A efetividade do processo penal como direito humano da vítima de crime: uma análise a partir das diretrizes da Corte Interamericana de Direitos Humanos

Abstract

This paper seeks to display an approach to criminal procedure, in view of the International Human Rights Law, focusing on the victim. It produces a wide reading of human rights, which goes beyond the reductionist bias of comprehending them only as negative obligations, in order to study such rights from a positive and obligatory perspective (of procedural obligations). The study tackles a bibliographic review of manuscripts on the subject and addresses the judgments in which Brazil was sued and convicted in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, for the sake of identifying the characteristic traits of a lawsuit that, in the light of the Inter-American Regional System’s understanding, would represent adequate legal practice, or an efficient legal action. The victim's role in justice systems has been remodeled considerably in History: from protagonism, deriving out of the era of private justice, to ostracism, typical of public justice, in which the victim was removed from conflict, henceforth established exclusively between State and offender, the injured party has recently been rediscovered by the International Human Rights Law, in the sense of having a state response to the violation of human rights recognized as a right of the victim. The centrality of the human being, proposed by international documents published after World War II, rescued the concern with the victim. In terms of international law, the American Regional System has come to acknowledge, according to the combined reading of articles 1.1, 8º and 25, from American Convention on Human Rights, not only the right for the victim to incite the instances of control in the event of human rights violations, but also the right to obtain adequate and prompt legal practice, setting in its precedents a set of guidelines to be observed. Thus, due to the supremacy of DIDH rules, the projection of such interpretation, rendered by the Regional System, impacts the internal criminal procedure, raising the victim to a prominent position. It is necessary to conceive criminal procedure, which, without neglecting the individual guarantees of the defendant, is able to provide adequate responses to the victim, in search of a balance between efficiency and assurance.