Posts

The Pedagogical Proposal of the Truth Commission

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In the two and half years since the Colombian Truth Commission began its mandate, it has developed a pedagogical strategy for generating cultural and educational initiatives to engage the public with its final report. This strategy also seeks to promote cultural and social transformations that contribute to non-repetition of the conflict, taking into account territorial, ethnic, and gender approaches. This snapshot sets out the Truth Commission’s pedagogical commitment and Embrace Dialogue’s (ReD) collaboration in this area.

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The Commission’s Final Year

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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.

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The FARC’s Progress Before the JEP

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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.

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The FARC’s Acknowledgement of Kidnapping: An Important Achievement of the Truth Commission

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Following the testimony of Ingrid Betancourt in a Listening Space led by Francisco de Roux, president of the Truth Commission (TC), the former leaders of the FARC-EP decided to publish a letter acknowledging the suffering that they had caused through kidnapping. This is an important achievement of the TC, demonstrating both its effectiveness in attaining the truth and acknowledgements of responsibility, and also its ability to mobilise emotions surrounding reconciliation. This snapshot analyses this recent development as part of the virtuous circle of truth.

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Guarantees for Transition Towards Peace

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With the signing of the Final Peace agreement with the FARC-EP in 2016, victims became the central focus of it.

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