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The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child published a report on Wednesday, January 22, finding Paraguay responsible for serious human rights violations in connection with the deaths of two 11-year-old girls, Lilian Mariana Villalba and María Carmen Villalba , during a Joint Task Force (JTF) operation in September 2020. The investigation into the case was led by Committee members Luis Ernesto Pedernera Reyna and Ann Marie Skelton.

The FTC is a special unit composed of military and police troops. It was created in 2013 during the Horacio Cartes administration with the mission of combating the Paraguayan People's Army (EPP), an armed group with a presence in the departments of Concepción and San Pedro since 2008, which the Paraguayan government holds responsible for kidnappings and murders.

According to the UN Committee, the FTC directly caused the girls' deaths in circumstances that required investigation. "The State party failed to fulfill its duty to investigate the girls' deaths promptly, in an effective, thorough, independent, impartial, and transparent manner," the document states.

Furthermore, they consider the State's failure to conduct a diligent investigation in accordance with the principles of international human rights law to constitute a serious violation. The UN finds that the State acted with gross negligence or deliberately concealed crucial aspects of the investigation.

What happened in Yby Yaú?

On September 2, 2020, then-Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benítez, in a press conference and on social media, celebrated what he called a "successful operation" against EPP guerrillas on a ranch located in Yby Yaú, on the border of the departments of Amambay and Concepción, in the north of the country. The triumph he spoke of was the murder of two 11-year-old girls, María Carmen and Lilian Villalba.

At the time, prosecutor Federico Delfino reported that the dead were two women. "This operation was judicially authorized on August 28, and we have to talk about the death of two Paraguayan citizens who chose to confront the security forces rather than face justice," he told Última Hora .

The girls' bodies were buried without performing an autopsy and their clothes were hastily burned on the day of their death. According to General Héctor Grau of the FTC, this was due to health protocols for the COVID-19 pandemic, a claim denied by journalist Maximiliano Manzoni in this investigation . The official guide from the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare on the Handling of Corpses in the Event of Suspected or Confirmed COVID-19 Infection indicates that autopsies are not recommended but could be performed under specific instructions.

Based on its investigation, the UN Committee concluded that the government misrepresented the victims to the media from the outset. First, it claimed they were two Paraguayan women, and then that they were teenagers aged 15 and 18. The Paraguayan justice system ordered their exhumation and autopsy on September 5, 2020, and was able to confirm that the girls were 11 years old at the time of their death.

According to an investigation by journalist Andrés Colmán, the parents of Lilian Mariana and María Carmen were allegedly members of the EPP (People's Party) and that the girls were born clandestinely in the north of the country. However, their relatives, being fugitives from justice, preferred that the girls live with their grandmother in Puerto Rico, Misiones, Argentina.

Information gathered by the international press indicates that María Carmen and Lilian Mariana were cousins ​​and were registered in Clorinda as Argentine citizens in 2010. At the end of 2019, they crossed into Paraguay to reunite with their parents for the first time, but were unable to return due to border closures caused by the pandemic. In a video released by the Human Rights Missionary Team, Mariana de Jesús Ayala de Villalba, the grandmother of the girls who died in Yby Yaú, confirmed that the girls were there because they wanted to meet their parents.

In this article , Korol explains that Laura Villalba is María Carmen's mother, and Myriam Villalba is Lilian Mariana's mother. The journalist maps out the persecution the Villalba family is experiencing to this day, including Carmen Villalba, an imprisoned founder of the EPP and mother of Carmen Elisabeth Oviedo Villalba, "Lichita," a 14-year-old girl who disappeared on November 30, 2020, in the same area.

Korol cites a testimony from Myriam Villalba, Lilian Mariana's mother, explaining that the UN resolution confirms what they have been denouncing from the beginning:

"That our girls were visiting Paraguay, that they were in fifth grade in Puerto Rico, Misiones, Argentina, that our girls are Argentine nationals and that they were 11 years old. At no point were they belligerent girls, as Paraguay tried to justify in capturing, torturing, and executing Lilian and María Carmen," Myriam Villalba stated.

On September 4, 2020, the Argentine Foreign Ministry confirmed that the deceased were Argentine nationals, born on October 29, 2008, and February 5, 2009. In this statement, they rejected General Grau's statements and urged the Paraguayan government's cooperation in clarifying the events and identifying those responsible.

After the exhumation of the girls' bodies, Pablo Lemir, a forensic doctor from the Public Ministry, said their clothing could have been stored in compliance with COVID-19 protocols. He also stated that the clothing could have been used to determine the distance of the gunshots.

They were girls

"They Were Girls" emerged as a rallying cry for truth and justice for the infanticide of María Carmen and Lilian Mariana, the return of Lichita alive, and the immediate release of Carmen Villalba. Chants such as "We're not all here, Lichita is missing" and the faces of Lilian Mariana and María Carmen multiplied at feminist marches and human rights demonstrations. The #TheyWereGirls campaign sought to denounce the negligence and the state's crude handling of the girls' deaths. 

The Human Rights Coordinator (Codehupy) published a statement in 2022 describing that since the beginning of its operations, the performance of the Joint Task Force (FTC) in the northern zone of Paraguay was characterized by a series of irregularities and human rights violations towards the most vulnerable populations .

“Girls, boys, adolescents, young people with disabilities, older people, from rural and indigenous communities; as well as the actions riddled with irregularities and poorly aligned with the current legal framework by various justice officials, both from the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Judiciary,” they stated three years ago.
Civil society organizations, such as the Coordinator for the Rights of Children and Adolescents of Paraguay (CDIA) , Amnesty International , and Codehupy, supported the UN Committee's statement. But five years after the girls' deaths at the hands of the Joint Task Force (FTC), those materially and ideologically responsible remain unpunished.