Transitional justice and the challenges of a feminist peace

Abstract

Abstract Colombia’s 2016 Peace Accords with the former FARC guerrillas expressed the triumphs and challenges of feminist mobilization. The resulting deal has been touted as “history’s most inclusive peace deal internationally.” During the negotiations groups of women combatants, government officials, and activists were successful in integrating a gender perspective into the Accords; their triumph extended to the selection of the judges of the new transitional justice system, where gender parity is a first for regional courts. With power, however, come new and complex challenges, not least the fact that perpetrators who admit perpetrating crimes of sexual violence will receive lenient, community service, sentences. Hope is perhaps to be found in feminist peace activism in Colombia, which has far exceeded the reiteration of women’s sexual victimization, and is set to take advantage of the incorporation of restorative justice to insist on the centrality of victim impact statements, the assessment of harm as part of transitional justice, and the incorporation of victim agency and expertise. However, as this article also argues, feminist activists are also right to be skeptical: there is no clear path to the construction of a feminist peace.