Background on the Alien Tort Claims Act

Passed in 1789, the ATCA grants jurisdiction to U.S. federal courts to hear complaints by foreign nationals for torts in violation of the “law of nations or a treaty of the United States.”

Beginning in 1981, in the landmark Filartiga decision, U.S. courts have recognized that a limited number of international crimes including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, “disappearances,” extrajudicial executions, forced labor and prolonged arbitrary detention, violate the "law of nations” and that claims for such abuses therefore can be brought under the ATCA.

The Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 (TVPA) approved of these court decisions and extended rights to U.S. citizen plaintiffs to bring claims against individuals acting under "actual or apparent authority, or color of law, of any foreign nation,” for torture and extrajudicial killing.

Atrocity victims normally encounter enormous difficulties in vindicating their rights. In most cases, the victims cannot seek redress in the country where the abuse occurred. ATCA and TVPA cases provide a U.S. forum for victims to tell their stories to a court and can create a judicial record of their suffering. Although awards under ATCA and the TVPA, including punitive damages, may never be recovered, they are meant to send a message to others that such conduct is unacceptable. Victims are empowered and perpetrators are, in effect, barred from the United States for fear of recovery action. The suits also allow U.S. courts to articulate principles of international law applicable in the United States

Under the ATCA and the TVPA, cases have been brought against the former dictator of Haiti, Prosper Avril; the self-proclaimed leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic; a Guatemalan defense minister and Indonesian military officials, among many others. In a class-action civil suit against the estate of Ferdinand Marcos, the former dictator of the Philippines who had substantial assets in the United States, victims are receiving a large sum of money. Three victims from El Salvador filed suit against two top Salvadoran Generals, Jose Guillermo Garcia and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, who were living in retirement in Florida. In 2002, a jury in West Palm Beach Florida found the generals liable for torture and ordered them to pay $54.6 million in damages to the three plaintiffs.

More recently, ATCA suits have been filed against multinational corporations accused of direct complicity in crimes committed by foreign governments and their security forces. For example, plaintiffs suing the oil company UNOCAL allege that it hired highly abusive Burmese military units to provide security for a gas pipeline project, and that the military used forced labor and committed other grave human rights abuses in direct furtherance of UNOCAL’s interests. The oil company Talisman has been sued for allegedly allowing Sudanese military forces to use its facilities to stage operations against civilians, and for providing vehicles and fuel to those forces. ExxonMobil has been accused of providing equipment and logistical support to Indonesian forces who killed and tortured civilians. None of these cases has yet gone to trial.

July 29, 2003

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