Transitional Justice System Research Articles

The Territory as a Victim: Geological Assessment to Analyzing the Impact of Colombia’s Armed Conflict on Geo-Bio Megadiversity at the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

This study delves into the intricate relationship between Colombia’s status as one of the world’s 17 Megadiverse countries and the socio-environmental challenges the country faces, with focus on the geological diversity of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (SNSM); the world’s highest coastal massif laying in the Caribbean Region of Colombia. Despite its natural splendors and magnificence, SNSM’s ecosystems have been significantly shaped by the enduring Colombian armed conflict (1964- latent today), leading to alarming environmental degradation that affects both geological and biological diversity, and hence the local communities inhabiting the territory. Employing modern geological methodologies such as Remote Sensing and Landscape Metrics, this research explores and quantifies the extent of degradation within the SNSM. The findings, spanning the pivotal years from 2000 to 2020, offer an innovative analysis of the Geo-Bio-Megadiverse ecosystems of the Sierra. This comprehensive examination reveals crucial insights to advancing informed environmental management, while supplying a groundwork for potential geoconservation strategies in this embattled territory; unequivocally acknowledged as a victim of a multifaceted and long-lasting socio-environmental conflict. The definition “territory as a victim” originated by local indigenous communities and is now incorporated in transitional justice systems such as the Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz (JEP, Colombia), condenses the profound violence experienced by the land, one that muted the spiritual guardians inhabiting its waters, trees, plants, soils, and stones. By spotlighting the intricate interplay between social struggles and environmental degradation as a central element of the ecosphere-techonosphere conflict in the Anthropocene, this study heightens awareness of the urgent issues confronting the SNSM, while advocating for targeted conservation initiatives to preserve its distinctive and invaluable natural heritage.

The figure of “Civilian Third Parties” in the Colombian Transitional Justice System. One more contribution to International Society

Este trabajo reivindica la figura de los “terceros civiles” acuñada en el marco del Sistema Integral de Verdad, Justicia, Reparación y no Repetición (SIVJRNR) de Colombia como antídoto al veto corporativo en contextos de posconflicto. Así, a partir de una serie de fundamentos teóricos y jurisprudenciales, se reexaminan los argumentos esgrimidos por la Corte Constitucional colombiana en la Sentencia C-674 de 2017 para limitar la competencia sobre terceros atribuida a la Jurisdicción Especial de la Paz por el Congreso de la República (Acto Legislativo 01 de 2017), con el propósito de esclarecer la responsabilidad de aquellos sujetos que, sin formar parte de las organizaciones o grupos armados (incluidos los actores económicos), hubieren contribuido de manera directa o indirecta a la comisión de delitos en el marco del conflicto armado y de apostar, más allá del caso colombiano, por la necesaria universalización de esta figura en el Derecho Internacional.

Thinking methodologies with textiles, thinking textiles as methodologies in the context of transitional justice

In this paper, we examine the methodological possibilities of working with personal textile objects, such as clothes in need of mending, beloved personal blankets, and knotted rag dolls. Our focus is on a transdisciplinary project that sought to collectively explore how the bodies of professionals working for the Colombian Transitional Justice System are affected when engaging with narratives of war and conflict. We contend that textile making in this context serves a dual methodological purpose when facilitating spaces of careful research. Firstly, this material practice enables participants to pause and immerse themselves in their own experiences, something that in turn is generative of personal reflections. Secondly, the created objects become appreciation devices capable of documenting and eliciting memories that continually engage participants and researchers in new inquiries. Consequently, this paper contributes to the understanding of object-oriented methodologies as inherently relational and situated. Moreover, it aims to comprehend textile making practices as capable of unfolding care as a research practice.

Radio Silences: The ‘Kidnapped Voices’ and the Production of Political Memory in Colombia (1994–2018)

AbstractAfter being kidnapped by the FARC-EP guerrilla group in 1994, the Colombian war reporter Herbin Hoyos created the radio show Las Voces del Secuestro (roughly, The Kidnapped Voices). Every morning, for 24 years, the families of those abducted by the guerrilla group sent out public messages of remembrance, hoping that their loved ones, deep in the jungles of Colombia, would be able to hear the broadcasts on their radios. Although the show closed in 2018, its legacy lives on, not only in the collective memory of many Colombians but also as an exhibition at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva (Switzerland). This article examines this show as a dispositif of power and knowledge that (re)produces a particular understanding of law, justice and memory. The show was used by far-right actors in Colombia to mobilise against the recent (2016) peace process – its crown jewel, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP). As the JEP tackles the question of the FARC-EP kidnapping through its macro-case 01, the shadow of the Voces looms large over Colombia's transitional justice system. In the longest non-international armed conflict in Latin America, even radio waves served the continuation of war by other means.

The emerging corporate turn in transitional justice

This essay reviews recent developments in transitional justice (TJ) scholarship that represent an emerging corporate turn in TJ. TJ has traditionally focused primarily on states and state-like actors, a movement that has gone hand in hand with the increasing standardization of TJ as a field of practice. Highlighting some of the limits to this model of TJ, scholars have since early 2000s been calling for the need to include economic actors in the TJ system. These four books that have all been published between 2020 and 2022 reflect a new momentum for this movement within TJ scholarship. They all highlight, in different ways, how complimentary innovative mechanisms and creative legal combinations have led and can lead to holding economic actors accountable for past abuse. Corporate accountability has been a blind spot in the increasingly standardized approach to TJ, but this emerging corporate turn represents a possibility to innovating the TJ standard to include “new” actors as subjects of accountability. All books, however, also show that this is far from a straightforward process as it involves transforming the deeply engrained and rigid international law and human rights system, which have usually protected economic elites and focused on states.

Women and the Rwandan gacaca courts: gender, genocide and justice

AbstractThis article examines the gacaca trials of women accused of perpetrating the Rwandan genocide, asking whether and how ideas about their gender impacted their defences, testimonies and experiences as defendants. It uses court reports of the trials of 91 accused women; a set of sources that provides novel insights into the role of gender in an African transitional justice system. These sources reveal that ideas about gender – particularly female peacefulness and passivity – were commonly invoked by both accused women and wider trial participants. These gendered ideas not only helped women to achieve acquittals, but they also contributed to the Rwandan state's construction of a ‘truth’ narrative that ordinary Rwandan women are not capable of genocide violence. Additionally, women's trials reveal a further function of the gacaca process: as a political tool that made moral judgements about contemporary Rwandan women's domestic roles and place within the household.

Nature in Focus: The Invisibility and Re-Emergence of Rivers, Land and Animals in Colombia’s Transitional Justice System

ABSTRACT Harms resulting from a 50-year-old conflict in Colombia were out of all proportion. Clashes between organized armed groups, such as guerillas, army troops and paramilitary groups, resulted in countless human rights violations. The emergence, degradation and continuation of the war has shown that, beyond a clash of armed groups, the conflict was and continues to be underpinned by a ‘logic of dispossession, exploitation, and domination.’ In the shadows of the strife, non-armed actors, such as businesspeople, corporations and politicians, benefited from the war, and participated in land grabbing, forced displacement and the illegal possession of land that historically belonged to Indigenous People, campesino and afro-communities. Along with human bodies as the first territory targeted for dispossession, lands, rivers and animals were severely impacted. This article explains how the Colombian transitional justice architecture – anthropocentric and focused only on armed actors’ accountability – is ill-equipped to deliver justice and remedy for victims of corporate abuse and to properly address the harms against land, rivers and animals. This piece also reflects on the endeavours that both transitional justice institutions themselves and civil society at the domestic and international levels have made to effectively respond to the Colombian conflict’s systems of dispossession and, most importantly, to their victims.

Atarraya: listening to human and non-human voices in post-conflict Colombia

ABSTRACT This article focuses on Atarraya, a participatory performance piece by Carolina Caycedo in collaboration with ; a group of social organisations affected by hydroelectric and mining megaprojects in Colombia. It argues that oral history-informed art practices offer an alternative space to communicate painful experiences and demand better futures, engaging broader and more diverse audiences. By analyzing the performative elements of Atarraya, such as the inclusion of human and non-human voices, the article shows how in the face of the transitional justice system in Colombia, it is necessary to understand listening as a critical component of oral history-informed performance.

Freestyling in war and peace: rap and transitional justice in Colombia

AbstractRap, as with other musical genres, can contain narratives about Colombia's armed conflict. Members of armed groups, such as the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo (‘Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People's Army’; FARC-EP), and civilians have used rap as a means of expressing war-related issues and their causes and consequences. Following the signing of the peace agreement with the FARC-EP in 2016, Colombia's new transitional justice system mainly has focused on a restorative rationale rather than a retributive one. Transitional justice, as a set of mechanisms and processes designed to overcome a violent past, demands peace-building narratives that protect the memory of past horrors while setting the stage for reconciliation. This article analyses the interplay of transitional justice and rap from the personal experiences, perspectives and lyrics of two former combatants and two groups from civil society that rap based in Bogotá, other cities and rural municipalities. These cases provide insight into how rap can relate to transitional justice, sometimes acting as a supportive tool for its goals and sometimes by providing a counter-narrative.

GACACA - "inny" wymiar sprawiedliwości

The system of Gacaca courts is a transitional justice system, implemented in Rwanda in order to bring to justice perpetrators of 1994 genocide and reconcile Rwandan society. Complexity of Gacaca’s objectives, its hybridity, and different possible perspectives for analysis lead to difficulties in formulating appropriate criteria for coherent assessment of the system. As the economic crisis in Rwanda was the most direct cause of escalation of violence in 1994 and economic problems in the country have been most often indicated by Rwandans and government officials as the most important problem in Rwanda following genocide the author turns to Gacaca’s contribution to economic growth as the most objective criterium to assess Gacaca’s success in transforming Rwandan society. Implementation of Gacaca and introduction of community service programme enabled the return to the society of a substantial part of the working-age population making the economic development of Rwanda possible.

Collective Ownership and Land Restitution: A New Opportunity for Afro-Colombian Communities

Abstract Some contemporary liberal states incorporate provisions that protect the relationship between ethnic communities and their lands. However, such measures are quite fragile in terms of effectively protecting the communities against market dynamics. We argue that transitional justice systems, such as that currently being implemented in Colombia, provide the mechanisms to not only guarantee the restitution of the dispossessed lands that ethnic communities have lost during armed conflict, but also to strengthen property rights by providing some guarantees to transform the socioeconomic conditions of these communities and, ultimately, to act as a shield against market dynamics.

Who Owns What in Macondo? The Flexibilization of the Rules of Evidence in Land Restitution in Colombia

Abstract Land restitution programmes, as part of transitional justice systems, make victims face obstacles to prove their material and legal relationship with their dispossessed land. The literature suggests that these obstacles can be overcome by changing the rules of evidence, such as reversing the burden of proof, introducing different legal presumptions and adopting alternative forms of evidence. In Colombia, the Land Restitution Law introduced changes to the rules of evidence for processing land restitution claims. In this article, we claim that this flexibilization of the rules of evidence is essential to guarantee the restitution of property rights to victims, based on a comparison of the evidentiary rules that must be fulfilled by the victims of land dispossession under two transitional justice systems, both of which have been implemented in Colombia in recent years.

Transitional justice and the challenges of a feminist peace

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.

La implementación del acuerdo de paz y la transformación del conflicto armado en Colombia

Este artículo describe la transformación del conflicto armado interno a raíz del proceso de implementación del Acuerdo Final con las FARC-EP. Mediante una revisión de fuentes con un enfoque cuantitativo y cualitativo, se describe el proceso desde la firma y su refrendación en 2016 hasta el año 2019. Primero se analiza la constitucionalización del acuerdo y su refrendación, para luego abordar el sistema de justicia transicional encarnado en la Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz (JEP), el contexto geopolítico de esta implementación en el 2019, para finalizar con un balance de la implementación. Como resultado, se plantean los avances y rezagos de la implementación; los desafíos y logros de la JEP, y los nuevos escenarios y actores del conflicto armado surgidos tras el desarme de las FARC-EP.

Transitional Justice in Colombia – Insights from Postcolonial Feminist Theory

In 2016, Colombia’s biggest Guerrilla group, the FARC, and the government under president Santos reached a breakthrough in the lasting peace negotiations after the decades-long armed conflict and established a comprehensive transitional justice system. Although the accord is described as relatively progressive, the peace process is currently fraying. This paper aims to address some of the deficits of the Colombian peacebuilding, focusing on insights from postcolonial feminist theory. Building on experiences of past transitional justice processes, the essay examines the Colombian example with regard to women in decision-making positions and the lack of an intersectional approach. Moreover, the paper challenges the capacity of TJ as a tool to address the root causes of conflicts and to achieve a transformation of the society which is necessary in order to accomplish sustainable peace.

Generations of Transitional Justice in the World

The objectives of the paper are to investigate the axiomatic truth and record the human wrongdoings of the past, deliver justice to the victims at present, make perpetrators accountable and initiate generous change in the rule of law for prosperous, peaceful and harmonious nation. The state-of-the-art paper is prepared based upon literature review, exchanging and sharing, and a practical observation approach rather than theoretical-analytical conception, except Generation. An interdisciplinary (politico-legal) word, ‘Transitional Justice’ (TJ) is healing the violations and/or abuses of yesterday, investigating and reconciling today and hoping to protect the tomorrow for not only a few privileged, but for the people of all Generations. The Generation tends to ascertain cause, nature, degree and patterns of identity-based crimes and genocide, determine the role of perpetrators and analyze the impact of the Truth Commission. Generally, Generation refers to the biological age groupings (20 to 30 years) that live together and share similar characteristics – attitudes, behaviors, contexts, sufferings and cultures. The paper reviews over 90 TJ countries in Five Generations (I, II, III, IV and 0), starting from the post-World War II to the present day world. Generation-I presents a genesis of TJ, a notion changed from the holocaust to the retributive justice which comprises the analyses of Nuremberg Trial and Tokyo Tribunal. Rather than making the main perpetrators involved in World War (WW) II accountable, the Nuremberg Trial has been a holier-than-thou betrayal to the Germans by a pseudo trial, and immunity to ‘French, Soviet Union, Americans, British and Japanese Emperor’ and Geneva Convention violators owing to a high political masquerading and retribution. Generation-II reveals a notion changed from internecine war crimes to humanitarian justice. It compares and contrasts the functions of the Truth Commissions that have a direct structural link with perpetrators’ four Ds (viz. delay, deceive, deny and dilute) approaches of TJ. Beyond domestication, TJ is an international human rights law, international criminal law and international humanitarian law. TJ has been more political in nature and less legal in practice. Generation-III tends to a notion changed from domestic criminal jurisprudence to international tribunal justice. The western developed and non-signatory nations of the Rome Statute try hard to establish and control the International Criminal Court (ICC) to their bad relation with post-conflict countries. Generation-IV discloses a  notion changed from sectarian violence to reconcile justice. In such cases, non-state elite actors normally engage against the weak and poor people to prove their superiority conducting communal apartheid and cultural genocide. Lastly, Generation-0 (Zero) refers to a notion changed for justice establishing the Truth Commission. Truth Commissions have been unable to identify and investigate the human rights violations and/or abuses in the post-conflict periods, despite huge national and international pressures. Generally, what for transitional justice: victor (perpetrator) or loser (victim and or survivor)? The answer is: ‘world’s Transitional Justice ironically ensures freedom to the perpetrators further limiting justice to the poor and weak victims and society at large’ in all Generations. On the other, the universe moves towards the identity-based multi-polar new world order setting owing to innumerable interests and practices of the Transitional Justice system.

Verdad judicial en procesos de justicia transicional: un sello jurídico en el caso a caso de la restitución de tierras en Colombia

En los modelos de justicia transicional que se adoptan en el mundo −y que buscan hacer una transición de la violación sistemática de derechos a una vida civil y democrática−, la verdad que se construye desempeña un papel fundamental. En este artículo se muestra cómo la verdad judicial en Colombia −a partir de un mecanismo de justicia transicional, como lo es la ley 1448/2011, y con base en las sentencias proferidas en el marco de la restitución de tierras del municipio de Tibú, Norte de Santander− puede contribuir de manera significativa a la construcción de una verdad extrajudicial más amplia. Se busca, entonces, mostrar las potencialidades y limitaciones de los procesos de restitución de tierras, de los jueces y de sus sentencias en la construcción de esa verdad judicial, la cual es básica para procesos de justicia transicional y para la consecución de una paz estable y duradera.

Transitional Injustice: Failure of Nepal's Transitional Justice System

A jurisprudence on transitional justice is developing in Nepal and it has come at a time when several gross human violations are now to be dealt with. For more than a decade Nepal had undergone a conflict between the security forces and the Maoist political movement led by the CPN-M (Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist). This conflict proved to be of a large scale with about 13000 thousand civilian lives that were claimed while 1300 went missing. The conflict ended in November 2006 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and an interim government being established in 2007 which included the CPN-M. Article 5.2.5 of the CPA specifically called for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Finally the Act on Commission on Investigation of Disappeared Persons, Truth and Reconciliation, 2071 (2014) was established to create the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Commission on Investigation of Disappeared Persons (CIEDP) after the Supreme Court of Nepal ordered the government to form these two commissions. However it has been an uphill task to obtain justice in a country which is filled with political arrangements at every level and laws which do not conform with Nepal’s obligation under international law. This paper intends to deal with the flaws in the TRC and the CIEDP, the political arrangements that have led to the failure of the Nepalese transitional justice system, approaches to counteract these failures and a possible way forward.

Conflict-Related Gender-Based Violence in Mali and the Limits of the Global System of Law

De Jorio examines some of the limits of the global system of law in addressing the dramatic increase in gender-based violence in Mali since the 2012 political and security crisis. The global system of law is the legal regime promulgated by UN agencies and human rights organizations, which is intended to shape legal reforms at the national level in order to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women and to promote women’s rights and wellbeing. Despite national and international efforts to implement anti-discriminatory legislation and prosecute perpetuators of violence, such institutional efforts have mostly been ineffective. This article identifies some of the current problems with the global system of law, relating to the narrow scale of the geopolitical analysis and the attempted reduction of culture to ahistorical “customs.” It begins to explore some of the opportunities afforded by transitional justice systems such as the TJRC in accommodating Malian citizens’ demands for historical clarification and justice.

Human Rights Violations and Transitional Justice in Nigeria's Niger Delta during Civilian Rule: A Focus on the Fourth Republic

Human rights violations and violent conflicts in the Niger Delta of Nigeria have elicited interest from scholars and international agencies. Although studies provide significant insights into the conflicts in the Niger Delta, the issue of transitional justice has not been adequately considered. This article examines human rights violations and transitional justice in the Niger Delta. It begins with the conceptualization of human rights violations and transitional justice. It then offers a historical contextualization of oil production in Nigeria and an overview of the human rights situation in the Niger Delta. The key argument of the article is that efforts to ensure peace in the Niger Delta have not been associated with an effective transitional justice system. Since transitional justice is a requirement for sustainable peace after periods of gross human rights violations and violent conflict, efforts should be made to put transitional justice mechanisms in place to punish perpetrators of human rights violations and provide redress for victims.