UN General Assembly
2006

Those principles, shared by the vast majority of the 5 06-52885 Argentine people, guide our administration and are the basis of our foreign policy decisions. In the field of human rights, in 2003, after more than two decades of sustained democratic rule in Argentina, we experienced a true paradigm shift. In response to the mandates of the whole of society, the three powers of the State adopted, within their respective purviews, concurrent decisions against impunity, preserving memory, truth and justice and securing reparations. The annulment by Congress of the laws that accorded impunity for State-sponsored crimes of terrorism, the ruling that those laws and pardons granted by the courts in our country were unconstitutional, and the reopening of over a thousand court proceedings for crimes against humanity — some of which have resulted in the conviction of those responsible — constitute landmarks of that shift. It is our conviction that democracy is strengthened with the simultaneous fight against impunity and promotion of full respect for the rule of law, without calling for revenge. With that experience, we have, since the