On 29 July 2021, Embrace Dialogue and the Centre of Religion, Reconciliation and Peace of the University of Winchester hosted Giovanni Álvarez to discuss Recent Developments in Transitional Justice in Colombia, as part of a series of events on reconciliation. This dialogue led to the identification of key challenges, achievements and hopes for the future.
In this event we will discuss the impact of the national strike and other developments in transitional justice in Colombia.
On 26 January 2021, the Chamber for the Recognition of Truth, Responsibility and Determination of Conduct (SRVR) of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) issued its first ruling: Auto 019 of 2021. This sets out the crimes and practices committed by former members of the FARC-EP Secretariat, and explicitly makes them accountable for the crimes investigated in Case 001. This order (Auto) represents the JEP’s first formal ruling that attributes responsibility. It highlights the participation of victims, and how information has been collected and verified in order to establish the truth about the former FARC-EP’s methods and practices in Case 001.
This snapshot analyses some of the key points within Auto 019 that are essential for the peace process to progress, for comprehensive reparation to be made to victims, and for Colombian society to be reconciled.
The Truth Commission is entering its final year of activity, during which it must assume the difficult task of producing a final report that incorporates the root causes of the conflict, the principal victimisers, and the invisible stories of resilience and resistance within communities of survivors. There are significant challenges on many fronts. On the one hand, there is a methodological and editorial challenge: which information should be included in the report, and what will remain excluded? Then, there is a political issue centred around how the Commission will deal with the inevitable attacks from particular political sectors that appear in the report’s content.
2021 is a critical year for the JEP. According to experts in peace processes, the first five years after a peace accord are the most decisive ones, because a conflict is more likely to reignite during that period. With the 2016 Peace Agreement entering its fifth year of implementation, it is not only the JEP’s decisions that are important in 2021, but also the political, institutional, and social context surrounding the agreement. This snapshot sets out some of the key elements that will define the work of the JEP this year.
As 2020 draws to a close, so too does the Truth Commission’s second year in operation. This snapshot provides a brief overview of the commission’s work to date and points to some of the challenges that might arise in its upcoming final year of work. A more detailed look ahead to 2021 will be tackled in the next snapshot.
Understanding competition over land and natural resources as underpinning the Colombian conflict is a fundamental step both for recognising environmental justice as a component of the peace-building process, and for taking action to guarantee non-repetition. The JEP is taking an innovative racial, ethnic and territorial approach to the inclusion of the environment in the transitional justice process. This approach acknowledges the importance of the relationship established by Afro-Colombian, Indigenous and campesinos communities with their territories, and investigates the degradation of local natural resources as a violation of the communities’ collective rights. Three of the currently open macro-cases investigate the damage caused to the environment in the context of the armed conflict: macro-cases 002, 004 and 005. Moreover the JEP has established a “Commission on Territory and the Environment” to investigate the links between the conflict and environmental degradation and to promote a reflection on a territorial and environmental approach within the various bodies of the JEP.
Join us for the second session of the Embrace Dialogue Academia Seminar to discuss forensic knowledge and its relation with victims rights.
Over the last few months, the leaders of the FARC Party (Common Alternative Revolutionary Force) have publicly admitted their responsibility for crimes they committed during the armed conflict. In early October, in a letter directed to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), they admitted to the murders of the conservative leader Álvaro Gómez Hurtado and five others. This followed a letter released in September 2020, within which the FARC both acknowledged their responsibility for kidnappings that they had carried out and asked for forgiveness from the victims. In August, the FARC also began giving testimony about the recruitment of minors. In this snapshot, we look at the progress made by the FARC Party in offering truth and acknowledging its responsibilities before the JEP.
Between August and September 2020, the Transitional Justice team of ReD organised two online dialogues that addressed the perspectives of Afro-Colombian social leaders on transitional justice. We discussed the three regional cases currently under the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP): Case 002 focused on Nariño, Case 004 on Urabá, and Case 005 on Cauca and Valle del Cauca; and what the leaders considered to be the JEP’s greatest challenges. This snapshot gathers some of the reflections, concerns, and proposals that arose during those events.
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