Feminist trajectories from Peru to Colombia: taking violence experienced by women into account in truth commissions

Abstract

ABSTRACT International human rights law has long ignored women’s realities, reproducing an epistemological blind spot that has impacted transitional justice mechanisms such as truth commissions. In the early 2000s, this blind spot was challenged by Peru’s Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (CVR; Truth and Reconciliation Commission). The lessons learned in Peru about including gender in transitional justice processes have nourished the application of transitional justice in Colombia. This article examines the inclusion of a gender perspective in Peru’s CVR and highlights the advances and lessons that inform Colombia’s Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, la Convivencia y la No Repetición (CEV; Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Repetition). Furthermore, it underscores the innovative contributions of Latin American decolonial and communitarian feminisms to reframing the inclusion of gender in the context of Colombia’s CEV. We argue that these feminisms allow the recognition that “woman” is a plural subject intersected by race and class; challenge liberal feminist conceptions of gender; propose a reconceptualization of time; provide a historical explanation of the reasons behind violence against women; and give an important centrality to nature, territory, and the sacred in the explanation of violence and in peacebuilding.