How does a truth commission get its authority, asked law PhD

Life after graduate research: Dr Valeria Vázquez Guevara

Dr Valeria Vázquez Guevara was troubled by the uncritical celebration of truth commissions internationally. During her law PhD at the University of Melbourne, she examined how these post-conflict institutions were created.

“International law and its geopolitics are part of my life story. I was born in November 1989 during the final days of El Salvador’s civil war, which coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War,” says University of Melbourne law PhD graduate Dr Valeria Vázquez Guevara.

Dr Vázquez Guevara wondered about this dissonance. She wanted the time and space offered by a PhD to delve into how truth commissions combine the many views of local communities to produce an official account of a conflict.

Why choose the University of Melbourne for a law PhD

“When you read articles and you follow the footnotes, you begin to see a wider authorship network. I saw how Australia was producing all this really innovative and exciting research – a lot of it through the University of Melbourne,” Dr Vázquez Guevara says.

“That’s why I applied. Well, also because it's a public university with an extraordinary international reputation. While institutions shouldn’t be reduced to prestige or reputation only, sometimes that can give you an idea about the resources available for research.”

Access to library resources, for example, is crucial for a PhD researcher.

“Early on, I needed a document from the early 1900s when Uganda was a British colony, but it was at the British National Archives. The University of Melbourne library liaised with them for me, and they got me that document,” Dr Vázquez Guevara says.

Dr Vázquez Guevara received a PhD scholarship that included fee remission and a stipend to support her research at the University of Melbourne. She also received funds for fieldwork and to attend conferences.

“In the Australian PhD system, PhD scholarships are well funded. You don’t have to worry about an income for at least three to three and a half years,” Dr Vázquez Guevara says.

“So many scholarships elsewhere come with additional work you have to do. This one really allows you to focus just on the PhD and that improves the quality of research you can do.”

The Melbourne Law School and the Institute for International Law and the Humanities encourage PhD candidates to engage with and support each other.

And Dr Vázquez Guevara had plenty of support from her supervisors, Professor Sundhya Pahuja and Professor Shaun McVeigh.

“They nurtured a community and gave me meaningful feedback. And yes, they were very demanding. But you need demanding supervisors who can do a tough job, which is to help you improve but without undermining your confidence,” she says.

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Are truth commissions the only option for post-conflict truth-telling?

Truth commissions are established in the aftermath of a violent conflict.

“Truth commissions are institutions that are created under the premise that by drawing on a plurality of experiences about a conflict, they will establish a single and official account about the violent conflict which is called ‘the truth’,” Dr Vázquez Guevara says.

The institutions aim to help reconcile different communities. They aim to repair relationships and to prevent the return of violent conflict.

Sometimes, to transcend the authority of the post-conflict state, truth commissions get their authority from international law, Dr Vázquez Guevara found. This occurs even though truth commissions aren’t designed to work with any laws.

“When they draw on the authority of international law to create this single account of the past, it comes at the expense of either displacing or silencing experiences about the violent conflict that don’t necessarily conform with the normative values and meanings embedded in international law,” Dr Vázquez Guevara says.

International law claims to be universal – but representing the whole diversity of world views that exist is simply impossible.

“And in the case of the Chilean truth commission and El Salvador’s UN-run truth commission, for example, what they were leaving out were the experiences of Indigenous peoples and peasants,” Dr Vázquez Guevara says.

“The particular violence that they suffered during the dictatorship that had a lot of racial and colonial history or connotations was not acknowledged.”

Truth commissions don’t pretend to be perfect. But the international community tends to see them as the only option.

“I don’t pretend to have the answers, that’s not my job. But I think perhaps there could be a space for something else,” Dr Vázquez Guevara says.

A University of Melbourne law PhD can lead to an academic career

Dr Vázquez Guevara won a 2024 University of Melbourne Chancellor’s Prize for Excellence in the PhD Thesis, and Melbourne Law School’s 2023 Harold Luntz Graduate Research Thesis Prize.

“I was so surprised about the prizes, because all of my peers have written marvellous theses. The high quality of doctoral theses from my PhD cohort is a testament to the kind of training that we get at Melbourne Law School, but also to the kind of community that allows you to thrive,” she says.

Cambridge University Press is publishing a book by Dr Vázquez Guevara, which is inspired by her PhD thesis.

After graduating, Dr Vázquez Guevara began a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Hong Kong. She will continue there in a new role as Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law.

“Doing the PhD at the University of Melbourne was simply one of the best decisions of my life,” says Dr Vázquez Guevara.

“I will always love Melbourne. I love Australia.”

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