rebellion or sedition are overly broad and vague and therefore allow these charges to be to result in possibly unfair trials. At the same time, we are still heartened by the very strong commitments made by President Arce at the ceremony in La Paz in which we delivered our report, including, for example, the announcement that the amnesty decree was going to be repealed, but also commitments more generally to take very seriously our recommendations. However, we believe that the task of taking steps towards reconciliation is still bending and we're also hoping that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights can take on the task of monitoring implementation of our report, hopefully in a detailed and specific agreement with the government of the very national state of Bolivia to implement and monitor the implementation of the report on a continuing basis in the next few months or years. As you know, the mandate of the HEA, the group of inter-disciplinary experts, was spelled out in an agreement in December 2019 between the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the then interim government. The mandate called for us to investigate all acts of violence and human rights violations occurring between September 1 and December 31 of 2019. And I want to stress that we were looking at human rights violations, but also at acts of violence, which meant for us that we had to look at the behavior both of state and non-state actors and to try to attribute responsibility under international human rights law for whoever bore responsibility for both for either acts of violence or human rights violations. We were barred from discussing two items that were very central to the crisis of the late 2019 in Bolivia. One is whether the change of government in November 10, 2019 constituted a coup d'etat or not. And the other one, whether the elections of October 20, 2019, were marked by fraud or not. As you can imagine, both issues were so central to our study anyway that it was very difficult to avoid mentioning them. So we chose first not to pass judgment on either of those questions. So we did not, our report did not take a position either on the nature of the change of government or on the validity or not of the election. However, we did include in our chapter two a reference to the way different people in Bolivia looked at those issues because we thought that was central to the acts of violence either spontaneous or organized that were indeed central to our mandate. And our chapter two, we did a very careful discussion about what to include. But as you know, our chapter two is a background to the acts of violence and human rights violations. And so we went back a number of years and we studied the cycle of violence and mutual accusations that in our mind set the stage for some of these violations. As you will see, we also attributed responsibilities both to state and non-state actors, but with a more careful assignment of responsibilities to those occupying highest offices in Bolivia, depending on the dates, that is until November 10 and from November 10 to the end of the year, obviously we're talking about two different outputs. So as you know, we were appointed early in 2020. However, we could not start in all of 2020 first because the interim government wanted to postpone our mission until after the elections took place. And then because the pandemic also obviously postponed those elections. So essentially, we started our work in November of 2020 after the government had changed during the because of the election and Mr. Arce had become president of Bolivia. We did make use of some clauses in the agreement that allowed us to ask for extensions because the task result became very, very complicated. And also because of the travel limitations imposed by the pandemic made the fact finding on the ground longer than we had at first anticipated. But we started from the premise that there were very, very different narratives about each of the incidents that we were looking at, especially in the early moments after each of the major incidents, there were all kinds of allegations about who was responsible for what, who had started, which act of violence and who had shot at whom. Some of it was not only just mistakes, they were clearly misinformation or disinformation or what we have come to call here in the United States fake news. So we needed to analyze the evidence and to look for evidence to dispel any myths about the major incidents. We also had to look at some incidents that had not been properly covered, that had been quickly forgotten, perhaps because they did not result in too many deaths, but they were serious enough that we thought we should not avoid investigating them and making findings about them. But our main task, therefore, was to do a very deep and committed effort at investigations on the ground. And that meant that with a very able team, which was also very ably led by Jaime Vidal, we deployed our staff in different parts of Bolivia and not only once, but many times over. And we ourselves, whenever each of us could travel, we made an effort to be in different parts of Bolivia and looking directly at the evidence, at witnesses, at documentation, etc., as much as we could from the perspective of determining exactly what was verifiable of each of these major incidents. We also made a point of making a very careful assessment of the credibility of the sources that we talked to. And of course, we talked to everybody and we made time to listen to anybody who wanted to tell us something. But at the same time, we were committed from the start in making sure that the information that we were receiving was not tainted, was not somehow motivated by ideology or politics and, therefore, lacking credibility. And so we made a big effort to double check and verify the information. And if we got one video of an incident, and there were many other videos, we tried to look at all of them and make up our minds on what could be seen and what could be verified. And the same, of course, with witness testimony. There was a lot of it was abundant evidence to look at, including videos. I mean, in our day and age, everybody has a camera. And so there was a lot of material and a lot of it published also. So we made an effort to look at as much as we could do everything that was in the marketplace of ideas as it were. And we also, as we started doing our work and finding out what was it that we were investigating, we made an effort to obtain support, not only directly from our staff, which was somewhat limited in numbers, but as I said, very talented and very committed. We also got support from the forensic evaluation of material done by the Argentine team of forensic anthropology, which, as you know, we actually added an attachment to a report written by the experts of the Argentine anthropology forensic team. But we also had specialized material or suggestions from the Auschwitz Institute, for example, on measures towards reconciliation that we incorporated into our recommendations. And from Justice Rapid Response that put at our disposal a couple of very important experts on gender dimensions of violence and on measures of investigation and so on. The end result, I think, is that we struggled, but the final result was a decision by the five members to maintain everything that we could and a certain distance between the political actors and not let our own preferences affect what we thought we had seen as evidence on the ground. We decided to come out and talk to people, to talk to them, but as I said before, we also accepted invitations by any person who would like to talk to us. For that reason, sometimes we talk more than once with the same person, some political leaders, because we would close our doors on anybody who wanted to tell us something about our commitment. We were, as much as we could, silent about expectations of our, you know, that people had on our report. For example, there were all kinds of statements that we were going to find crimes against humanity. We preferred not to comment on that, at least not to comment until we had finished publishing our report. The same with possible referrals to the International Criminal Court. Obviously, it was not within our mandate to decide on individual criminal responsibility. We were only assigning institutional responsibilities, and as I said, to all sides, under international human rights law. And we also tried to be guarded about commentaries on developments, legal and other kinds of developments that were happening as we were doing our work. And then, for example, on the amnesty decree published in February, I think of 2020, we commented only directly to the government and because the government asked us to comment on it. We chose not to participate in the public debate while our investigation was still going on. As to the structure of the report, you will have seen it by now, and I'm going to let Patricia Tapata and Jaime Vidal comment more on the content of the report. But I do want to say that we made a big effort to offer recommendations on the way forward, and especially on the way forward about investigations. There were so many limitations or worse weaknesses on the investigations of the criminal acts that we were documenting that we could not avoid making very serious critiques of the way some of these cases had been handled by the appropriate authorities. And at the same time, we wanted to be constructive, so we offered ways forward on how to direct those investigations so that they could come to an appropriate result. We also made recommendations about what we consider central to this violence, and that is the issue of racism in Bolivian society. And we made a very strong recommendation to the government to initiate a forum where all Bolivians should look into their societies and come to grips with issues of racism and establish some ways of overcoming that problem. We made a very special effort to identify gender-based dimensions of some of the violence, and we made recommendations to that effect as well. And finally, we found so many instances of people detained and tortured that we really needed to make some recommendation about how to do investigations without falling into the trap of extracting confessions via torture. And of course, as you will see in the report, there were many other recommendations as well. But I will let Patricia and Jaime brief you a little further on the contents of our report, and thank you very much again. Thanks so much, Juan, for that very thorough explanation of the very meticulous methodology that was used and the special focuses on gender and other key issues that run through the report and have been so central in the recommendations. I think it's really important for all of us to remember that the Inter-American Commission's emergency visit to Bolivia at the end of November 2019 was one of the first voices of the international community calling out or denouncing the violence, the massacres, the detentions, the role of peristate groups, and the very thorough follow-up and the long-term in-depth research of the expert group really provided a lot of substance to that in a very objective, impartial fashion. And I thank you so much, Juan, for your contribution. I just want to point out a housekeeping issue now. Anybody who is part of our virtual audience can ask questions either on the U.S. Institute for Peace website or in the YouTube comments, and USIP and WOLA will be selecting questions to present to the panel today. Now I'd like to introduce another member of the expert group, Patricia Tapacavaldes. She's worked since 1974 for the defense of human rights in many Latin American countries. Since September 2021, she has been part of the independent international fact-finding mission on Venezuela that was established by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2019. Before this, she was a member of the interdisciplinary group of independent experts for Bolivia, created by the Inter-American Commission. Since 2010, she has been a member of the faculty in international human rights at the law department of the University of Buenos Aires. She's also currently on the advisory board at Archives and dealing with the past project of the Swiss Federal Department of Federal Affairs, and she in the past was the director of the Truth Commission for El Salvador in 1992 and 1993. Before that, she headed the Human Rights Department for the National Conference of Bishops in Peru from 1977 to 1987. Welcome, Patricia. Thank you so much for your participation. Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you to John Walsh from WOLA and Steve Haig from USIP. Together with Juan, we divided the content that we wanted to share with you all. I hope I won't repeat anything, but in any case, it will be in Spanish, so it will be a little bit more animated, so to speak. In any case, I will try to go into further detail regarding the content of our report, the report that we published, and I will try to summarize the work that we carried out since November 2020, in other words, one year after the violent acts that took place in August 2021, when we published our final report. We divided the report into eight chapters. Some of them were addressed by Juan, but I will try to focus more in detail on the content. Chapter number four was where we described the background and the unfolding of the electoral crisis. I believe here we have people that have occupied and served as presidents of Bolivia, but also to represent the Bolivian state in the United States, and they are very much aware of the fact that the facts of 2019 were not an exception in terms of events, where there were violent acts or violent events all over the country. When political tension increased, those violent events took place. Chapter number two, therefore, tried to describe the way the violent took place within the framework of the elections. Because of these events, we saw a toll of 37 dead people and a lot of injured people because of the dispute after the electoral results and everything surrounding Evo Morales' resignation and then Janine Agnes taking over. Like I said, Chapter two describes the background information before the events and after without really saying if it was fraudulent electoral process or if it was a coup d'etat. We actually didn't investigate that because that news arrived at the end of our investigation. It was international denounces with specific participation of two countries regarding arms trafficking and how the police force and the military forces of Bolivia were supplied with arms and ammunition. Chapter number three talks specifically about violent acts and violations of human rights. We were asked to analyze the events that caused serious commotion and turmoil. However, we also focused on other events that were less well known, maybe even minor events, but that led to violent acts and that also involved non-state actors. That is why Chapter number three is so long and actually describes acts that took place in Santa Cruz in Montero, Cochabamba, La Paz in the southern part of La Paz, El Aldo, the southern caravans. Here we talk about two caravans, two groups of people that were heading to La Paz in order to demonstrate regarding the turmoil surrounding the electoral process. We also investigated joint operations of armed forces and police forces in Betanzos, Iapacani and Montero. Finally, the massacres that took place in Sacaba and Sencata, those massacres received a lot of international attention and that's where most of the fatal victims happened. Chapter number four addresses subject matter that we believed was quite important and that we couldn't leave aside in any case. These demonstrations, these protests, these blockades of roads in Bolivia were one of the main characteristics of the conflict and they didn't take place overnight. Quite the contrary, they were receded by a series of antagonistic speeches made by the most well-known leaders of each political group, contending political group, and also by political actions that actually brought a lot of tension to the democratic institutions. These behaviors undermined the credibility of the different institutions and also undermined the agreements that were in place to exercise democracy in Bolivia. Within this framework of social and political polarization that was increasingly deepening in very specific dates, we appealed to or actually the ethnic identity was appealed as a criteria to identify whether you belonged or not to the Bolivian society. The hei actually addressed the ethnic matter in the report as well as its politicization. In other words, its political use in order to make accusations to one side or another and also to even try to leave some people outside of the democratic functioning of the country to those people that did not meet certain characteristics that were mainly Indigenous peoples. Those political sanctions therefore took a racial nature specifically in very important political moments and that was actually used, that was weaponized basically by the different sectors. This racist violence was used against Indigenous peoples and there was a very specific type of violence used against Indigenous women specifically. Chapter number four, we talk about structural issues. In order to do so, we analyzed the different stakeholders that we believe were especially important in the conflict. That's how we talk about justice and I'm not talking about justice in general because justice is clearly valid but rather the functioning of the judiciary. Here we also talk about the functioning of the public ministry. Another important actor was the armed forces and security forces. The judiciary as well as public forces in order to include here in this term military and police forces, those need to guarantee the functioning of a democratic society and during the time that we analyzed they were not complying with their normal functions. Given the high number of victims that they produced and given the way that they stopped abiding by their regulations and norms, the regulations and norms that regulate their functioning and in the case of the judiciary because of their clear biased actions, there was therefore an environment of impunity that was really harmful for the highly numerous victims when they arrived in Bolivia a year had passed since the first violent act and we can say that maybe at that time one percent if any of those that had suffered and I'm not talking about those that were in prison because of an illegal application of laws. I'm not talking about that we were talking about those that had been injured that had lost their lives. Those victims were left completely out of the assistance that the state should have provided but also they were not getting any justice or any recognition as victims and they certainly did not have access to a process that could actually lead to reparation and compensation for all the victims since it is a right that they have. This type of impunity is not acceptable and in the case of Bolivia really the state acted against a civil society that had demonstrated in favor of democracy and against and what they thought was an illegitimate electoral process. These institutions, the armed forces or the security forces and the judiciary as well as a very serious act that had to do with the lack of subordination of the armed forces to the civilian power that all happened before the turmoil that led to the resignation of Eva Morales. All those are very serious acts and violations of the rule of law. In chapter number four we address all these structural matters, racism, lack of or weak democratic institutions, lack of democratic rules, weak judiciary with temporary appointments, political manipulation of appointments of judges and prosecutors. The steps that were taken also had very serious setbacks and all that led to a situation where we saw very serious attacks against civil society. Bolivia's character is because in Bolivia we saw a lot of demonstrations to ask for rights and most of those demonstrations took place on the streets. Civil society was therefore very dynamic and they're asking political parties to do something. They blocked cities, they blocked roads and that led to very violent events that repeat on and on regularly and where we saw fatal victims or victims with many injuries. We also have to continue making sure that we have these tools so that we don't have these situations of violence. Our investigation, when we describe what was violated, which by the way is described in the fifth chapter, we also in chapter six proposed several recommendations for investigation that the police force and judicial sector can include in order to improve the rule of law. I would also like to mention that we made a broad explanation of how the victims were affected and we've detailed this information especially why victims are allowed to receive a restitution of their damage and what does it mean to be a victim? Something that I saw in Bolivia was that something that didn't really adjust to reality as is in Bolivia which is similar to many other countries in Latin America. Victims of different events start to collect like in different layers and never receive something for their damages. The incidents on November 19th led to 36 fatal victims, 37 extended families, so we had to multiply the number of people who are mourning for those that they lost without finding somebody who was responsible. But there was a larger group of people who were injured and seeing the nature of these injuries it says a lot about the armed forces and the police force and the protests on the streets. This has affected their future life in terms of their employment and many other factors. Now mainly these people are from a young population. Now these are some of the details that we've included in the report. The state should be made responsible and non-state actors should be made responsible as well. The state was not able to control the confrontations between different groups and abstained from fulfilling its responsibility of enforcing public order and making the public areas safe. So I'm going to conclude here and maybe after the questions we can continue. So thank you so much. And for all of us watching and listening to understand that there are long-standing problems in Bolivia, recurring cycles of conflict, a corrosive impunity, racism that persists, difficulty with the security forces in terms of respecting their constitutional mandate and that of the civilian government, but also to point out what was perhaps unusual in terms of this event or something that's happened rarely in Bolivian democratic history. Another example of extreme violence would be October and September of 2003 with the killings in El Alto in the Bolivian gas war. But I think it's important to note the acute racism, the attacks against indigenous women. Using this as a weapon we're going to speak later with Patricia Arce who was a victim of peristate groups of a racist attack as a woman leader. And to look at how the rule of law was threatened, how it was tossed on its edge, and the very important need for operations and that the victims receive attention because five months after the presentation of the report, and the report led to recognition of other members of the international community about the grave human rights violations that had occurred, that the judicial processes in Bolivia still move very slowly. There are inherent problems with the Bolivian judicial system that need to be significantly addressed, but at the same time the families of fatal victims, those seriously wounded and those tortured demand and deserve justice. One of the areas where we have made progress in Bolivia is working to disband the peristate groups that functioned within the context of this interim government. I'm very pleased to welcome the former executive secretary of the interdisciplinary expert group, Jaime Vidal Melero. He is currently the coordinator of the follow-up and recommendations and impact section of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission. He is a Chilean and a lawyer and he has worked at several posts at the Inter-American Commission, including the head of various repituals office and coordinators of operations at the Sacroix. He also worked in the past at the High Commissioner of Human Rights Office in the United Nations. Welcome Jaime. Jaime is going to explain what needs to be done to ensure compliance with these recommendations, something that the RSA government has assured the Bolivian government supports. What are the steps that need to be taken? What's the follow-through? Welcome Jaime. Thank you so much Catherine. Good afternoon to everybody. Thank you to all of those who are joining today. It's lovely to see Juan and Patricia again since we've worked together in the past while I was secretary on the task that we were assigned to. I've worked with Alejandro Ribao and Catherine from the Andean Information Network. Thank you so much. Thank you to those who organized this event and thank you of course for inviting me. My name is Jaime Vidal as I was saying. I was a former executive secretary of GIEI and now I focus on the follow-up and impact section at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. So I'd like to talk about the follow-up on the report that we carried out in Bolivia. The determinations or the findings at Juan and Patricia presented are well received. The report includes two recommendations to this, includes several recommendations to the state. Now this is a unique opportunity to implement a specific tool to apply work methodologies to overcome the challenges that we have and to also determine the progress of these recommendations. In addition, and this is probably less well known, it's a technical assistance first of all to the state based on the recommendations but also organizations of the civil society and of these victims. These recommendations carry out an important role for all of these groups and especially for the state. This special follow-up tool, especially for Bolivia, it might be useful to talk about the previous experience that we've had. We've seen success in the past in Mesa, in Mexico. We've also seen stories of success in Honduras with the CDH and these could be useful references in the case of Bolivia. Since I don't have too much time I wouldn't be able to present everything that we've had experience with in terms of these tools but I can review the modalities that this tool would help us with. First of all, we have the first modality which is to support on a technical aspect what should be implemented. First of all, we've focused on what we would like to achieve this year 2021 and the second category are the more detailed tools which can deal with specific strategies and situational strategies in a determined country. In comparison to a tool that focuses on follow-up, this tool doesn't focus on the technical aspects but rather on the recommendations. So one of our successful instances is how Mesa has contributed to the 23 missing students in Mexico or also the contributions that this tool has made in Nicaragua. When a recommendation is made by IACHR, this leads to other factors that can be considered for the case. So before going to the main topic on Bolivia, I'd like to quickly talk about why it's important to create a follow-up tool and what its contributions would be based on the experiences in the past in terms of the follow-up tool. First of all, these follow-up tools offer a space for dialogue and conversation to be able to implement the recommendations not only for the state but also for the civil society, for the victims and international organizations. So this way we can expand the dialogue with all the parts involved and as a result we can overcome the obstacles that may arise when trying to comply. It also helps because we can really implement these recommendations in a more programmatic way. This offers a tool that's a little more broad and it's easier to comply with the recommendations. In addition, it helps develop an approach, a focused approach to implement these recommendations. And this way it helps all the actors that are trying to implement these recommendations. Now it's not easy to help the victims who are often forgotten in this process. So having presented the follow-up tools and the ways that they function, I'd like to offer the specific ways that the GIEI can help in terms of Bolivia. Now it's a GIEI that works with IACHR to implement these recommendations. It's really our task to develop a mechanism and it's up to IACHR to help us in this process. Now we have included 36 recommendations in which 26 are directed towards the state and 18 include both social society and the states and two recommendations that are the remaining ones are focused on the internal system for recommendations. We really need to find specific ways to implement these recommendations. There is a large component that the tool includes to help the state implement these recommendations. But there's also a part that focuses on social society and organizations for victims. In this way we can find a way to use this tool for several actors. It's in this way that civil society and the state can find a common dialogue to be able to initiate these efforts. The GIEI offers this tool specifically to implement the recommendations. The acts of violence from September is what is focused on. Now this includes different, it's also compatible with the different tools that the state uses and to also prevent these acts of violence and the violation of human rights. Now we also include in this tool a category to focus on the judicial process so that the justice system can also be used and there is no negligence or negligence by on behalf of the armed forces or the police forces. There's another block that focuses on legislative issues, terrorism, torture and other topics. And finally there is one final block that is focused on the creation of public policies and incidents that violate human rights. What I'd like to really highlight with this variety in terms of the tool that we have is that each one of these categories really will focus on different parts that the state carries out, the judicial, the executive or the other parts, other roles that the state carries out. It's really about having strategies and different work methodologies. We can carry out recommendations that are more individual or more structural or legislative. So this nature of the recommendations, it's important to to really understand that this tool focuses on different parts of these recommendations and focus on the what we can do to help the victims. All these methodologies and the priorities and the actors that intervene here really focus on finding a way for all of this to be more effective. I wanted to share some sides here but I don't think I will have time to talk about all of these topics that I wanted to share. We were also thinking about the periodical follow-ups that we could carry out to make sure that these recommendations are carried out. Also making requests for information to the state and the civil society, making meetings or holding meetings to be able to review all of this. And then also the technical assistance for the development of the policies. But since my time is up, I think actually I went over the eight minutes that I had. I do apologize for this. Thank you so much for inviting me to this conversation. I really hope that you join us in our efforts, especially the civil society and the organizations that focus on the victims. We really developed a group of experts and those that are in charge of these efforts have really been those that have been in the front lines. So having said that, thank you so much and Catherine, please go ahead. Crucial for us to understand the very varied and diverse recommendations and thorough recommendations that the expert group made to different groups, not just the state, but also the different levels of recommendations. And I think that it's really helpful to have and really essential to have a roadmap after such a violent democratic rupture. And the U.S. Institute for Peace and we're all looking towards peacebuilding, but we understand that we need to understand the specific steps and one of them is reparations and one of them is follow through of these crucial and varied recommendations. I think that we all have a better idea and understanding now. And I appreciate your contribution a great deal. Unfortunately, Patricia Arce is in a legislative session and may join us later. So I wanted to move right ahead to Eduardo Rodriguez Belce. I'm quite pleased to have him here because he can provide background information that very few people have or he has a very unique experience as a skilled constitutional lawyer and scholar as a member of the Foreign Service as the former head of the Bolivian Supreme Court and as former interim president. I think that it's important to note that Eduardo Rodriguez's interim presidency was far different than that of Yanine Anya. So it adhered to the rule of law. There were peaceful elections, convoked, they were clear, transparent, and it brought on a democratically elected government in a relatively short period of time. A little background on Eduardo, he's from Cochabamba and got his law degree at the Universidad Mayor de San Simon. He has a public administration degree from Harvard University. He's in the past worked in the foreign ministry and the comptroller's office. He was also a representative from Bolivia to the Latin American Institute of United Nations for the Prevention of Crime in 1999. As I mentioned before, he was president of the Supreme Court. He also was interim president. He has also worked as the Bolivian ambassador to the Netherlands and a member of the Permanent Arbitration Court at The Hague. He's also a member and has been newly appointed to the advisory committee to appoint judges as part of the International Criminal Court. Welcome, Eduardo. We appreciate your participation. Thank you, Catherine. Greetings to everyone who is here with us today. I wanted to start by thanking Wala and USIP for opening up the space to listen to those that were part of the GIEI, the interdisciplinary group of independent experts, and also to say thank you for the report. And not only to those that are here with us today, Juan Patricia Jaime and the members of the team, but also to the different entities that made it possible for this group to work in Bolivia. And here I'm talking about the missions of Mexico, the United States, the Ford Foundation, the as well as others that contributed. The report is notable and the work carried out by its members is admirable. I would like to highlight this because I actually don't remember another case when Bolivia received such a thorough report. And I would like to highlight the work that was carried out on the ground, your willingness to come to Bolivia, to work with the victims, civil society, public entities, agencies, different members of the ministries and so forth in order to draft such a thorough report. We follow the sources, very solid methodology, and we have to say so. Bolivia right now has a very important product to be used that addresses the crisis that we went through. The report focuses not only on violations of human rights, so problems with gender violence or racism. The report by the HE addresses something that in my opinion is actually very interesting as well as concerning for all of us Bolivians. It addresses structural issues in Bolivia. And here I'm talking about something that is addressed in chapter number four that has to do with the functioning of the judiciary, the different instruments used by the judiciary in order to guarantee the exercise of fundamental rights, security, public order, as well as public policies in order for Bolivians to be able to peacefully and harmoniously enjoy our rights and our duties. I was concerned but also thankful. This was an outside perspective and we were told you've undergone a very serious crisis and obviously the report focuses on the most serious incidents but also have provided feedback saying that we need to address our own foundations, the judiciary and democratic coexistence. It's very important to have an international and independent group of experts to tell the Plurinational City of Bolivia that they have to think about doing things better and reflect upon this. I don't think I can add much more to what the report actually says. I'm not part of the executive or the judiciary. My perspective is from a person that is retired. I started reflecting upon what this virtual event could contribute. The title of the event is Bolivia's Search for Justice and Reconciliation and the first thing that came to mind when I was thinking about this after the report had been published was to share with you some thoughts that I shared in the University San Andrés de la Paz quite a few days ago. I believe there was a lecture about democracy and politics and I talked about something that is relevant for this session too. There was a very famous philosopher and Mexican writer Octavio Paz and he said or he actually talked about our democratic incapacity in Latin America and how it's directly related to our lack of capacity for self-criticism. We should reflect upon what we have done, who we are and that also involved talking to the otherness, the other sectors that had been historically marginalized by the state in society in a very divided society as a product of such a complex colonial process as the one that took place in Bolivia. I think we need to analyze this critically with self-criticism. And going back to the report, I think that the group did a great job and it was really good that they were independent and they didn't take sides with any of the two. They didn't take sides in the report. They described what happened in November 2019, November December 2019 and they decided not to call it a fraud or a coup d'etat. In my opinion it was much more serious than a coup d'etat or fraudulent elections. It was a succession of democratic violations in the four branches of power, the electoral, the executive, the legislative and the judiciary. We also saw very serious incidents carried out by the police and the armed forces. This report doesn't take sides. You either defend there were fraudulent elections or there was a coup d'etat. You're either racist or you're with black people. No, you're either black or white. The report doesn't do that. I believe their opinion is very balanced. They show the events as a succession of problems, of weaknesses, institutional weaknesses, of setbacks, of disruptions, very serious democratic disruptions. And we as Bolivians should be able to have enough self-criticism power in order to start thinking not only about specific incidents that took place and that will have to be taken to justice, but to analyze also these structural problems of our judiciary and of our democratic coexistence. I think now it is up to us Bolivians to again be much more empathetic and we need to talk to our other otherness, so to speak. And here I would like to talk about the difficult current situation where we are right now in Bolivia. We are in some sort of stalemate. It turns out that right now we have to activate a judicial system that will have to judge the incidents where we saw very serious and grave human rights violations. In the judiciary where we have the public ministry and the general attorney's office, we saw something that I would like to highlight. There was an analysis not only of the incidents but also of how the judiciary and the public ministry and the prosecutor's office could do or not do. In most of the cases, and I'm not going to go into detail, there is very severe criticism of lack of timely actions, lack of intervention by our prosecutors and our judges in order to analyze the incidents that took place quite a while ago. And it seems like nothing has really happened and they are actually not that concerned about moving forward with investigations. We have therefore a judiciary that is being questioned not only because of its lack of operability but also because of its lack of independence. And it's precisely this requirement, the independence of the judiciary that is paramount for its functioning. The report just corroborates something that we believe had known for a long time. And obviously, this is one of the democratic institutions that we need to save. But it seems that we don't have the right environment yet in place for those decision makers, the public entities that are in charge of transforming the system to actually concern or take decisive steps in order to move forward toward the structural and comprehensive reform of the judiciary in Bolivia. In my opinion, we're still playing the chicken and egg game to test really the political will. I am very concerned, I must say, because without a political agreement with some sort of rapprochement among the different main stakeholders within the political system, we will not have a reform, the necessary reform. In spite of the fact that the political party in power has a comfortable majority in the legislative assembly, they have more than 55% of the votes, rather with 55% of the votes. And they obtained a majority that will allow them to approve structural reforms. However, it's this majority that must decide on specific proposals that would entail coming closer to civil society and bring legitimacy to their interactions within the system. And here is another thought regarding the political situation and that has to do maybe with political science or democratic systems. Basically, the famous system of checks and balances, as it is called in the US, we have to see whether it actually functions or not, whether it works or not in Bolivia. It didn't work during the crisis of 2019. And I don't see it working right now. Therefore, we need to recover spaces for dialogue to have a conversation about democracy. And here, I would like to quote Gargarela, who is a constitutionalist from Argentina. We need to have a debate and know if it's enough to have a majority, the current majority, to eliminate the possibility of a dialogue. Is that what we need? That's what we're wondering in Bolivia. This crisis has taught us many things. For example, we need to have a more reliable and accessible justice system that will bring reparation to the victims. And here we have many victims. Without justice, it will be really hard to start a reconciliation process. The reconciliation process, the different elements of the reconciliation process are clearly identified. There are many innocent victims, but also many perpetrators. And not all of them have been identified. Some of the aggressors or perpetrators are those responsible for the crisis that led to all those violent acts that we saw. Are not willing to recognize their responsibility and their blame in order to start a reconciliation process and to reestablish the very much necessary dialogue that we need in the divided society, such as the Bolivian society. Those in power need to show that they're willing to get involved in such a process where actors have to basically talk honestly to those that have suffered and continue to suffer. Patricia mentioned something about conflict in Bolivia. And I would like to echo what she said. A long time ago, and not only with the government of, with masses administration, we've seen people taking the streets in Bolivia for many, many years. And that's because citizens in Bolivia suffer from something that is very important in for any citizen. They suffer from actually not having access to spaces where they can protest in an efficient and effective manner. I believe Bolivia is one of the worst countries in that sense. And I think this is something that the different administrations, the different governments in Bolivia tried to avoid addressing. The citizen may go to court for criminal cases because of criminal crimes, rather. But citizens do not have any spaces in Bolivia to complain about the performance of their mayors, their politicians and those carrying out the public administration. There's no tradition in Bolivia, any type of resource in Bolivia. And that was a debate that took place a long time ago and that didn't lead to a solution. That's why the root of the of social conflict in Bolivia is still very much alive and it could be activated because they need to complain about water management or lack of distribution of vaccines, for example. Therefore, this democratic coexistence is suffering. If you take a look at the different sessions of the Plurian National Legislative Assembly, you will see that there is a lot of conflict between the opposition and those in power. And once again, I think I would like to say that we can we can actually be optimistic here. Bolivians can have controversies, but we can also reach agreements. The events that took place in November 2019 need to be analyzed, need to be properly addressed, and together with the report of the GIE, we are on the right path in that regard. A few weeks ago, a torture committee in Geneva issued another report in this regard and also an advisory opinion by the Interamerican Court on Human Rights about the very controversial decision of our constitutional tribunal to recognize indefinite reelection as a human right. That was obviously not accepted by most of the judges that took part in such an advisory opinion. Bolivia continues to be the center of attention of many countries in the continent because they're close to us and because they want us to continue to move forward and not repeat these events. I'm going to wrap up right now leaving an optimistic note to my words. I would like to thank once again the hosts of this event, especially I would like to thank those that wrote this report, which is extremely useful for us Bolivians. Jaime said it during his recommendations, so let's hope that we can continue to move forward. There are too many and too big the chances that we have ahead, but we will manage to overcome them. I think that they're really essential for us to understand the widespread democratic fracture, the destruction of balance of powers that was already limited in the past, the role of the security forces, and this persistent polarization that we still have to address. It's unfortunate there was an attempt at legal reform or justice reform in 2017 with penal code system law, which was overturned by popular protests and by some group on the right, but there's still so much more that needs to be done and addressed. I think you've pointed out these difficulties. The expert group has found the same difficulties. The Committee Against Torture has also highlighted these things. I think there's consensus that there needs to be a broad based solution so that we can address these long-term problems and that Bolivia can move forward as a society. I think it's very important that your observations and the observations of the HEA, as you mentioned, are also echoed by other international institutions. I think that everyone's participation is crucial to bringing to light the violence that occurred, the problems that occurred, because at the moment when the violence started in November 2019, the great majority of the international community didn't recognize it, didn't speak out. It was very difficult to convince many large human rights organizations about the violence and the democratic rupture that was occurring, and there certainly was very little coverage in the international or in the Bolivian press. I'm very pleased that this group of people and other institutions have begun to shed light on the long-lasting problems and the violent crisis that took place so that we can all work together as human rights defenders as an international community and with Bolivian experts to move forward and to surpass this democratic breach and to make sure that the victims have justice and have reparations. It's important to note that many of the victims still have criminal charges against them. They still have high medical costs. They have high legal costs. They have serious impediments and psychological difficulties after the violence. We've made a great deal of progress, but we certainly have far to go as a human rights community and a justice community. I'm very pleased now to introduce Alejandro Bilbao la Vieja Ruiz. I think that as a representative of the Bolivian government, it's crucial to hear their voice. Alejandro, as his role as charge of affairs at the Embassy of the Plurinational State of Bolivia in Washington, has focused on the defense of human rights, the promotion of justice issues and was very active in supporting this event and coordinating this event. Alejandro was born and raised in La Paz. He's a lawyer. He has a degree also from the Diplomatic Academy of the Plurinational State of Bolivia and the Masters in Foreign Affairs and International Law. He was advisor to the Bolivian Attorney General's Office in the Ministry of Legal Defense with an area of expertise in international arbitration. He's also got a degree in business administration and a Masters in International Negotiations from the University of Barcelona and was a former negotiator for Bolivia on the team between the European Union and the Andean community for the Complementary Trade Agreement. He previously worked as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Bolivian Embassy in Washington in charge of legal and political affairs, and he now continues his efforts as charge of affairs and he is also a Senior Lecturer of Latin American Political Thought International Cooperation and International Arbitration Forums. Welcome Alejandro. We look forward to your comments on behalf of the Bolivian Government. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you everyone tuning this panel today. We are addressing important things this afternoon here. I'll try to wrap up all the important topics that have been brought here today. Special greetings to the former President of the Supreme Court of Bolivia and Bolivia as well Rodriguez Belsay, former members of the GIE Group, Patricia Tapata, Jaime Vidal, Juan Mendes. Thank you for your service. Thank you to the USIP and WOLA team, Steve and John for the coordination, Katie for her support throughout these years and kind introduction and expert comments. Well, let me start on the background by noting that the final report of the Interdisciplinary Group of Experts GIE was presented on August 17, 2021 because the Bolivian Government ratified its comments to comply with its constituents' mandate by signing the implementation protocol on November 23, 2020 on the idea to combat impunity by recovering the historical memory of the terrible human rights violation registered in our country at the end of 2019 with intercultural democracy, inclusion and dignity. Quoting Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, former Bolivian social politician killed during the Luis García Mesa de facto military government is not hatred that drives our actions by the passion for justice. I'll come back to this later on. As we all know, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights made an on-the-ground observation visit from the November 22 to 25, 2019 in which serious human violations were identified. Among the commission's recommendation was the need to create an oversight mechanism. In other words, the creation of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts was not just a mere formalities. Rather, a direct call to restorative justice are recommended by the highest observational mechanism of the Inter-American human rights system. Based on the GIE's experience in other countries, its tax requires proving substantial evidence leading towards systematic violations of human rights. Therefore, five experts of the high professional and academic levels were summoned to the task. In addition, like the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a plethora of influential human rights organization carried out special reports all reaching identical conclusions. In retrospect, the University Network of Human Rights and the Corporal Law School's International Human Rights Clinic produced a report called Violations of the Right to Life, Freedom and Expression, Assembly and Association, and Other Ongoing Human Rights Violations in Bolivia, which was submitted to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extradjudicial Summary and Admitrary Executions. Furthermore, Amnesty International, along with Human Rights which published several works denouncing massacres, freedom of speech, violations, constant governmental impunity, and corruption, just to name a few. In the same spirit, the Center for Economic and Policy Research also uncovered the residual impacts of false political narratives carrying misinformation, those giving rights the greatest civic violence while they're regarding the jeopardized life of the everyday Bolivian citizens as later supported by the professors from MIT and Tulane, among others. The intensity of the human rights violations was so severe that the international human rights community swiftly respond via official letters, press releases, and solidarity actions. One resounding example is an evidence jointly sponsored by the Center of Latin American Studies Stanford University, HLS Advocates for Human Rights University Network for Human Rights shared by Camila Barreto-Mahia, Thomas Becker, from Harvard School of Law, Samuel Moin from the Yale Law School, Edward Taylor from the University of California, Rodriguez Garabito from NYU, Claret Vargas of the Center for Justice and Accountability, where I had the opportunity to represent the candidate, Luis Arsicarado Catacora, in elaborating political harassment amid corruption, persecution, and escalation of violence in Bolivia for such courageous solidarity, our deepest and most sincere gratitude for their interest in helping us amplify the voices of Bolivian human rights abuse victims. Meanwhile, the United States Congress became aware of state abuse around the beginning of November 25, 2019, as proven through a series of notes addressed preliminary to the head of electoral observation mission in Bolivia, questioning the validity of false political driven narratives that gave rise to a change of violence that led to the systematic violation of human rights in Bolivia, a special recognition to Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who proposed and pushed to pass a law to restrict the de facto government from purchasing war material from the United States during the 2020 fiscal year. On July 7, 2020, in a wave of solidarity with the Bolivian people, an extensive list of joining U.S. senators, including Murphy, Senator Murphy, Senator Leahy, Senator Cardin, Senator Kane, Senator Sanders, Senator Van Hollen, and Senator Markey, signed an official letter made out to the Secretary of State highlighting the November 2019 human rights violations in Bolivia. Unsurprisingly, former government minister of de facto government, Arturo Murillo, who is currently being held in Florida state jail under fraud, monetary and bribery charges, questioned the intention of the legislators, and declared that those senators were misled by a communist plot against them. Subsequently, on September 22, 2021, 28 representatives and senators of the United States sent a note to the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressing the false narratives that had caused the climate of violence in Bolivia that caused the massacres of more than 38 unarmed protesters and bystanders in hopes that the diplomatic channels may address this situation. Following said note, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a long marked language proposed by a U.S. Representative Shostakovsky and White regarding the comprehensive human rights crisis as part of the 2022 fiscal year of state appropriations bill on July 28, 2021. Representative Shostakovsky and White have been among a group of United States representatives seeking answers to specific questions about the emergence of an unelected regime bucket by the military responsible for massive human rights violations. Despite repeated letters from Congress, neither the O.S. officials nor the Department of State have responded to the questions from members of Congress on the basis of the fake news this disseminated in Bolivia that led to the massacre of 38 people, hundreds of wounded and thousands of political persecutors. In October of this year, the United States Senate received and carried the baton of truth through the Appropriations Committee register in the legal report of the Department of State's appropriation bill of the 2022 fiscal year stating the political crisis that followed the Bolivian elections in 2019. According to the language introduced by the senators, the report gives 120 days to the Department of State to investigate the human rights violations based on the findings of the GAE, which has not yet been approved by the plenary sessions of the chamber senators. Clearly, it is necessary to point out that in Saqqaba massacre were tens of strategical executions as presented on page 226 of the GAE report under the analytical evaluation chapter, literally stating as a result, there was a massacre with tens of billion killed and about 100 people injured. The evidence indicates that the state police and military forces acted with the intention of killing the people in the protests, even if they were on the run, became criteria to recognize one as belonging or not belonging to Bolivian society, criterion under which the life of the indigenous was worthless pointing them as a sabbages. Irregular groups carried out of violence, discrimination and extreme right races, attacked children, women and indigenous people, destroying public and private property under the guise of notionless low enforcement bodies, giving rise to the aforementioned human rights violations. People were imprisoned even for posts on Facebook for helping others for providing medical assistance for their clothing appearance or for facial or cultural features. 38 people killed, hundreds of injured, and thousands of persecuted. President Liz Arcea, Vice President of Iqqewanka, have sincerely apologized to the population on behalf of the Bolivian state and promised to repair the damage done by this group that massacred, tortured and persecuted our Bolivian sisters and brothers. The GEE report presentation published on August 17 culminated the first phase in the search for memory and integral reparations and damage which began to carry out even before the presentation of the final report with the derogation of several questionable regulations that the previous regime has instituted. Make no mistake that this is not revenge in any way, shape or form. It is justice, it is memory, it is the road to recover the dignity of the Bolivian people. Haya ya to all of you. Thank you. Thank you Alejandro for that very thorough explanation and an explanation of the role or the position of Bolivian government and to point out that although the international communities often did not recognize the violence, there were key members within the United States Congress that did point this out and that expressed concern and that were very very aware of the gross human rights violation and that that's something very important to point out that there is an area of consensus in spite of bilateral differences between the United States and Bolivia and that is a concern of progressive legislators of the United States for the violence. Both countries' emphasis on the importance of the GEE and the compliance with its recommendation and both countries' agreement that peristate violent groups such as the Cochabamba youth resistance should be disbanded I think is a very important starting point for both nations to move forward and I appreciate your participation very much. We now have some time for questions. I'm going to begin addressing questions that have or are asking the panel questions that were presented earlier and the first one when I'm going to meld two together and I'm going to say them in Spanish because they were written in Spanish I want to make sure that the person that asked the questions views are expressed but two things for the panel to respond to. The first question is which would be your advice for the IACHR regarding monitoring and follow-up on human rights. How could we work on broken or ruptured social fabric and a polarizing society with so much biased information and misinformation? That's the first group of questions. Another person asked how can you guarantee that a confronted society can find agreement in the word reconciliation for some people that's legal retaliation and for others is absolute forgiveness. I don't know who would like to take the floor. I would like to answer the second one and maybe give the floor to Patricia and Jaime to answer the other questions. We believe that reconciliation is absolutely necessary. We've also described violations of human rights as grave violations of human rights in the jurisprudence of the inter-American court and in general in international human rights law. It's mandatory to investigate, prosecute and punish all those responsible and offer reparation to the victims and reveal the truth. We believe that such obligations that like I said come from describing these incidents as grave violences of human rights are the necessary conditions in order to have reconciliation. Forgiveness is the opposite or forgetfulness rather is exactly the opposite of reconciliation. The interpreter would like to clarify that the connection was disrupted and now it's back. Reconciliation, in order to have reconciliation the rights of the victims need to be recognized through an investigation that will lead to the truth about what happened. Reconciliation can take place based on mutual understanding by all Bolivians regarding of what happened and why it happened. Obviously it's a long and difficult road but the start point is investigating what happened, finding other truth offering reparation and non-repetition. Thank you. I would like now to take the floor to answer the questions that have been posed regarding reconciliation. The basis is on truth and justice. Reconciliation has a very broad meaning and sometimes it has a religious connotation so I prefer to talk about democratic coexistence. When there is polarization and cracks now we are somehow condemned to or destined to be together. We are citizens, we live in the same territory and we need to share the country where we live, the country that produces the goods that we enjoy in spite of deep inequality and this deep inequality is shown in incidents such as this one where we find the majority of the victims but in any case we need to strengthen democracy, we need to create also mechanisms for citizens to have a dialogue, the possibility to interact with the state through different instances that currently do not exist and that could actually favor dialogue and democratic coexistence. All those are fundamental and we cannot leave aside other things that are directly related to the truth and to make justice possible. This has to do with political will. Everything that the he wrote in the report would be to be honest completely useless if there is no political will by the state of Bolivia and by the most important political actors. There are many different stakeholders but not all of them have the same power and do not occupy the same place in society. When we call on everyone to come to a mutual understanding we cannot be naive, not everyone has the same power, not everyone holds the same responsibilities in a society. So in that regard I think we need to be very candid in terms of claiming and asking for political will. Regarding the other questions there is something here and again I didn't mention this before but I will do it now. I think we need to mention the role played by the media. They were very present throughout the conflict and at some point everyone was attacking the media and when I say everybody I talk about the sides that were involved in the conflict. They were attacking the media, accusing the media to be biased. There is a problem for sure. It's clear that that problem exists but I believe that the media has a lot to contribute. The government as well as the IHCR have a lot of work to do here as well as other international organizations. They could all work together with the media in order to move towards more unbiased information so that the media can produce more objective information. I think that regarding what my colleague said, my colleague Juan Mendes said we need to know the identity of the perpetrators and those that caused the damage and then we need to follow up on that and implement policies that truly focus on bring reparation. We need to know that in countries like Bolivia and other countries in Latin America there are certain structural conditions that are not helpful and therefore those reparation efforts will have to be doubled. In order to have reparation we will need a lot of political will. Like I said at the beginning, thank you very much Patricia, thank you very much Juan for the very detailed answers that you provided to the questions that were posed here by our audience. It's truly important that we take into account all that you said. I have two questions that were posed in English. The first one is the HIE directs its recommendations to the Bolivian state and civil society as well as to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission. The governments of Mexico and the United States helped fund the HIE effort and the US Congress will be requiring reports on progress in human rights investigations and accountability. How should the international community and the US government support progress in achieving justice and reparations? I don't know who would like to address that first. Who would like to answer the panelists? Of course our report is addressed to the Bolivian government and society but I think because it's an international report it will have the best possible effects if the international community as a whole takes it on and disseminates it and also exerts some influence over the possibility of realization and other recommendations that we made. In that sense, congressional interest in the United States is very welcome. We already have enjoyed while we were working and when we published our report the support of the Office of the High Commission of Human Rights of the United Nations and we felt a lot of support and interest from representatives of the international community and government and foreign governments in Bolivia. I think nudging the Bolivian society towards effective implementation of our recommendations is a task that is collective that can be done by many different actors and particularly offering technical and financial support for some of the measures that will obviously require resources would be undoubtedly very, very helpful as well. As long as the Bolivian institutions welcome it and require it, there should be no impositions here. The decision is finally to be taken by Bolivianos and Bolivians. Thank you very much Juan. May I say something? Yes. I would stress the fact that foreign countries intervening in judicial reform can be very sensitive. That's been assessed in the past. Yet our challenge, main challenge amongst other things is to launch a structural judicial reform and I would say that countries like the US, Mexico or elsewhere or any other one could get involved not directly but through the UN or multilateral organizations. So the issue or the sensitivity being the US promoting or the Mexico promoting a better judicial system in Bolivia can be cumbersome. So I would probably move things towards a multilateral organization rather than a single country. Thank you, Eduardo. Would anyone else like to comment? Thank you. We have time for one last question and I will open this up to the panel. Which recommendations have garnered the most broad endorsement across socio-political fault lines within Bolivia? How constructures such as the Forum on Racism that Juan outlined be leveraged to build greater consensus around the common ground which exists around certain TA recommendations? Who would like to address that? I think at first, the first day that we published a report, we were surprised that we got a lot of support from across the political spectrum and it might seem that each political actor wanted to see in the report whatever they wanted to see and ignored other parts of it. I think, however, what recommendations were most enthusiastically supported or not, I really cannot say. Maybe my colleagues have some sense of follow-up on what was discussed in the weeks and months after the publication of our report. I haven't seen as much enthusiasm for the Forum on Racism that our colleague Julian suggested and we all incorporated into our report. Maybe that recommendation has to be rounded up and filled with a little more substance on it. And then hopefully, Bolivians will embrace it. We think it's very important to use it mostly as a way of recognizing racism as a fact of life and a very negative fact of life, obviously. But one that can be overcome with dialogue and with common understanding. Whether it then becomes a basis for structural and institutional reforms, that will be great. We didn't quite conceive it that way. And I think, in fact, some of the institutional reforms, and by the way, I completely agree with Mr. Rodriguez-Valce about where to look for support internationally for judicial reform. I think judicial reform can happen without reckoning with racism, but I mean, Bolivia will still have the problem of having to reckoning with racism. Thank you very much, Juan. Eduardo, did you want to make a quick comment or Patricia? Sure, just a very quick one. All the justice-related recommendations are, to me, the most important one or the ones that got more recognition. In two-fold, one is specific cases that are still pending and the other one is the structural judicial reform. And just a note on the racial recommendation. As far as I know, the government has announced a summit on the racial matter. That's my impression. Thank you. Thank you, Eduardo. Patricia. Good night. Yes, I just have a comment based on what the other panelists have said. It's really difficult to say exactly what recommendation is more important. However, I would like to say that the one mentioned, the one that has to do or talks about racism and political conflict is very specific in the report. And it talks about structural causes and it talks about specific data that was analyzed. I think it's very interesting and I think everyone understands that in Bolivia and in the Indian countries, there is racism. When we say that the political conflict was racialized in order to use that content and not be part of democratic institutions, that's really what happened when the president resigned and there was a change of government. And I think that was very serious, especially because we have a country with different ethnic groups. And that is part of the Bolivian society. But you can't use race as a way of being included or excluded of the political life. So as experts, we want it to be very explicit in terms of the very violent discrimination. It's a shame that we didn't have one of the victims here, but also it's important to take into account the political debate that took place and that used race as a weapon to disqualify the other. I'm not going to talk about the importance of the judiciary because Bolivia, as many other countries, already underwent different reforms. So when we want to have a new democratic order, we really need to think about this. There are many other people in this room that are much more capable to talk about that. Of course, it's absolutely paramount. There's no doubt about it, but let's see how it can happen. Gracias, Patricio. I just wanted to add one quick comment before I hand the floor over to Steve for conclusions, and that is that the Indian Information Network along with the Washington office on Latin America have worked on growth human rights violations and recurring conflict in Bolivia since the 1990s. And for a long portion of that time, foreign operations language has been crucial in terms of modifying not U.S. intervention in Bolivia, but to a certain extent, but modifying U.S. policy a lack of transparency and reporting and a way to reel in the U.S. government and make sure that U.S. policy focuses on respect for human rights. And I think within that context, the foreign ops language proposed in the Senate is crucial. Thank you very much. Steve, I want to give it to you now for concluding remarks. Thanks to everyone. Thank you very much, Catherine, for your very skilled and professional moderation throughout this incredibly rich and important panel. I think any of those of us who've had the chance to listen to the three members of the group of experts and our two panelists, Eduardo and Alejandro, providing their particular remarks and perspectives, found this to be very valuable, found the contributions. I think reaffirmed that the contributions of the group of experts are incredibly important for a Bolivian society, putting things on the table that are very difficult and sensitive in the context of deep polarization, such as the issues of racism, the independence of the judiciary, very thorny issues of torture that were raised in the report, which continue to be of concern for many Bolivians. These are incredibly important issues and the constructive nature of the spirit of the recommendations themselves, I think are really critical, something that reflects the the inspiration for this particular panel in and of itself between USIP and WOLA to try to find a way in which to give light to the recommendations so that the effort to accountability for the violence of 2019 are truly understood as efforts, impartial, independent efforts to bring healing to not only victims, but the broader Bolivian society. And that requires a lot of structural changes, but it requires a lot of also mindset changes as well. We saw that through some of the comments that were received. I think their comments on the website were actually reflective of the very precise tensions that exist around this report. And the challenge is that Jaime and others will have in the follow-up mechanism. We hope that this is an opportunity to begin a discussion, a deeper discussion, at least from our standpoints and those of you that are in Washington to broaden this discussion as the follow-up mechanism moves forward, so there can continue to be international accompaniment, international awareness around these deep and profound challenges that Bolivia faces. So I want to thank particularly the three members of the experts group, Patricia Jaime and Juan, and of course Eduardo and Alejandro, Alejandro from the Bolivian Embassy have been very supportive of these types of initiatives, very, very grateful for the quality of your comments, of your analysis, of your time and effort to be with us this afternoon. We look forward to future chances to hear how your recommendations are moving forward and to the extent possible that USIP can be another ally in helping them be a source of overcoming polarization, dealing with the past, and hopefully preventing future cycles of violence. So I want to thank Catherine again for her moderation, John Walsh from WOLA and his colleagues and my other colleagues from our events and audiovisual staff at USIP for their work, our interpreters for their long effort over these two hours to get through these very important and complex comments. Thank you all and to the audience that joined this afternoon, very grateful for your interest and hope to continue to have spaces where we can provide this type of very rich debate and important discussion around Bolivia which doesn't get as much attention in Washington and other international circles as it ought to. So thank you all very much and we look forward to future opportunities to continue to engage with you and include you in important debates and conversations like this panel this afternoon. So good afternoon to everyone and we look forward to seeing you again in the future. Thank you so much.