tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/transitional-justice-11851/articlesTransitional justice – The Conversation2023-06-22T14:23:54Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2077722023-06-22T14:23:54Z2023-06-22T14:23:54ZSierra Leone has been at peace for 20 years after a brutal civil war - what went right<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533511/original/file-20230622-15-wlt6p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Henry, a teenaged rebel solider, before he is disarmed in 2001. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sierra Leone’s <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/13/how-do-the-sierra-leonean-elections-work-a-simple-guide">June 2023 parliamentary elections</a> are the fifth since the end of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Sierra-Leone/Civil-war">civil war in 2002</a>. </p>
<p>They also mark a decade since the <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/april-2014/special-court-sierra-leone-rests-%E2%80%93-good">closure of the Special Court for Sierra Leone</a>. The court prosecuted high level commanders deemed responsible for the suffering experienced during the war. </p>
<p>The 11-year-long civil war (1991-2002) was estimated to have killed <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Sierra-Leone/Civil-war">over 50,000 people</a>. Thousands were maimed and their limbs amputated. Half of the population was displaced. Almost all the people of Sierra Leone were affected by the war, leaving an enduring scar on the country and the collective psyche.</p>
<p>In the late 1990s and early 2000s, academics and peacebuilders became increasingly interested in promoting transitional justice alongside other methods of peace consolidation, particularly in countries that had experienced mass violence and large-scale atrocities. These included South Africa, Rwanda, Bosnia and Peru. </p>
<h2>Transitional justice mechanisms</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.un.org/peacebuilding/sites/www.un.org.peacebuilding/files/documents/26_02_2008_background_note.pdf">Transitional justice</a> is justice adapted to societies undergoing transformation away from “normalised” human rights abuse.</p>
<p>Sierra Leone became the first in which two transitional justice mechanisms were used. The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up in <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/transitional-justice-in-the-twentyfirst-century/sierra-leone-truth-and-reconciliation-commission/27970FD7B68E9C76AEDF507257B35F35">July 2002</a> and a Special Court was created. </p>
<p>The country has remained relatively peaceful in the two decades since the war ended. This is in a stark contrast to other examples such as Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. </p>
<p>In my <a href="https://theses.flinders.edu.au/view/1d634031-048d-49f8-9dfa-d5e63146abe4/1">thesis</a> I reflected on the long-term impact and the legacy of transitional justice in Sierra Leone. I examined whether lessons learned could assist in improving the process for future use. </p>
<p>My research focused on the official transitional justice mechanisms and whether the underlying causes of the war continued to affect the people of Sierra Leone. Economic mismanagement, poor governance, abject poverty and severe disenfranchisement were some of those underlying causes. </p>
<p>Through interviews with people who worked alongside the mechanisms and in non-government organisations, as well as others in civil society, I gained a better understanding of the lasting impact of transitional justice. </p>
<h2>Transitional justice in the long term</h2>
<p>While in Sierra Leone, I had candid discussions on the implementation, limitations and legacy of the official transitional justice mechanisms. I found there were operational tensions between the Truth Commission and the Special Court, but having both gave Sierra Leoneans restorative and retributive justice. Some thought that the Special Court undermined the existing amnesty and pardon agreements while using limited resources for both mechanisms was not ideal. These led to the tensions between the two mechanisms. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/rj-jr/index.html#:%7E:text=What%20is%20Restorative%20Justice%3F,the%20aftermath%20of%20a%20crime.%E2%80%9D">Restorative justice</a> refers to “an approach to justice that seeks to repair harm by providing an opportunity for those harmed and those who take responsibility for the harm to communicate about and address their needs in the aftermath of a crime.” Retributive justice is a system of criminal justice based on the punishment of offenders rather than on rehabilitation. Considering the impact of the war, incorporating both mechanisms was essential in helping the society to reconcile and rebuild.</p>
<p>My discussions also showed there was room for improvement in the way the two mechanisms worked. Both were hampered due to limited funding, more funds could have made their work easier. There should have been wider community engagement and consultation also before both started operations. Their effectiveness and acceptance was largely the result of outreach teams at grassroots level focusing on ensuring that the process benefited as much of the population as possible. </p>
<p>The Truth Commission and the Special Court have left a legacy: they are still able to promote reconciliation and societal restoration now. This is despite the fact that access to the commission’s report has been limited. A video edition of the report was circulated widely around the country, but the number of physical copies of the report is limited. Information about the findings and recommendations is restricted to the commission’s <a href="https://www.sierraleonetrc.org/">website</a>.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, through the recommendations resulting from the victim testimonies, the report led to the establishment of an <a href="https://www.anticorruption.gov.sl/en_GB/">Anti-Corruption Commission</a>. This addresses exploitative practices in the chieftaincy system and acknowledges systematic youth disenfranchisement. The effectiveness of the recommendations is debatable, but their ongoing influence demonstrates a concerted effort to ensure that certain causes of the conflict do not resurface. </p>
<p>Similarly, through the Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone, which replaced the Special Court, the legacy of accountability and the rule of law continues. It still promotes societal reconstruction, reconciliation and collaboration. For example, there is a programme to reintegrate former war criminals back into the community. This acknowledges collective trauma but works towards peace in the long term. </p>
<h2>A long way forward</h2>
<p>It is vital to continue examining what transitional justice can do. This is because its mechanisms are put to work over a short period but aim at long-term and lasting peace. </p>
<p>My research also explored the current situation in a more holistic way. Particularly, it considered how socio-economic pressures continue to affect income generation and perceptions of disenfranchisement. Despite the Truth Commission’s acknowledgement of the fact that socio-economic injustice had a serious impact on the pre-war society, such issues persist. They are seen through youth disenfranchisement and underdevelopment. </p>
<p>Through this research I found that the peace which Sierra Leone has experienced in the last two decades was achieved through collaborative efforts. These are the legacy of transitional justice and its relationship to long-term peace, and the resilience of the Sierra Leonean people. </p>
<p>There is still more to learn, including how better to incorporate socio-economic aspects of peacebuilding. This might help to rectify the deeply entrenched causes of war, which current processes are not fully capable of addressing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207772/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christina Mammone receives funding from Flinders University.
While undertaking my PhD research:
2018 awarded Flinders University Overseas Travel Grant
2020 awarded Flinders University Write-up Stipend Scholarship</span></em></p>Transitional justice contributed greatly to the peace which Sierra Leone has experienced in the last two decades.Christina Mammone, Early Career Researcher in Peace and Conflict Studies, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1756612022-01-27T15:09:47Z2022-01-27T15:09:47ZWhy The Gambia should fast-track gender quotas for women<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442685/original/file-20220126-19-gyuv41.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Supporters of incumbent president Adama Barrow’s National Peoples Party (NPP) during a campaign rally in Banjul in November 2021.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Guy Peterson/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Women have <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/gambia/gambia-s-women-demand-seat-political-table">historically</a> been poorly represented in positions of power and decision-making in The Gambia. Out of 58 National Assembly members, only six are women lawmakers and only three of these are elected. Women make up more than half of the Gambian population, yet they account for <a href="http://archive.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm">only 10% of parliamentarians</a>, including the speaker.</p>
<p>This poor representation is just as evident in <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/202108090284.html">the political parties</a>. None of the 18 <a href="https://iec.gm/political-parties/registered-parties/">registered political parties</a> is led by a woman. A few have women serving as deputy party leaders. But for the most part, women are assigned token positions that lack the necessary power and authority. They are deployed as mobilisers, campaigners and cheerleaders. </p>
<p>Little wonder then that during the December 4, 2021 elections, only one woman, Marie Sock, filed her nomination for the presidency. Even then her application was <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/202111100022.html">rejected</a> by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) as she failed to declare her assets. She also did not have the <a href="https://www.lawhubgambia.com/electoral-laws">legally required number</a> of registered voters to support her nomination.</p>
<p>This left the field open to a contest between six male candidates in which Adama Barrow <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/6/the-gambias-barrow-wins-second-term-opposition-reject-results">secured his second term</a>. </p>
<p>Adama Barrow was voted into office in December 2016, <a href="https://constitutionnet.org/news/new-gambia-and-remaking-constitution">ending 22 years of autocratic rule</a> under Yahya Jammeh. In the democratic transition that followed, Barrow pledged a <a href="https://crc220.org/">reformed constitution</a> and transitional justice for victims of Jammeh’s brutal dictatorship. </p>
<p>But the <a href="https://www.lawhubgambia.com/latest-news/publication-constitutional-developments-in-2020-gambia">constitution-making process is stalled</a>. The proposed Constitution Promulgation Bill of 2020 was <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/202009230283.html">rejected</a> by the National Assembly owing to <a href="https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/2020-posts/2020/9/29/attempts-at-constitutional-reform-in-the-gambia-whither-the-draft-constitution">political party disagreements</a>. </p>
<p>The draft constitution outlined several provisions to accelerate substantive equality between men and women. Among its transformative provisions was a section that explicitly forbids discriminatory treatment based on gender. </p>
<p>Section 55 further provided equal treatment between men and women. This included equal political, economic and social opportunities. Section 74 set out general principles for the electoral system. This included fair representation of all genders in elective public bodies. The draft constitution also provided a quota system that reserves 14 seats in parliament for women.</p>
<p>The failure to pass the bill represents a loss in the momentum for gender reforms. </p>
<p>But, in my view, there is still an opportunity to address the issue of women’s representation in politics. This is in the form of a <a href="https://thepoint.gm/africa/gambia/headlines/women-seek-16-parliament-reservation-seats">private member bill</a> which seeks to increase women’s representation in the National Assembly.</p>
<p>The bill presents a timely opportunity to rectify imbalances in political representation by guaranteeing a number of seats for women. Arguments against it might be that it’s only a temporary measure. But, I would argue, temporary measures such as legislative gender quotas can increase women’s access to political participation. </p>
<p>It’s true that over the past few decades the principle of equality between women and men has become increasingly <a href="https://constitutions.unwomen.org/en">constitutionalised</a>. These include gender-specific constitutional provisions on women’s rights, the right to reproductive healthcare, access to education, protection from violence.</p>
<p>But a number of <a href="https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/recommendations/General%20recommendation%2025%20(English).pdf">temporary special measures</a> have also been put in place. One is the quota system. </p>
<h2>Support for quotas</h2>
<p>Gambians are ready for change.</p>
<p>A nationwide <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331260768_'Women's_Political_Participation_and_Representation_in_The_Gambia_One_step_forward_or_two_back">study</a> on women’s political participation and representation showed that 89% of all respondents supported the introduction of the quota system.</p>
<p>In 2018, a <a href="https://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/D%C3%A9p%C3%AAches/ab_r7_dispatchno338_gambias_draft_constitution_reflects_citizen_preferences.pdf">survey</a> by Afrobarometer – the pan-African research network – showed overwhelming support (85%) in the country for constitutional change that would mandate a quota system for women’s representation in the National Assembly.</p>
<p>But this support has not yet been translated into the statute books.</p>
<p>Gender rights in The Gambia are governed by the <a href="https://www.lawhubgambia.com/1997-constitution">1997 constitution</a> and other relevant laws. These laws include the <a href="https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/MONOGRAPH/90619/115464/F-1335047347/GMB90619.pdf">Women’s Act 2010</a> which has general provisions to support women’s political participation and representation. </p>
<p>The Gambia is also one of few countries in Africa that has <a href="https://www.hhrjournal.org/2019/12/the-gambias-political-transition-to-democracy-is-abortion-reform-possible/">enacted</a> specific legislation to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331260847_The_impact_of_the_African_Charter_and_the_Maputo_Protocol_in_The_Gambia">domesticate</a> African and international norms and standards that recognise the human rights of women and girls. </p>
<p>But the legal framework in its present form is not comprehensive in securing a substantive right for women in the political realm. Take section 15 of the Women’s Act. It provides a general obligation to adopt temporary special measures. But it does not make a definitive prescription such as electoral gender quotas.</p>
<p>In addition, existing laws are grossly inadequate given the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331260768_'Women's_Political_Participation_and_Representation_in_The_Gambia_One_step_forward_or_two_back'?_sg=WRVtUl1YUavXBZSSNsLQEjiyRFEUtNBOxlLPqKAqiTQKdOhGY-h2p_s0n-zQKA265YaXx99x8J8B9PivTjbP17OHETYsPlsPy-CU54Cm.6wvKJV6BgmNiDlJocFXUEfaJvYbcl6MujA4VelILKp3f9NzI5ObDTfnj7n_KB6zvxsRZ7IKzA2cOTHsC4IBCYw">socio-cultural barriers</a> that are well entrenched in society against women. </p>
<h2>An alternative route</h2>
<p>The private member bill before parliament presents an opportunity to embrace reform. The bill proposes increasing the total number of seats in The Gambia’s National Assembly from 58 to 71, reserving 16 seats for women assembly members. Fourteen would be elected from each region; people with disabilities will elect one woman from among them, and the president would appoint one. </p>
<p>In my view the private member bill effort would be beneficial for advancing women’s rights. </p>
<p>However, a key question has arisen as to what will be the modalities for electing the women parliamentarians. It would be helpful to draw from other countries with a quota system to address this. For example, the <a href="https://ulii.org/akn/ug/act/statute/1995/constitution/eng%402018-01-05">revised 1995 Constitution of Uganda</a> institutionalised the quota system by providing for a number of reserved seats in the national parliament equal to the number of districts in the country. Each district elects a female parliamentary representative. </p>
<p>In this case, reserved seats are organised as <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-modern-african-studies/article/recruitment-mechanisms-for-reserved-seats-for-women-in-parliament-and-switches-to-nonquota-seats-a-comparative-study-of-tanzania-and-uganda/4ADE9AFC34E95A7F163588EF62629F88">single-member “women’s districts” constituencies</a>, designed as first-past-the-post districts. In essence, a one-woman representative is elected by universal suffrage in each district – which may consist of multiple counties (constituencies) – indirectly contested “female candidate only” elections.</p>
<p>Equally, in the case of The Gambia, it is proposed that parliamentarians for the female-reserved seats be elected and not appointed to enhance the legitimacy of these parliamentary seats. Some have <a href="https://academic.oup.com/sp/article-abstract/15/3/345/1616342">argued</a> that this may promote a static view of “women” as a group and push for a parallel process that affects equal voting rights. But in this case this is necessary as a time-limited positive measure that is intended to provide opportunities for a historically and systematically disadvantaged group.</p>
<p><em>A longer version of this article was <a href="https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/spotlight-on-africa/2022/1/25/womens-political-participation-in-the-gambia-gender-quotas-as-fast-track-to-equality">published</a> by International Association of Constitutional Law.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175661/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Satang Nabaneh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Temporary measures such as legislative gender quotas can increase women’s access to political participation.Satang Nabaneh, Director of Programs, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1664522021-08-23T21:40:18Z2021-08-23T21:40:18ZTransitional justice for Indigenous Peoples should be a key federal election issue<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417422/original/file-20210823-14-cpki1s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5605%2C3834&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People march in the streets in Ottawa during a rally to demand an independent investigation into Canada's crimes against Indigenous Peoples, including those at Indian Residential Schools.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“<a href="https://www.ictj.org/about/transitional-justice">Transitional justice</a>,” centred on accountability and redress for victims, refers to the ways countries emerging from periods of conflict and repression address large-scale or systematic human rights violations.</p>
<p>But applying transitional justice and its mechanisms, such as truth and reconciliation commissions, to the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and the Canadian state is contested terrain. </p>
<p><a href="https://academic.oup.com/ijtj/article-abstract/8/2/194/2912075?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Scholars debate</a> whether the term transitional justice makes sense in settler colonial contexts like Canada where there is no political transition to speak of, no massive regime change, no cessation of violent conflict and no progression from authoritarianism to democracy. </p>
<p>But this debate isn’t just academic — how we understand the term transitional justice and whether it applies to the Canadian situation could form the basis of policy decisions. And as we head towards an election on Sept. 20, justice for Indigenous Peoples should be a key campaign issue given the discoveries of hundreds of mass graves at the sites of former Indian Residential Schools.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/indian-residential-schools-acts-of-genocide-deceit-and-control-by-church-and-state-162145">Indian Residential Schools: Acts of genocide, deceit and control by church and state</a>
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<h2>The goals of transitional justice</h2>
<p>The aim of transitional justice is to usher in a peaceful society after mass atrocity, periods of systemic human rights violations and violent authoritarian regimes. </p>
<p>Transitional justice is not a form of justice itself, but a way of understanding justice and its aims. The term first appeared in the 1990s as a way to describe the different approaches taken by nations as new regimes came to power and had to grapple with the massive violations <a href="https://www.un.org/peacebuilding/sites/www.un.org.peacebuilding/files/documents/26_02_2008_background_note.pdf">of their predecessors</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/transitional-justice-lessons-from-kenya-on-what-works-and-what-doesnt-101984">Transitional justice: lessons from Kenya on what works, and what doesn't</a>
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<p>The term and concept have grown into their own field of study and practice to promote peace, generally focusing on a number of now-established approaches, including criminal trials, truth and reconciliation commissions, political reform and reparations. </p>
<p>Why is this debate important? Why should we care whether transitional justice applies to Canada? It’s important because transitional justice is not just a catalogue of mechanisms to address systemic human rights violations. It’s also the recognition that a nation is either undergoing monumental change or that it needs to — and that considerations of justice are necessary to support this transition.</p>
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<span class="caption">A woman is consoled during a gathering and march to honour Indigenous children, denounce genocide and demand justice for residential school victims in Montréal on Canada Day, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span>
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<p>Those who believe the Canadian context does not demand transitional justice or who believe the word “transition” doesn’t apply in Canada are not fully understanding the term “transition” or the fact that it’s urgently needed here. </p>
<p>They see a transition as requiring political change of the type seen in a country emerging from violent conflict to peace or from authoritarian rule to democracy. Such transitions usually require the deposing of political leaders. </p>
<p>Some critics of transitional justice see the need for justice to address past harms or to rectify current injustices, but disagree that there’s a need for political transition. But they’re overlooking the massive societal and political transition that is required to restore or develop trust and confidence among Canadians and Indigenous peoples. </p>
<h2>The goals of transitional justice</h2>
<p>Instead, it’s better to take a big-picture approach and look at all of transitional justice’s options by focusing on its goals. </p>
<p>The goal in Canada should be, at a minimum, transforming a society in which mass human rights violations and settler colonial violences were and are commonplace, accepted and endured — the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/04/04/freshwater-canadas-dirty-water-secret">clean drinking water denied to many Indigenous populations</a>, the <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/foster-care-replaced-residential-schools-for-indigenous-children-advocates-say-1.5459374">over-representation of Indigenous children in the child welfare system</a>, the <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7920118/indigenous-women-sterilization-senate-report/">forced sterilization of Indigenous women</a> and <a href="https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/1492-land-back-lane-caledonia-six-nations-protest">stolen Indigenous land</a>, to name just a few — into one where such violations are simply not tolerated. </p>
<p>Transitional justice in Canada is far bigger than merely addressing past wrongdoings or filling more public roles with Indigenous people (though these are valuable endeavours). The concept of transition should include societal and political change that focuses on establishing real relationships of value, trust and equity and recognizes many sovereignties. What’s needed in Canada is a fundamental shift in perspective.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/canadas-new-governor-general-mary-simon-is-poised-to-engage-in-her-most-challenging-diplomatic-mission-yet-164229">Canada's new governor general, Mary Simon, is poised to engage in her most challenging diplomatic mission yet</a>
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<p>We also need to consider what peaceful co-existence looks like, and then consider what mechanisms and political actions would help pave a path to that new reality. All transitional justice options should be on the table, including those tried and commonly accepted approaches like reparations and criminal trials, but also more creative options that are specific to Canada.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417428/original/file-20210823-20-lwlod0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man poses in ancestral garb." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417428/original/file-20210823-20-lwlod0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417428/original/file-20210823-20-lwlod0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417428/original/file-20210823-20-lwlod0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417428/original/file-20210823-20-lwlod0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417428/original/file-20210823-20-lwlod0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417428/original/file-20210823-20-lwlod0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417428/original/file-20210823-20-lwlod0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zachary Orchard, of Shoal Lake 40 First Nation on the Manitoba and Ontario border, poses for a photograph while attending a ceremony and vigil for the children who died at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From the perspective of Indigenous Peoples, such place-based options must draw on the continuity of their rich history, values and practices of self-governance on their lands, rooted in ancestral ways of life.</p>
<p>This election campaign provides a real opportunity to discuss creative, place-based solutions. But recognizing and choosing to apply these solutions after election day requires our political leaders to accept that a major Canadian transition needs to happen. Embracing transitional justice will prevent Canada from simply accepting and prolonging the status quo.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166452/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathy Walker receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kirsten J. Fisher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The aim of transitional justice is to usher in a peaceful society after mass atrocity, periods of systemic human rights violations and violent authoritarian regimes. It should be a Canadian priority.Kirsten J. Fisher, Assistant Professor, Political Studies, University of SaskatchewanKathy Walker, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Studies, University of SaskatchewanLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1393932020-06-01T14:28:19Z2020-06-01T14:28:19ZWhat Kabuga’s arrest means for international criminal justice – and Rwanda<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338568/original/file-20200529-96727-1ws218s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The date of arrest and a red cross marked on the face of Felicien Kabuga on a wanted poster at the Genocide Fugitive Tracking Unit office in Kigali, Rwanda, on May 19, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Photo by Simon Wohlfahrt/ AFP via Getty Images)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Félicien Kabuga, the Hutu financier of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26875506">Rwanda’s 1994 genocide</a>, has been captured after 26 years in hiding. More than 800,000 Rwandans, primarily Tutsis, were slaughtered by their countrymen in 100 days of genocide. </p>
<p>Kabuga was arrested by French police in a sting operation in a suburb of Paris on May 17. They were acting on an indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1997. Despite a global arrest warrant accompanied by a $5 million bounty, Kabuga avoided authorities for 26 years.</p>
<p>He owned and operated Radio Mille Collines, which broadcast messages of hatred. This included the notorious command to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3257748.stm">“kill the cockroaches”</a> before and during the genocide. He allegedly <a href="https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/05/21/felicien-kabuga-africas-most-wanted-man-is-arrested">imported</a> and <a href="https://unictr.irmct.org/en/cases/ictr-98-44b">distributed</a> the hundreds of thousands of machetes that were instruments of the genocide. </p>
<p>Despite the arrest, there are a number of reasons that Kabuga’s case does not represent a simple triumph for justice.</p>
<p>First, the long anticipated trial that would shed light on how Rwanda’s genocide was organised may not come to pass. Kabuga is <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/france-rwanda-kabuga-court-1.5576587">at least</a> 84 years old. There is already a fight heating up about where he should be tried: <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20200520-rwandan-genocide-suspect-kabuga-appears-before-french-court">France, Tanzania, or Rwanda</a>. After this question has been resolved, we should expect that his attorneys will argue he is too frail to stand trial. Thus Kabuga’s advanced age and the slow speed of international justice mean that he may never see trial. </p>
<p>Second, his arrest revisits the contested success of transitional justice in Rwanda, and showcases the mixed record of international justice more generally.</p>
<h2>The legacy of a tribunal</h2>
<p>Based in Arusha, Tanzania, the <a href="https://legal.un.org/avl/ha/ictr/ictr.html">International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda</a> was set up in 1994. It operated until 2015. It indicted 93 individuals, and heard 55 cases. Since its closure, outstanding work and cases are handled by the <a href="https://www.irmct.org/en">International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Trials</a>, which has branches in The Hague and Arusha. It handles only ongoing cases or outstanding warrants, and has no power to bring new indictments.</p>
<p>International criminal justice faces a number of criticisms. These include that it is <a href="https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/402bacd74.pdf">slow and expensive</a>, replicates <a href="http://opiniojuris.org/2019/10/01/distant-justice-symposium-how-colonial-inscriptions-continue-to-matter-in-icc-and-africa-dynamics/">colonial power relations</a> and is overtly <a href="https://justiceinconflict.org/2019/01/18/some-quick-reflections-on-the-gbagbo-acquittal-at-the-icc/">political.</a> </p>
<p>In addition to these standard criticisms, during its working lifetime the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda faced <a href="https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/hirondelle-news/17117-en-en-un-report-on-corruption-and-fee-splitting-at-rwanda-tribunal-released78837883.html">multiple corruption</a> allegations. </p>
<p>Kabuga was one of nine indicted individuals long at large, an ongoing reminder of the limitations of international criminal justice. Lacking their own police force, international courts rely on the cooperation of states to produce wanted individuals. </p>
<p>In Kabuga’s case, the capture was made possible by the investigative work of a special <a href="https://www.gendarmerie.interieur.gouv.fr/Notre-institution/Nos-composantes/Au-niveau-central/Les-offices/L-Office-central-de-lutte-contre-les-crimes-contre-l-humanite-les-genocides-et-les-crimes-de-guerre-OCLCH">French office</a> that pursues violators of international criminal law. </p>
<p>That the French followed up on this 26-year-old, cold, indictment is significant. International cooperation and institutional validation can have useful spillover effects for other international criminal justice institutions, specifically the <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/">International Criminal Court</a>. It has struggled massively to convince member states to <a href="https://theconversation.com/al-bashir-and-the-icc-is-it-worth-getting-your-man-if-you-jeopardise-your-mission-119317">enforce its warrants</a>.</p>
<p>Kabuga’s arrest, and the international cooperation that brought it about, is a reminder of the promise, and premise, that underwrote the tribunal. His alleged participation in the Rwandan genocide is the type of criminality that international justice seeks to prosecute: leaders and enablers who have not personally committed atrocity, but who were central to its deadly reach.</p>
<p>Kabuga’s arrest is thus also a victory against impunity. His trial should reiterate an insistence on rule of law norms making violations of international criminal law prosecutable.</p>
<h2>Rwanda’s contentious transitional process</h2>
<p>Accountability for international crime is a central component of “transitional justice”. This is a policy designed to substitute liberal, rule of law values in place of ethnic, nationalist, authoritarian or murderous rule. </p>
<p>In the case of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, “reconciliation” was embedded in the <a href="https://unictr.irmct.org/sites/unictr.org/files/legal-library/941108_res955_en.pdf">UN Resolution</a> setting it up. </p>
<p>But Rwandan President Paul Kagame has rejected this model of transitional justice. Instead, a firm line is drawn between Tutsis, the victims of the genocide, and Hutus, the perpetrators of the genocide. This erases many facts, such as <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/4/10/5590646/rwandan-genocide-anniversary">moderate Hutu victimisation</a> or Tutsi-organised crimes. </p>
<p>Attempts to address facts outside of those officially sanctioned are decisively suppressed by the state. This has included <a href="https://towardfreedom.org/story/rwanda-political-opposition-persists-amid-death-disappearance-and-detention/">imprisonment and assassination</a>. </p>
<p>One of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’s biggest failures was arguably its inability to <a href="https://www.globalpolicy.org/international-justice/international-criminal-tribunals-and-special-courts/international-criminal-tribunal-for-rwanda/48103-ictr-accused-of-one-sided-justice.html">challenge Kagame’s ethnically divisive narrative</a>. </p>
<p>In the first years of its work, prosecutors began investigating crimes associated with the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the Tutsi forces led by Kagame. In retaliation, Kagame stopped cooperating with the court and had its prosecutor, Carle del Ponte, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/sep/13/johnhooper">removed</a>. No RPF members, or Tutsis, were ever indicted by the tribunal.</p>
<p>Kagame is often praised for his stewardship over Rwanda’s economic recovery. Increasingly, however, observers <a href="https://theconversation.com/rwandas-economic-growth-could-be-derailed-by-its-autocratic-regime-114649">speculate</a> that his authoritarianism will interrupt this economic success. More worryingly, <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300197396/rwanda">scholars in the area fear</a> that Kagame’s ethnicity-based governance risks future repetitions of cyclical ethnic violence in Rwanda.</p>
<h2>Insistence on rule of law norms</h2>
<p>In the wake of Kabuga’s arrest, some international criminal justice <a href="https://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/experts-raise-questions-kabuga-french-connection">scholars</a> have supported Rwanda’s call to have him tried in the country, instead of sending him to the tribunal in Arusha. </p>
<p>This call should be resisted. </p>
<p>Present-day Rwanda is a country in which opposition figures die – <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/rwanda-gospel-singer-kizito-mihigos-death-likely-a-political-assassination/a-52463272">in jail</a> or <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/03/12/another-mysterious-opposition-death-rwanda">otherwise</a> – with alarming regularity. International institutions as well as state governments should demand higher rule of law standards, particularly in a country that has been the <a href="https://medium.com/@david.himbara_27884/kagames-central-government-expenditure-is-financed-by-foreign-aid-to-the-tune-of-70-9-56c06725da88">recipient of sustained, multifaceted international assistance</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kerstin Carlson received funding from Dreyers Fund to conduct fieldwork in Arusha and Addis Ababa for her book on international criminal justice in Africa, The Justice Laboratory (Chatham House/Brookings forthcoming 2020).
</span></em></p>Given the contested success of transitional justice in Rwanda, the arrest showcases the mixed record of international justice.Kerstin Bree Carlson, Associate Professor International Law, University of Southern DenmarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1226962019-08-30T13:12:57Z2019-08-30T13:12:57ZColombia’s peace process under stress: 6 essential reads<p>Three years after negotiating a landmark peace agreement with the Colombian government, a top commander of the now defunct FARC guerrilla group has called for “<a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2019/08/29/actualidad/1567065255_850419.html">a new stage in the armed struggle</a>.”</p>
<p>In a 32-minute online video posted Aug. 29, FARC second-in-command Iván Márquez appeared with other rebels in fatigues to announce that their dissident FARC faction would renew its insurgency.</p>
<p>“The state has not fulfilled its most important obligations,” Márquez said, saying the group aims to install a new government in Colombia that will support peace.</p>
<p>He does not represent all former FARC guerrillas. The FARC’s top commander, Rodrigo Londoño, who briefly ran for president last year, <a href="https://twitter.com/TimoFARC/status/1167044800954142720">tweeted</a> that “more than 90% of ex-guerrillas remain committed to the peace process.” </p>
<p>“War cannot be the destiny of this country,” <a href="https://twitter.com/TimoFARC/status/1167112444050845696">he wrote</a>.</p>
<p>How did Colombia’s fragile peace unravel? These six stories will bring you up to date on the complicated peace process that ended the Western Hemisphere’s longest-running conflict.</p>
<h2>1. A model agreement</h2>
<p>Peace talks with the FARC guerrillas began in 2012. In September 2015, President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño announced that they had developed a plan to end a 52-year conflict that had killed 220,000 Colombians and displaced 7 million.</p>
<p>The deal was “<a href="https://theconversation.com/could-the-peace-deal-in-colombia-be-a-model-for-other-conflicts-48564">precedent-setting in several ways</a>,” wrote professors Jennifer Lynn McCoy and Jelena Subotic.</p>
<p>The two sides agreed to use “new forms of restorative justice” to reach peace while “also holding perpetrators of human rights abuses accountable.” Colombia was the first conflict zone in the world to bring victims to the negotiating table. </p>
<p>In exchange for laying down their weapons, FARC leaders determined not to have committed human rights violations during their armed struggle would be given amnesty and the right to run for office. </p>
<p>But guerrillas accused of “grave human rights crimes … like sexual crimes, kidnapping, torture, forced displacement and extrajudicial killing” would be tried by a special new wartime justice system, wrote McCoy and Subotic.</p>
<h2>2. Colombia votes no</h2>
<p>The final FARC accords, signed on Sept. 26, 2016, had to be approved by the Colombian people. That referendum – the “peace plebiscite” – would divide the nation.</p>
<p>The allure of reconciliation in a war-torn nation was clear. But some people simply could not conceive of making a deal with the rebels who had killed their friends and family. </p>
<p>A well-organized “no” campaign, run by a powerful and hardline former president, formed to turn other Colombians against the deal. </p>
<p>Michael Weintraub, an associate professor at Bogotá’s University of the Andes, <a href="https://theconversation.com/colombias-peace-plebiscite-the-case-for-yes-and-the-case-for-no-66325">summarized the “No” camp’s argument</a> like this: The deal “provides too many concessions to the FARC, essentially rewarding terrorism and human rights violations.”</p>
<p>Still, as Colombians prepared to vote on Oct. 2, 2016, polling suggested that they would cast their ballots for peace. </p>
<h2>3. The ‘No’ vote wins</h2>
<p>The pollsters were wrong. </p>
<p>Just over half of Colombian voters – 50.24% – opposed the government’s agreement with the FARC guerrillas. </p>
<p>“A cloud of uncertainty descended on Colombia,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-nobel-prize-help-or-hurt-colombias-peace-process-66729">wrote Oscar Palma</a>, a professor at the University of Rosario, in Bogotá, shortly after the vote. “There was no Plan B for a rejection of the agreement.”</p>
<p>Then, five days later, President Santos won a surprise Nobel Peace Prize for his failed peace accord.</p>
<p>Analysts wondered if the Nobel could revive Santos’ failed efforts to end Colombia’s civil conflict.</p>
<p>“It is up to the president to take advantage of this moment,” Palma wrote.</p>
<p>Ultimately, Santos took his rejected peace accord to the Colombian Senate, which approved it in a marathon 13-hour session on Nov. 29, 2016.</p>
<h2>4. Peace makes progress</h2>
<p>The accord showed immediate results. </p>
<p>Nearly 7,000 FARC fighters laid down their weapons and joined government retraining camps. The FARC rebranded as a political party. Violence dropped markedly in 2017, Colombia’s safest year since 1975.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257276/original/file-20190205-86195-1v1k4yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257276/original/file-20190205-86195-1v1k4yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257276/original/file-20190205-86195-1v1k4yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257276/original/file-20190205-86195-1v1k4yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257276/original/file-20190205-86195-1v1k4yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257276/original/file-20190205-86195-1v1k4yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257276/original/file-20190205-86195-1v1k4yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257276/original/file-20190205-86195-1v1k4yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Santos and FARC commander Rodrigo Londoño after signing Colombia’s historic peace treaty on Sept. 26, 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://ustv-mrs-prod.ap.org/c252dad242cd4409b95ba59533955502/components/secured/main.jpg?response-cache-control=No-cache&response-content-disposition=attachment%3Bfilename%3DAP_16273806278437.jpg&Expires=1544041737&Signature=CRwY1BLXm99DQCoQbAgLsWlliS52a0f1A5K4FpAUWiewT20lQOEJ0z70Unmd9vQ">AP Photo/Desmond Boylan</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But half of the country still opposed the agreement. And the Santos government struggled to hold up its end of the ambitious deal, <a href="https://theconversation.com/peace-makes-strides-in-colombia-but-the-battle-is-far-from-won-83601">according to Fabio Andres Diaz</a>, writing 10 months after the accord was signed.</p>
<p>“From underfunded mental health care for ex-combatants to setbacks in passing the laws necessary to activate components of the peace deal, the process has been fraught,” Diaz said.</p>
<p>The government’s lack of follow through raised concerns early that the FARC guerrillas would lose faith.</p>
<p>“There are already reports that demobilized fighters are being recruited by other armed groups,” Diaz warned.</p>
<h2>5. Duque’s election</h2>
<p>The powerful political forces that derailed the peace referendum hadn’t disappeared with the signing of the accord. They continued to criticize the deal, agitating for a “corrected” agreement that would more harshly punish FARC militants.</p>
<p>In July 2018, one of the peace accord’s biggest opponents, Iván Duque, was elected president of Colombia. </p>
<p>Duque, a conservative, felt the 2016 FARC accord was “too lenient and should be renegotiated,” Diaz <a href="https://theconversation.com/colombia-elects-a-conservative-who-promises-to-correct-its-peace-accord-98273">wrote following the Colombian election</a>. He was the only candidate in the 2018 presidential election who did not support the FARC accords. </p>
<p>“Reneging on the deal risks restarting the longest-running conflict in the Western Hemisphere,” warned Diaz.</p>
<h2>6. Unraveling a fragile peace</h2>
<p>Duque has fulfilled his campaign promise to dismantle Colombia’s peace agreement since taking office in August 2018.</p>
<p>Though the courts have largely blocked his efforts to send FARC guerrillas to jail, the president has found many <a href="https://theconversation.com/violence-climbs-in-colombia-as-president-chips-away-at-landmark-peace-deal-with-farc-guerrillas-115112">other ways to weaken the deal</a>, says Diaz.</p>
<p>Duque has appointed “No” campaign loyalists to lead the agencies tasked with implementing the Colombia peace deal, underfunded their budgets and broken promises to boost economic investment in rural areas. His administration also sought to imprison some high-level FARC commanders on drug trafficking charges.</p>
<p>“Under Duque’s leadership, the government’s progress on fulfilling its commitments to peace has slowed to nearly a standstill,” Diaz says.</p>
<p>One-third of the peace deal’s 578 provisions have not even begun to be implemented, according to Notre Dame University’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.</p>
<p>As a result, trust between the FARC and the government has deteriorated, Diaz says. A May 2019 Gallup poll found that 55% of Colombians doubted that the government would fulfill its commitments. </p>
<p>By June, an estimated 1,700 former FARC guerrillas had joined one of Colombia’s many other active militant groups. </p>
<p>Political violence in Colombia rose sharply in 2018, with hundreds of activists and several former FARC fighters assassinated. Saying he feared for his life, FARC commander Iván Márquez went into hiding last August. </p>
<p>He has now returned to public view – and, it appears, to armed rebellion.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122696/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Dissidents in Colombia’s FARC guerrillas are threatening to renew armed struggle three years after signing a landmark peace deal. Here, experts explain the history of Colombia’s fragile peace process.Catesby Holmes, International Editor | Politics Editor, The Conversation USLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1151122019-06-04T12:42:26Z2019-06-04T12:42:26ZViolence climbs in Colombia as president chips away at landmark peace deal with FARC guerrillas<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276877/original/file-20190528-42565-11sb2o3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Police protect a judicial complex where former FARC rebel leader Seuxis Hernandez was standing trial on May 20, 2019. The former peace negotiator has been arrested on drug charges and is now fighting extradition to the United States.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Colombia-Rebel-Leader/65e6fa7a81094638ad4967fedc8effca/2/0">AP Photo/Ivan Valencia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thousands of Colombian militants and soldiers will have their day in court. </p>
<p>A panel of judges <a href="https://amp.elespectador.com/noticias/judicial/las-objeciones-la-jep-si-se-hundieron-en-el-congreso-corte-constitucional-articulo-863299">ruled on May 29</a> that a <a href="https://www.jep.gov.co/Paginas/Inicio.aspx">special peace tribunal</a> established in Colombia’s landmark <a href="https://theconversation.com/colombias-peace-plebiscite-the-case-for-yes-and-the-case-for-no-66325">2016 peace deal with the FARC guerrillas</a> must proceed under the agreed-upon terms. It cannot be altered to narrow its scope or make sentencing harsher, as Colombia’s new president, Ivan Duque, had <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2019/03/14/colombias-president-ivan-duque-undermines-a-peace-deal">requested</a>.</p>
<p>Colombia’s <a href="https://colombia2020.elespectador.com/colombia-en-transicion/las-consecuencias-territoriales-del-recorte-al-sistema-de-justicia">transitional justice system</a>, which resembles processes used in nations <a href="https://www.ictj.org/our-work/regions-and-countries">like South Africa and Guatemala</a>, will judge FARC militants and members of the armed forces for crimes perpetrated during Colombia’s 52-year conflict. But the emphasis is on making amends for harm caused to civilians – not on punishing combat-related offenses, such as a guerrilla killing a soldier in combat. </p>
<p>Nearly all of the 6,804 FARC guerrillas who <a href="https://lta.reuters.com/articulo/colombia-paz-idLTAKCN1AV2AI-OUSLT">disarmed in 2016</a> and settled in government-run “reintegration camps” must now surrender themselves to the peace tribunal, swear to testify honestly and be interviewed by Colombia’s new <a href="https://comisiondelaverdad.co/">truth commission</a>. </p>
<p>Fighters who are determined not to have committed human rights violations during the conflict, and to have obeyed the law since the peace deal, may leave the reintegration camps to rejoin society. All others will be sentenced to jail or to community service in the areas they once terrorized.</p>
<p>This will happen despite the attitude of Duque, who thinks the <a href="https://www.jep.gov.co/Paginas/JEP/Sistema-Integral-de-Verdad-Justicia-Reparacion-y-NoRepeticion.aspx">transitional justice system</a> is too lenient. It is one of many provisions of the landmark Colombian peace deal he has moved to weaken, or even abandon, since taking office in August 2018.</p>
<h2>Colombia’s best chance at peace</h2>
<p>Colombia’s painstakingly negotiated peace agreement with the FARC – which won former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos the <a href="https://theconversation.com/santos-got-the-nobel-prize-for-not-giving-up-on-peace-heres-why-all-colombians-won-66689">2016 Nobel Peace Prize</a> – ended the longest-running armed conflict in the Western Hemisphere. Fighting <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/colombia-farc-peace-treaty-longest-war-western-hemisphere-ends-a7331746.html">killed 200,000 people</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/colombias-war-has-displaced-7-million-with-peace-will-they-go-home/2016/09/05/538df3c6-6eb8-11e6-993f-73c693a89820_story.html">displaced 7 million</a> between 1964 and 2016.</p>
<p>But the deal was <a href="https://theconversation.com/santos-got-the-nobel-prize-for-not-giving-up-on-peace-heres-why-all-colombians-won-66689">rejected at referendum</a> before being passed by Congress in November 2016, and it remains controversial.</p>
<p>Its goals include exposing and documenting the atrocities of the Colombian conflict, offering reparations to <a href="https://www.unidadvictimas.gov.co/es/registro-unico-de-victimas-ruv/37394">war victims</a> and revitalizing the long-neglected rural areas terrorized by different armed groups. It also aims to turn a Marxist insurgency into a <a href="https://theconversation.com/colombias-farc-rebels-have-rebranded-as-a-political-party-now-they-need-a-leader-82728">political party</a> and to reconcile Colombians by <a href="https://theconversation.com/colombian-guerrillas-disarm-starting-their-risky-return-to-civilian-life-73947">reintegrating rebel fighters back into society</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276876/original/file-20190528-42551-14tix3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276876/original/file-20190528-42551-14tix3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276876/original/file-20190528-42551-14tix3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276876/original/file-20190528-42551-14tix3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276876/original/file-20190528-42551-14tix3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276876/original/file-20190528-42551-14tix3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276876/original/file-20190528-42551-14tix3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276876/original/file-20190528-42551-14tix3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Former FARC guerrillas elected to Congress in Colombia celebrate their win, July 20, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Colombia-Rebel-Lawmakers/8bdde539af7f44ec9a569d99711f0ffe/27/0">AP Photo/Fernando Vergara</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Conflict researchers <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=jjkUy0wAAAAJ">like myself</a> have found that this comprehensive truth and justice process stands a good chance of <a href="https://www.ictj.org/about/transitional-justice">bringing lasting peace and reconciliation</a>. </p>
<p>At first, it seemed to be working. </p>
<p>Violence dropped markedly in 2017, Colombia’s <a href="https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/judicial/homicidios-en-colombia-la-tasa-mas-baja-en-los-ultimos-42-anos-se-dio-en-2017-articulo-734526">safest year since 1975</a>. Social movements – <a href="https://theconversation.com/mass-protests-in-colombia-mar-presidents-first-100-days-but-reveal-a-nation-marching-toward-peace-107339">long repressed</a> by a state that labeled all dissent as the seeds of insurgent rebellion – <a href="https://www.msn.com/es-co/noticias/colombia/%C2%BFpor-qu%C3%A9-ha-aumentado-la-movilizaci%C3%B3n-social-en-este-gobierno/ar-BBQ30FO">blossomed</a>. And a robust public debate began around <a href="https://theconversation.com/colombians-are-fed-up-with-corruption-and-everyone-seems-to-be-under-investigation-75173">corruption</a> and public services, both concerns long buried by militant violence. </p>
<h2>A directionless peace process</h2>
<p>Then Duque took office <a href="https://theconversation.com/colombia-elects-a-conservative-who-promises-to-correct-its-peace-accord-98273">promising to “correct” Colombia’s peace agreement</a>. As a senator, he helped lead the “Vote No” initiative that <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-colombia-voted-no-to-peace-with-farc-66416">narrowly derailed the accord</a> at referendum. </p>
<p>Under Duque’s leadership, the government’s progress on fulfilling its commitments to peace has <a href="https://kroc.nd.edu/news-events/news/tercer-informe-sobre-la-implementacion-del-acuerdo-de-paz-la-implementacion-sigue-progresando/">slowed to nearly a standstill</a>. </p>
<p>Duque has appointed “No” campaign loyalists to lead the agencies that must implement the agreement and left their <a href="https://colombia2020.elespectador.com/verdad/comision-de-la-verdad-con-menos-recursos-para-funcionar">budgets underfunded</a>. He has voiced opposition to a Santos administration commitment to <a href="https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/why-destroying-colombian-coca-fields-pesticides-may-backfire-terribly">help farmers who grow illegal coca leaf</a> transition to legal crops like coffee and ignored <a href="https://www.elcolombiano.com/colombia/la-reforma-rural-integral-se-quedara-en-promesas-XY9414819">promises to boost economic investment in rural areas</a>. </p>
<p>And Duque’s conservative Democratic Center party played a central role in vetoing a peace accord agreement that would have given more <a href="https://www.elcolombiano.com/colombia/politica/circunscripciones-no-obtuvieron-la-mayoria--efrain-cepeda-IG7822596">seats in Congress</a> to remote rural areas of Colombia – places so long neglected by the government that militant groups like the FARC controlled the territory.</p>
<p>The president’s foot-dragging comes after <a href="https://theconversation.com/latest-threat-to-colombias-peace-process-murders-a-kidnapping-delays-and-of-course-politics-73895">legislative delays</a> and last year’s election had already substantially slowed the peace process. One-third of the peace deal’s 578 provisions have not even begun to be implemented, according to Notre Dame University’s <a href="https://kroc.nd.edu/research/peace-processes-accords/pam-colombia/#Spanish">Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies</a>. </p>
<p>Few provisions in Colombia’s peace deal have official deadlines or progress markers. That’s common in peace agreements, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Truth-Justice-and-Reconciliation-in-Colombia-Transitioning-from-Violence/Diaz-Pabon/p/book/9781857438659">which after tense negotiations between warring sides tend to capture promises – not establish work plans</a>.</p>
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<p>Duque also appears to be considering a <a href="https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/politica/detalles-del-desayuno-entre-whitaker-y-congresistas-articulo-850317">demand from the United States</a> to <a href="http://www.wradio.com.co/noticias/actualidad/oficina-judicial-de-embajada-de-eeuu-cancela-cena-prevista-con-magistrados-colombianos/20190403/nota/3886216.aspx">extradite FARC guerrillas</a> accused of involvement in international drug trafficking.</p>
<p>Currently, Colombian law only allows for the extradition of former guerrillas who committed drug crimes after the peace agreement was signed. Those who did so during the conflict, as a means to finance the FARC’s insurgency, will be dealt with through the transitional justice system.</p>
<h2>The risks of a derailed peace</h2>
<p>Members of the peace <a href="https://www.rcnradio.com/politica/fuertes-criticas-de-sergio-jaramillo-duque-por-objeciones-la-jep">delegation that reached the FARC agreement</a> say the government’s actions <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2018/01/17/colombia/1516162343_892303.html">compromise peace itself</a>. </p>
<p>According to a <a href="https://imgcdn.larepublica.co/cms/2019/05/17085310/031800190000-GALLUP-POLL-130.pdf">recent Gallup poll</a>, 55% of Colombians believe the government will not fulfill its commitments to the peace process. Sixty-two percent believe the FARC will not hold up its end of the deal.</p>
<p>As trust between the two sides deteriorate, violence in Colombia is climbing.</p>
<p>Murders <a href="https://www.eltiempo.com/justicia/delitos/indice-de-homicidios-crece-en-colombia-en-el-2018-313930">rose 3% in 2018</a>, from 12,066 to 12,458. That figure includes a wave of attacks against activists, <a href="https://theconversation.com/colombias-murder-rate-is-at-an-all-time-low-but-its-activists-keep-getting-killed-91602">peasant organizers and Afro-Colombian community leaders</a> who have vocally defended the peace deal, 226 of whom were killed last year.</p>
<p>An estimated <a href="https://www.eltiempo.com/justicia/investigacion/los-ejercitos-ilegales-que-enfrentara-la-nueva-cupula-militar-305714">1,700 former guerrillas have returned to armed struggle</a>, joining one of Colombia’s many other militant groups, according to the think tank <a href="http://www.ideaspaz.org/publications/posts/1662">Fundacion Ideas Para la Paz</a>. Several high-profile leaders – including Ivan Marquez, <a href="https://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/ivan-marquez-sale-espantado-de-bogota-y-se-instala-en-caqueta/564211">who lead the FARC’s peace negotiations</a> – have gone into hiding.</p>
<p>In February, a <a href="https://theconversation.com/violence-and-killings-havent-stopped-in-colombia-despite-landmark-peace-deal-111232">bombing by the ELN guerrillas</a> in Bogotá killed 21 police personnel, confirming that domestic terrorism remains a threat in Colombia. </p>
<p>In response to climbing violence, Colombia’s armed forces have gotten more violent, too. </p>
<p>In early 2019, Major Gen. Nicacio Martínez Espinel ordered soldiers to “double the number of criminals they kill, capture or force to surrender,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/18/world/americas/colombian-army-killings.html">The New York Times</a> has reported.</p>
<p>The reporting raised fear that Colombia would revert to the era of “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-48344919">false positives</a>,” when members of Colombia’s armed forces in the early 2000s killed unarmed civilians, dressing their dead bodies in militant fatigues to meet their kill quota.</p>
<p>According to some estimates, soldiers <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/08/colombia-false-positives-scandal-casualties-higher-thought-study">murdered 10,000 innocent Colombians</a> to earn bonuses, holidays and promotions.</p>
<h2>A long path to peace</h2>
<p>Countries commonly suffer violence as they transition out of armed conflict, making <a href="https://theconversation.com/advice-for-colombia-from-countries-that-have-sought-peace-and-sometimes-found-it-67419">strong political leadership</a> crucial for a peace process to succeed. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14094918">post-apartheid South Africa</a>, Nelson Mandela brought legitimacy to the country’s return to democracy. As its first black president, Mandela curbed political forces that opposed racial integration in South Africa and <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-first-democratic-elections-25-years-on-never-lose-sight-of-what-the-country-has-achieved-115861">supported the truth and reconciliation process</a>. </p>
<p>In doing so, Mandela made the prospect of peace seem real. He virtually willed it into being.</p>
<p>Colombia’s acrimonious post-accord government is leading the country in a different direction, empowering longtime opponents of the FARC accords and eroding the political capital of FARC leaders committed to peace. That increases the risk of <a href="https://www.semana.com/opinion/articulo/se-esta-promoviendo-la-formacion-de-una-nueva-amenaza-criminal-en-colombia-columna-de--jeremy-mcdermott/617500?fbclid=iwar0s2uigd2klpsnm-tb5_m487agkovzq54wzc5k1zpwrti2q8kd2_qmi9rc">relapsing violence that takes dangerous new forms</a>.</p>
<p>War may not be imminent in Colombia. But neither, it now seems, is peace.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115112/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fabio Andrés Díaz Pabón does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Colombia’s new president opposes the 2016 peace deal with the FARC guerrillas. As trust between the government and militants erodes, at least 1,700 former insurgents have returned to armed struggle.Fabio Andrés Díaz Pabón, Researcher on Conflict, Peace and Development, International Institute of Social StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/836012017-10-16T00:36:09Z2017-10-16T00:36:09ZPeace makes strides in Colombia, but the battle is far from won<p>One year after Colombians initially <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/colombians-vote-on-historic-peace-agreement-with-farc-rebels/2016/10/02/8ef1a2a2-84b4-11e6-b57d-dd49277af02f_story.html">rejected a peace agreement with the FARC guerrilla group</a>, today the outlook for peace seems almost promising. On Oct. 10, the country’s constitutional court <a href="https://colombia2020.elespectador.com/politica/acuerdo-de-paz-una-politica-de-estado-por-12-anos">shielded that accord from any changes for a period of 12 years</a>, removing fears that future governments could water down or undo the controversial deal.</p>
<p>With this much-anticipated decision, nine judges made it possible for the country to institutionalize peace after 50 years of internal conflict. </p>
<p>But for all the speculation among scholars about the FARC’s transition from armed rebellion to political party – <a href="https://theconversation.com/colombias-farc-rebels-have-rebranded-as-a-political-party-now-they-need-a-leader-82728">my own included</a> – the end of the conflict remains uncertain. Colombia’s violence was never just about the FARC, and peace won’t be, either. </p>
<h2>Not just the FARC</h2>
<p>On the one hand, there are positive signs of calm in the country. On Oct. 1, <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/09/colombia-eln-leader-readies-troops-ceasefire-170930163656526.html">a ceasefire went into effect</a> with the National Liberation Army (ELN), <a href="http://www.warscapes.com/blog/eln-and-peace-colombia">the FARC’s lesser-known rebel sibling</a>. </p>
<p>Established in Colombia in 1964, the same year as the FARC, the ELN aimed to promote a <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-11400950">Cuban model of armed revolution in Colombia</a>. This set them apart from the FARC, with <a href="https://www.farc-ep.co/decima-conferencia/decima-conferencia-nacional-guerrillera.html">its Marxist-Leninist approach to social change</a>. So did the ELN’s less militaristic approach to violence. The group didn’t shy away from <a href="http://cdn.ideaspaz.org/media/website/document/529debc8a48fa.pdf">ambushing Colombia’s armed forces</a>, but its preferred methods were sabotage – bombing oil pipelines, <a href="http://www.verdadabierta.com/victimarios/eln/6293-radiografia-de-los-artefactos-explosivos-del-eln">laying landmine fields</a> – and extortion.</p>
<p>The ELN still has 1,500 to 2,000 troops stationed across the country, in <a href="http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/despite-peace-talks-colombia-eln-guerrillas-continue-expansion">territory that intersects with areas once occupied by the FARC</a>. Thus, any narrative of the Colombian conflict that touts the FARC’s centrality risks missing the key role that the ELN must play in building a lasting peace. </p>
<p>As such, the ELN ceasefire is an important step in its peace process, which <a href="http://www.verdadabierta.com/procesos-de-paz/eln/6545-negociacion-con-el-eln-en-su-fase-publica">started in February 2017</a>. On Oct. 5, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/un-approves-monitoring-of-eln-rebel-cease-fire-in-colombia/2017/10/05/02416d52-aa14-11e7-9a98-07140d2eed02_story.html">U.N. announced a mission</a> to verify its implementation.</p>
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<p>This opens the door to broader deescalation of violence in Colombia, which remains high since the peace agreement. At least 200 human rights activists <a href="https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/investigacion/la-lista-roja-de-defensores-de-derechos-humanos-articulo-713488">have been killed over the past two years</a>, and <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2017/07/22/colombia/1500740630_359655.html">drug cartels, organized crime groups and paramilitary organizations</a> continue to operate in the country. This dangerous dynamic does not miraculously disappear along with the FARC, or the ELN for that matter. </p>
<p>Recidivism is another threat: In past peace efforts in Colombia, demobilized fighters from one rebel group simply <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Peace.Conflict.Spanish.pdf">rejoined other armed organizations</a>. This fueled the war, giving it a continuity that went beyond particular organizations to become a kind of generalized social phenomenon.</p>
<h2>Spoiler alert</h2>
<p>Despite recent advances, implementing the FARC agreement is still a significant challenge: The accords are ambitious, and they must be carried out in a country whose populace <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-37537252">voted against the peace agreement by a thin margin</a> just one year ago. </p>
<p>There were <a href="http://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/acuerdo-de-paz-con-las-farc-enfoque-de-genero/504340">numerous conspiracy theories</a> floated during the peace talks, including allegations that the negotiations’ inclusion of gender and LGBTQ issues would promote a “homosexual agenda” in Colombia.</p>
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<p>But the deal’s opponents raised <a href="https://theconversation.com/colombias-peace-plebiscite-the-case-for-yes-and-the-case-for-no-66325">valid claims</a>, too. Some <a href="http://www.warscapes.com/opinion/uncertainty-peace-agreements-and-public-participation-colombia">wondered</a> whether conflict victims would actually see justice served, while others expressed concerns about former rebels joining the political process. </p>
<p>In the end, many Colombians were profoundly uncertain about how the principles of the FARC agreement would be interpreted and implemented. Just over <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/02/colombia-referendum-rejects-peace-deal-with-farc">50 percent of them rejected the peace agreement</a>, which ultimately had to be approved via a fast-tracked passage through Congress. </p>
<p>As the 2018 presidential election season heats up, some candidates and parties have found that <a href="http://www.eltiempo.com/politica/debate-en-redes-por-video-de-cambio-radical-contra-las-farc-137494">attacking the accords</a> is now a good way to mobilize votes. </p>
<p>This, in my assessment, is a dangerous electoral strategy. FARC fighters could interpret such political bluster as the state reneging on its commitments, which could in turn produce a spike in recidivism: Why should guerrillas hold up their end of the deal if the government won’t?</p>
<p>Indeed, there are already reports that demobilized fighters are being recruited by <a href="http://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/choco-eln-y-autodefensas-oprimen-a-comunidades-advierte-hrw/527800">other armed groups</a>. This has real potential to foil the peace process.</p>
<p>The court’s decision has now shielded the agreement from populist proposals of renegotiating a “better deal.” But there are other reasons why the Colombian government could fail to keep its commitments to the FARC – namely the ongoing <a href="http://lasillavacia.com/el-duro-aterrizaje-de-las-farc-la-realidad-62692">challenges of implemention</a>. </p>
<p>From <a href="https://theconversation.com/latest-threat-to-colombias-peace-process-murders-a-kidnapping-delays-and-of-course-politics-73895">delays in disarming rebels</a> and underfunded mental health care for ex-combatants to setbacks in passing the laws necessary to activate components of the peace deal, the process has been fraught. </p>
<p>Colombia, a middle-income South American nation, may simply lack the institutional capacity necessary to fulfill its own landmark agreement. After all, a weak state unable to deliver on promises made to its citizens is one reason that warlords and armed actors <a href="http://www.altocomisionadoparalapaz.gov.co/mesadeconversaciones/PDF/Informe%20Comisi_n%20Hist_rica%20del%20Conflicto%20y%20sus%20V_ctimas.%20La%20Habana%2C%20Febrero%20de%202015.pdf">got so powerful there in the first place</a>. </p>
<h2>Political tensions</h2>
<p>There have been remarkable achievements, of course. In June, the FARC <a href="http://caracol.com.co/radio/2017/06/26/nacional/1498513260_592266.html">surrendered its weapons to the U.N.</a>, and its guerrillas are now concentrated in reintegration camps. The government has even managed to keep demobilized fighters safe throughout this process.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190220/original/file-20171013-3520-1nplqxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190220/original/file-20171013-3520-1nplqxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190220/original/file-20171013-3520-1nplqxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190220/original/file-20171013-3520-1nplqxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190220/original/file-20171013-3520-1nplqxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190220/original/file-20171013-3520-1nplqxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190220/original/file-20171013-3520-1nplqxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The FARC: Not the only players in the game of peace.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Fernando Vergara</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the next big hurdle is just around the corner: the phases of <a href="http://www.altocomisionadoparalapaz.gov.co/Documents/informes-especiales/abc-del-proceso-de-paz/abc-jurisdiccion-especial-paz.html">transitional justice and historical reckoning</a>. Colombia’s Congress is now debating legislation <a href="https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/politica/en-congreso-se-debate-la-ley-que-pone-en-marcha-la-jep-articulo-715151">detailing how FARC fighters will be punished</a>, or not, for their transgressions. </p>
<p>Lawmakers must also set up the <a href="http://www.altocomisionadoparalapaz.gov.co/Documents/informes-especiales/comision-verdad-proceso-paz/index.html">Colombian Truth Commission</a>, which will allow Colombians to understand, for the first time, the full extent of the atrocities committed in their country.</p>
<p>At present, this legislation is being filibustered by some right-wing politicians, who want Colombia’s transitional justice to be more punitive. Meanwhile, members of the Cambio Radical Party stand accused of seeking <a href="http://lasillavacia.com/el-presidente-santos-ha-quedado-rehen-de-su-coalicion-62873">bribes from President Juan Manuel Santos’ administration</a> in exchange for their votes. As the May 2018 election nears, such political tensions are likely to rise. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/advice-for-colombia-from-countries-that-have-sought-peace-and-sometimes-found-it-67419">Peace-building often looks like this</a>. It’s messy and long and nonlinear, a national process that takes political leadership, sacrifice and no small dose of patience.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83601/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fabio Andrés Díaz Pabón does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A court decision securing last year’s peace deal and a new ceasefire have invigorated Colombia’s peace process, but there are plenty of ways it could still go wrong.Fabio Andrés Díaz Pabón, Researcher on Conflict, Peace and Development, International Institute of Social StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/782962017-05-26T06:39:57Z2017-05-26T06:39:57ZIn Argentina, the Supreme Court spurs national outrage with leniency for a ‘Dirty War’ criminal<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170983/original/file-20170525-23249-dqecra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In post-dictatorship Argentina, citizens, like the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, have been the guardians of justice.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/rh3rrZ">Argentine Ministry of Culture/flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/furia-en-argentina-despues-del-juicio-que-da-indulto-a-un-criminal-de-la-guerra-sucia-98230"><em>Leer en español</em></a>.</p>
<p>The streets of Argentina’s cities went white on May 10 as tens of thousands donned the iconic headscarf of the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who’ve never stopped searching for the sons, daughters, and grandchildren they lost in the country’s “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Dirty-War">Dirty War</a>” (1976-1983) some four decades ago. </p>
<p>Buenos Aires saw one of the <a href="https://www.pagina12.com.ar/36779-la-plaza-del-no-a-la-vuelta-de-la-impunidad">largest marches in recent Argentinean history</a> as human rights organisations, NGOS and citizens of all political stripes flooded into the Plaza de Mayo, the country’s political heart. Organisers say as many as 200,000 people attended.</p>
<p>They came to protest a Supreme Court decision that many feared would reinstate the regime of impunity that once supported Argentina’s six military coups (1930, 1943, 1955, 1962, 1966 and 1976).</p>
<p>On May 3, the court ruled in a three-to-two majority decision to grant leniency to Luis Muiña, a convicted kidnapper and torturer, by <a href="http://www.cij.gov.ar/nota-25746-La-Corte-Suprema--por-mayor-a--declar--aplicable-el-c-mputo-del-2x1-para-la-prisi-n-en-un-caso-de-delitos-de-lesa-humanidad.html">invoking the so-called “two-for-one” rule</a>. The rule holds that each year already served in prison counts as two. </p>
<p>Muiña has completed just six years of a 13-year prison sentence handed down to him in 2011 for his role in the 1976 operation <a href="http://www.hospitalposadas.gov.ar/equipo/ddhh/contenido/chalet_ccd.php">Posadas Hospital</a> in which dozens were detained and tortured. He is now slated for release in November 2017. </p>
<p>The two-for-one law, which was applied from 1994 to 2001, allowed early release of prisoners who’d already served significant jail time while awaiting sentencing. </p>
<p>In granting the benefit to Muiña, the Supreme Court has now expanded its scope <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2017/05/09/el-caso-muina-los-argentinos-rechazan-el-atropello-a-los-derechos-humanos/">to include crimes against humanity</a>. Critics say the decision could effectively commute the sentences of hundreds of people convicted of committing genocide, kidnapping and torture during Argentina’s last military dictatorship (1976-1983). </p>
<h2>‘Nunca mas’</h2>
<p>Argentina’s 1976 coup, in which president María Estela Martínez de Perón was overthrown by a military junta, was the <a href="http://www.cels.org.ar/common/documentos/muertos_por_la_represion.pdf">bloodiest and most devastating in its history</a>. In just seven and a half years, 30,000 people were “disappeared”, 300 dead bodies found mangled, live <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/13/world/argentine-tells-of-dumping-dirty-war-captives-into-sea.html?pagewanted=all">prisoners dropped from planes</a>“ and 22 public officials assassinated.</p>
<p>President Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989), who lead Argentina’s first democratic government, understood this nefarious legacy, and he centred his victorious 1983 campaign <a href="http://www.archivoprisma.com.ar/registro/cierre-de-campana-de-raul-alfonsin-en-la-9-de-julio-1983-2/">on restoring the rule of law</a>. By systematically trying Argentina’s dictators and their henchmen, he hoped to <a href="https://theconversation.com/advice-for-colombia-from-countries-that-have-sought-peace-and-sometimes-found-it-67419">rebuild society’s trust in state institutions</a>. </p>
<p>Later administrations sometimes regressed. In the 1990s, <a href="http://web.archive.org/20020620191418/www.nuncamas.org/document/nacional/indulto_intro.htm">president Carlos Menem</a> granted amnesty to war criminals, and under the <a href="https://www.clarin.com/politica/senado-anulo-leyes-punto-final-obediencia-debida_0_BJvWDdxl0te.html">laws of Due Obedience (<em>Obedencia Debidea</em>, 1989) and End Point (<em>Punto Final,</em> 1990)</a> sentences were commuted and guilty generals set free (the laws were <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3146379.stm">overturned by Congress</a> in 2003).</p>
<p>The Argentinean people, on the other hand, had learned Alfonsín’s lesson: human rights violators must be punished. Since 1983, the majority of citizens have stood by the idea that trials and punishment are critical to reconstructing their republic and righting the democratic sensibility. </p>
<p>From 2004 onward, the courts seemed to be on the same page. Judges across the nation began <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ideas/2010/11/juicio-y-castigo-nestor-kirchner-and-accountability-for-past-human-rights-violations-in-argentina/">examining the constitutionality of old cases</a> in which amnesty had been granted to war criminals and retrying scores of police, generals and commanders. </p>
<p>On September 6 2004, the Supreme Court of Appeals, Argentina’s highest criminal court, <a href="http://www.cij.gov.ar/nota-4848-La-Corte-ratifico-la-nulidad-de-los-indultos-de-Videla-y-Massera.html">officially declared amnesty for war crimes to be unconstitutional</a>. </p>
<p>The process of ending impunity began in 1985, with the <a href="http://www.memoriaabierta.org.ar/juicioalasjuntas/?p=179">Trial of the Juntas</a>, in which nine members of the military government were tried and sentenced on television; the proceedings were also printed daily in a special newspaper, <em>Diario del Juicio</em>. </p>
<p>The government report that followed, <em><a href="http://www.jus.gob.ar/derechoshumanos/publicaciones/informe-nunca-mas.aspx">Nunca Mas</a></em> (Never Again) memorialised the truth about Argentina’s state terrorism, including names and aliases of those who waged war on citizens, the aberrant forms of torture they employed and the locations of concentration camps.</p>
<p>The indicted generals never repented for their infamous actions: manning <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/13/world/argentine-tells-of-dumping-dirty-war-captives-into-sea.html?pagewanted=all">death flights</a>, stealing newborn babies and appropriating the belongings of the disappeared.</p>
<p>In the meantime, Argentina was quickly developing the field of forensic research and building DNA banks that would make major progress in identifying bodies not just at home but in newly democratic countries across the region. Recently, the <a href="http://www.eaaf.org">Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense</a> supported Mexico’s investigation of the 43 students who <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-missing-forty-three-the-mexican-government-sabotages-its-own-independent-investigation">disappeared in Ayotzinpa, Guerrero, in 2014</a>.</p>
<h2>No to impunity</h2>
<p>Many <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21596582-one-hundred-years-ago-argentina-was-future-what-went-wrong-century-decline">economic and political crises</a> have battered Argentina since democracy returned in 1983. But throughout it all, one thing has stayed steady: the critical importance of human rights and the necessity to neither forget nor forgive those who violate them. </p>
<p>This non-negotiable commitment to punishing genocide is the DNA of the reconstructed Argentinean republic and the last bulwark of a people whose democratic governments have made so many mistakes. </p>
<p>Together, Argentina has celebrated as a nation each of the 122 grandchildren <a href="https://www.abuelas.org.ar">recovered by the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo</a>. Together, citizens have raged when <a href="http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1661658-polemicas-declaraciones-de-etchecolatz-en-un-juicio">convicted torturers like former Buenos Aires police chief Miguel Etchecolaz</a>, who has admitted to killing people between 1976 and 1983 but says he cannot recall how many, <a href="http://www.andaragencia.org/el-discurso-de-etchecolatz-sobre-la-defensa-de-la-patria-cristiana/">shirk responsibility for their actions</a> (Etchecolaz said that "the state had the right to use force and [as] in all wars, excesses occurred”). </p>
<p>In a country where laws are systematically violated, one norm persists: no more impunity. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170661/original/file-20170523-5757-1wim7w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170661/original/file-20170523-5757-1wim7w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170661/original/file-20170523-5757-1wim7w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170661/original/file-20170523-5757-1wim7w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170661/original/file-20170523-5757-1wim7w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170661/original/file-20170523-5757-1wim7w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170661/original/file-20170523-5757-1wim7w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1984 report enshrined a culture of vigilance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ANunca_mas.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was a foreseeable certainty, then, that Argentineans would repudiate en masse the court’s “two-for-one” ruling in favour of Muiña, a “Dirty War” criminal. As Taty Almeida, <a href="http://madresfundadoras.blogspot.com.ar/">director of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo Founding Line</a>, said at the May 10 protest: “Never again silence. We won’t live alongside the bloodiest killers in the history of Argentina”.</p>
<p>These days, the people have politics on their side too. After the ruling, Congress moved quickly to <a href="http://elpais.com/elpais/2017/05/11/inenglish/1494512512_516294.html">pass, with bipartisan support, a bill</a> prohibiting the “two-for-one” rule from being applied in cases of crimes against humanity. </p>
<p>It was approved before the demonstrations took place, allowing Estela Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and a well-known face of citizen resistance, to have hope in repeating her motto of the last 40 years: “<em>Señores</em> judges, never again a genocider set free”.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court erred in siding with impunity. The Argentinean people have made clear that reconciliation is not their chosen path, even <a href="https://www.clarin.com/politica/2x1-corte-historia-mentiras-traiciones_0_Bymp_6Qlb.html">when the idea comes from the Catholic Church</a>. For Argentina, the painful history lesson of the 20th century is this: without justice there’s no republic.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78296/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rut Diamint has received funding from the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Tedesco does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Argentineans are determined to not forgive or forget the criminals who killed or disappeared more than 30,000 people.Rut Diamint, Political Science Profesor, Torcuato di Tella UniversityLaura Tedesco, Professor of International and Comparative Politics, Saint Louis University – MadridLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/755172017-04-05T01:10:08Z2017-04-05T01:10:08ZBosnia’s 25-year struggle with transitional justice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164098/original/image-20170405-14629-16m39ti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Graves at the memorial center Potocari, near Srebrenica</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Amel Emric</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Bosnian war started 25 years ago this week.</p>
<p>Although bombs ceased falling in 1995, in many ways the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) are as divided as ever. The past two decades have repeatedly shown that divisions exacerbated by the war continue to permeate politics. </p>
<p>In fact, according to a 2013 public opinion poll, just one in six residents of BiH feels that the three ethnic groups that live there – the Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats – have reached <a href="http://www.media.ba/sites/default/files/prism_research_for_un_rco_statistical_report_1.pdf">reconciliation</a>.</p>
<p>It would be easy to pass this sentiment off as what one former U.S. secretary of state called “<a href="http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/briefing/dispatch/1992/html/Dispatchv3no52.html">ancient tribal, ethnic and religious rivalries</a>.” But I believe it raises profound doubts about the ability of international justice to bring about a more peaceful world.</p>
<p>As I demonstrate in my book, <a href="http://undpress.nd.edu/books/P01398">“The Costs of Justice</a>,” transitional justice – the process of dealing with human rights abuses committed by a previous regime – is an inherently political process made even more contentious by taking it out of the country. The fallout is not just a lack of reconciliation, but also the constant threat of violence. </p>
<p>In BiH, <a href="http://www.media.ba/sites/default/files/prism_research_for_un_rco_statistical_report_1.pdf">more than 30 percent</a> believe a renewal of armed conflict could be right around the corner.</p>
<h2>The G word</h2>
<p>Ongoing resentment in BiH was highlighted by two recent events. </p>
<p>First was the fall election of a Serbian genocide denier, Mladen Grujicic, as mayor of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2005/07/10/legacy-srebrenica">Srebrenica</a> – a town where more than 8,000 Bosniaks, or Bosnian Muslims, were systematically killed in 1995.</p>
<p>Next came the Bosniak response: a February <a href="http://www.rferl.org/a/icj-bosnia-serbia-genocide/28360242.html">request</a> for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to review its 2007 ruling that cleared the neighboring state of Serbia of complicity in genocide during the war. </p>
<p>The war may be long over, but wounds are still oozing. </p>
<iframe src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d2905758.676488683!2d14.726032644738389!3d44.66540078404253!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x134ba215c737a9d7%3A0x6df7e20343b7e90c!2sBosnia+and+Herzegovina!5e0!3m2!1sen!2sus!4v1491325241954" width="100%" height="300" frameborder="0" style="border:0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<p>Lack of reconciliation in BiH comes despite – or perhaps because of – a major international effort to ensure justice in the region. BiH, like other states of the former Yugoslavia, was under the jurisdiction of the <a href="http://www.icty.org/en/about">International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia</a> (ICTY) at The Hague for more than two decades. </p>
<p>The ICTY’s establishment in 1993 was greeted by human rights advocates as the harbinger of a new era of justice. At the time, transitional justice scholars preached its <a href="https://bookstore.usip.org/books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=51329">numerous benefits</a>. These included deterring future rights violations, strengthening rule of law, increasing the legitimacy of a new regime and, perhaps most importantly, encouraging reconciliation within broader society.</p>
<p>There are many <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022343309340108">ways to address</a> past rights abuses – from issuing apologies and providing victim compensation to holding truth commissions and launching criminal trials. The international community has historically focused on the latter – whether at <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/accountability-for-human-rights-atrocities-in-international-law-9780199546671?cc=us&lang=en&">Nuremberg</a>, <a href="http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/tokyo/tokyolinks.html">Tokyo</a> or <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100357920">The Hague</a>.</p>
<p>Criminal prosecutions are largely symbolic, but they are nonetheless important. They signal the end of impunity, or the ability to escape punishment, and the start of a more just order. The fact that post-conflict countries frequently lack institutions strong or independent enough to pursue criminal prosecutions on their own makes international mechanisms indispensable. Indeed, BiH’s inability to carry out its <a href="https://www.ictj.org/sites/default/files/ICTJ-FormerYugoslavia-Domestic-Court-2008-English.pdf">own criminal trials</a> for a decade and a half points to a real need for international courts. </p>
<p>But the very process of taking criminal prosecutions out of the domestic purview can ultimately be a <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/accountability-for-human-rights-atrocities-in-international-law-9780199546671?cc=us&lang=en&">blow to justice</a>. Most locals, for instance, lose interest in trials that play out in faraway courtrooms, meaning trials fail to bring about the sorts of dialogue that might lead to mutual understanding. </p>
<p>Formidable challenges of international prosecutions, from learning the intricacies of a foreign culture and political regime to collecting evidence essential for a successful prosecution, mean that international trials also take a long time to complete. And, of course, they are expensive. The <a href="https://www.wcl.american.edu/hrbrief/15/3skilbeck.pdf">ICTY cost</a> more than US$1 billion, or between $10 million and $15 million for each person accused. Various countries, including the United States, footed the bill.</p>
<p>And yet, rather than improve relations in the region, the ICTY may have <a href="http://undpress.nd.edu/books/P01398">incited tensions</a>. Each of the parties claimed they were unfairly targeted. Serbs were infuriated by their overrepresentation on the court’s docket. Croats couldn’t believe that any of their heroes were facing judgment. </p>
<p>Little surprise then that <a href="http://www.media.ba/sites/default/files/prism_research_for_un_rco_statistical_report_1.pdf">only 8 percent</a> of those polled in BiH in 2013 felt the ICTY had done a good job facilitating reconciliation. </p>
<p>While international courts did little for reconciliation, they fundamentally sabotaged more <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2486.2009.00891.x/abstract">organic forms of justice</a> than could otherwise have happened at the local level. In the former Yugoslavia, political leaders who were struggling to balance international pressure for – and domestic opposition to – ICTY cooperation opted for half-baked local initiatives designed to satisfy both. The result was a watered-down <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2002/02/truth-commission-serbia-and-montenegro">truth commission</a> here, an <a href="http://www.rferl.org/a/1105227.html">apology</a> of questionable sincerity there. </p>
<p>These half-measures ultimately replaced what might have been <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ijtj/article-abstract/10/2/292/2356904/History-of-a-Failure-Attempts-to-Create-a-National?redirectedFrom=fulltext">more earnest mechanisms</a> had they not been established in the context of ongoing international trials. The recent Bosniak appeal to the ICJ, just like the key political victory of a Serb genocide denier, highlights the degree to which justice and historical memory remain politicized in BiH a quarter-century after the war began. </p>
<h2>The ICTY’s long shadow</h2>
<p>The ICTY and subsequent tribunals demonstrated that international prosecutions can play an important role in ending impunity. But they must carefully balance the need of the international community to ensure accountability with the needs of a local populace to deal with past rights abuses on their own terms. </p>
<p>Limiting international prosecutions to the most serious perpetrators is one way to reach this balance. Few in Serbia shed tears for the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic, a corrupt dictator. </p>
<p>Even then, the recent experience of the International Criminal Court (ICC), established in 2002 as a permanent and global version of the ICTY, demonstrates this can be a tough sell. Numerous African states have accused the ICC of the same bias Yugoslavs attributed to the ICTY. They are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/jan/31/african-leaders-plan-mass-withdrawal-from-international-criminal-court">threatening to withdraw</a> as a result.</p>
<p>Back in Bosnia, the <a href="http://www.rferl.org/a/icj-bosnia-serbia-genocide/28360242.html">ICJ last month rejected</a> the Bosniak request on the grounds it did not come from all three members of the country’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/oct/08/bosnia-herzegovina-elections-the-worlds-most-complicated-system-of-government">tripartite presidency</a>. In other words, the very lack of reconciliation between Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats that prompted the initial appeal now makes that appeal impossible. It is ironic that Bosniaks still feel the need to turn to international justice mechanisms for redress. After all, international justice may bear some blame for the predicament they’re in today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Grodsky received funding from a number of organizations while carrying out research in the former Yugoslavia, including grants from Fulbright-Hayes and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. </span></em></p>How long does it take to make peace? Decades after the end of the Bosnian war, just one in six residents felt that country had reached reconciliation.Brian Grodsky, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/654372016-11-25T13:02:14Z2016-11-25T13:02:14ZCan Colombia’s new peace agreement hold all parties to account?<p>After a first peace agreement was <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-colombia-voted-no-to-peace-with-farc-66416">rejected in a plebiscite</a>, the Colombian government has signed a <a href="https://www.mesadeconversaciones.com.co/sites/default/files/12-1479102292.11-1479102292.2016nuevoacuerdofinal-1479102292.pdf">revised agreement</a> with the FARC, a radical left-wing guerrilla group that has fought against the state for five decades. It is now for the Colombian parliament to decide whether to endorse it.</p>
<p>Many issues were fiercely debated in the run-up to the referendum and then again in the negotiations between the government and the leaders of the no campaign in its aftermath. But one aspect of the agreement has received quite a bit of (<a href="http://colombiareports.com/coca-cola-facing-terrorism-support-charges-colombia/">sometimes somewhat misguided</a>) attention: the way it would affect so-called “third party actors”.</p>
<p>These include <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Corporate-Accountability-in-the-Context-of-Transitional-Justice/Michalowski/p/book/9780415524902">corporations</a>, landowners, and politicians who did not take up arms, but who nonetheless participated in international crimes during the conflict – funding armed groups, for example, or providing them with other support to carry out massacres or <a href="http://www.verdadabierta.com/lucha-por-la-tierra/5543-a-la-carcel-16-empresarios-de-palma-de-choco">forcibly displace people</a>.</p>
<p>The question of how to deal with third party actors has been an issue since 2005, when Colombia began a process of transition with the <a href="http://www.fiscalia.gov.co/jyp/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ley_975_de_2005.pdf">Justice and Peace Law</a>, a process that mainly benefited paramilitary groups. Under this system, <a href="http://www.verdadabierta.com/otros-negocios-criminales/6265-asi-investigan-a-financiadores-del-paramilitarismo">important information</a> has come to light showing that these third party actors were heavily involved in the armed conflict. Under the peace agreement, third party actors, like CEOs (but not corporations) or politicians, can be brought to justice. In Colombia it is not possible to prosecute legal entities as such.</p>
<h2>Learning from the past</h2>
<p>The measures adopted under the 2005 law were only extended to paramilitaries who demobilised and fully confessed their crimes. <a href="http://www.anuariocdh.uchile.cl/index.php/ADH/article/viewFile/37498/39175">Third parties</a> whose involvement they mentioned were not under the jurisdiction of the Justice and Peace System, but that of Colombia’s ordinary criminal courts. </p>
<p>On paper, that means corporate and other actors who have participated in crimes committed by paramilitaries could receive much harsher punishments than those received by paramilitaries under the jurisdiction of the Justice and Peace System. But in reality, impunity has prevailed, given the lack of effective prosecutions under the ordinary criminal justice system.</p>
<p>This could be about to change. Assuming it is implemented, the agreement creates transitional justice mechanisms that apply to everybody who directly or indirectly took part in the conflict, not just armed combatants. The new <a href="http://www.essex.ac.uk/tjn/documents/Leafleft%20ETJN%20Dejusticia.pdf">Special Jurisdiction for Peace</a> will have jurisdiction also over third party actors, though only if their involvement reaches the threshold of “active or determinative participation” in the most serious international crimes. </p>
<p>If these actors fully engage with the process, admitting their involvement and contributing to reparations, they will receive diminished punishment. The agreement proposes five to eight years of “effective deprivation of liberty”, which can take different forms – helping to remove landmines, for example, or building infrastructure. They will not be imprisoned. </p>
<p>But if they disclose the truth late in the process, they could face five to eight years in prison; if they do not contribute to justice and are found guilty, they could be imprisoned for up to 20 years.</p>
<h2>Accountability for all</h2>
<p>What makes this possible is that under the agreement, third party actors will fall under the remit of the new transitional justice mechanisms, rather than being dealt with by the ordinary criminal justice system. This provides an incentive to engage with the new process, and avoids the problems of the <a href="http://cja.org/where-we-work/colombia/related-resources/colombia-the-justice-and-peace-law/">Justice and Peace process</a>, that did not include them within its jurisdiction.</p>
<p>Getting third parties involved in the work of transitional justice mechanisms is hugely important. Victims deserve to know the full truth of what happened during the conflict, including who was involved in international crimes and how. They are also entitled to reparations from all those who were responsible for the harm they suffered. Holding third parties to account increases the likelihood that they will contribute to redressing the harm they have caused.</p>
<p>Some in Colombia, including some of those behind the no campaign, have called this a <a href="http://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/fiscal-nestor-humberto-martinez-explica-situacion-de-empresarios-involucrados-conflicto-armado-y-la-lista/492266">witch-hunt</a>, but that’s wide of the mark. The whole point is to encourage them to engage and secure <a href="http://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/acuerdos-de-paz-con-las-farc-alcance-del-punto-de-justicia-en-el-sector-privado/491996">accountability</a>. That is a major step in the right direction. At the centre of the agreement is the imperative to hold those responsible for the most serious crimes to account – and that will apply to third party actors, too. </p>
<p>To be sure, there are powerful third parties who would rather not be involved, and a lot will depend on whether the government can sustain the political will to enforce the terms of the agreement against all relevant third party actors. But the negotiators have found a nuanced approach. Once parliament approves the agreement, the victims of some of the war’s most heinous crimes will be able to seek the justice, truth and reparation they have been denied for decades.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65437/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clara Sandoval and Sabine Michalowski have bee providing advice to the Ministry of Justice (Transitional Justice Unit) on various issues related to justice and reparation within the peace process.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sabine Michalowski receives funding from the International Organisation for Migration and ESRC. </span></em></p>Colombia’s deal with the FARC means third parties implicated in international crimes could at last face justice.Clara Sandoval, Senior Lecturer, School of Law and Director of the Essex Transitional Justice Network, University of EssexSabine Michalowski, Professor of Law, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/677062016-11-21T03:08:59Z2016-11-21T03:08:59ZCreativity and resilience: how do war survivors make international justice work for them?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143978/original/image-20161031-27102-727lmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A disempowering judgment by the Special Court for Sierra Leone should not blind us to how local activists still made use of its symbolic power.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/64749744@N00/7595942598">Steve Evans/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
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<p>“<a href="https://www.ictj.org/about/transitional-justice">Transitional justice</a>” for societies emerging from periods of war, dictatorship or atrocity has become something of a buzz term within international law and policy circles. </p>
<p>Since the 1990s countless experiments, from Latin America to Eastern Europe, Africa to Asia, have been designed to deliver justice and help with peace-building and democratisation. The international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia are the most famous (and costly) examples. But what do we hope to achieve with these institutions? </p>
<p>According to their advocates, they are a means of ensuring accountability and redress to populations ravaged by conflict and violence. This, they assert, also promotes peace (recall the adage, “no peace without justice”). </p>
<p>Not only does a legal process allow marginalised groups the possibility of being heard – thus empowering them – it also provides a model for the development of local institutions that are better capable of promoting democracy and the rule of law. </p>
<p>These benefits appear to have convinced many within the non-governmental world, the United Nations system and government aid agencies. Ever-greater resources are being invested in transitional justice processes.</p>
<p>Criticisms also abound. These focus largely on the realities of past and present geopolitical inequality (colonialism in the past, neocolonialism in the present), the inability of legal institutions to respond to widespread structural problems (particularly economic) and the violence of the law, which all too often relies on silencing and exclusion. </p>
<p>How, critics argue, can “top-down” legal institutions genuinely deliver empowerment? Don’t they just create new reliance on elite “experts” and replace politics with models of bureaucratic governance?</p>
<p>After a decade working in the field of transitional justice, in four post-conflict sites – Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Nepal and Sri Lanka – I am sympathetic to these critiques. I am also struck by the highly abstract ways in which both advocates and critics of transitional justice make their arguments. Few have delved into how people in such places actually feel about and experience transitional justice.</p>
<p>How are we to understand why people in different parts of the world continue to demand and participate in transitional justice institutions and processes in spite of the shortcomings? </p>
<p>Extremely marginalised sections of the population have mobilised in a variety of settings to demand recognition and accountability and to participate. Examples range from survivors of sexual violence in Bosnia who attended the <a href="http://www.icty.org/">International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia</a> in The Hague back in the 1990s through to women’s collectives in northeastern Sri Lanka who presented submissions to the national <a href="http://www.slguardian.org/2016/06/final-report-by-the-public-representations-committee-on-constitutional-reforms/">Public Representations Committee on Constitutional Reform</a> in 2016.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143981/original/image-20161031-15816-1p5sy9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143981/original/image-20161031-15816-1p5sy9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143981/original/image-20161031-15816-1p5sy9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143981/original/image-20161031-15816-1p5sy9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143981/original/image-20161031-15816-1p5sy9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143981/original/image-20161031-15816-1p5sy9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143981/original/image-20161031-15816-1p5sy9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Peace Palace or a place for misplaced hopes? The International Court of Justice at The Hague in the Netherlands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">United Nations Photo/flickr</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>This can be (and has often been) interpreted as evidence of their desperation. Otherwise, it is argued that perhaps their naivety or a sort of false consciousness allows for their co-option and continued domination. </p>
<p>In the case of the Bosnian survivors, studies have documented their disappointment following their experiences in The Hague. This may support a reading of (misplaced) optimism. </p>
<p>However, I want to suggest some other explanations. To do this I offer two examples.</p>
<h2>Sierra Leone</h2>
<p>In 2006, fresh from working on the global <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Violence_Against_Women">Stop Violence Against Women</a> campaign at Amnesty International, I went to work as a trial monitor at the <a href="http://www.rscsl.org/">Special Court for Sierra Leone</a>. International feminists and human rights lawyers lauded the court for the serious stand it was taking on prosecuting crimes committed against women during the nation’s civil war. </p>
<p>I was particularly interested in the prosecutions for forced marriage. On the one hand, these were said to reflect a commitment by the court to respond to victims’ experiences of violation. On the other, as a feminist, I was curious to see how the court would define “marriage”.</p>
<p>As it turns out, the court adopted an extremely conservative definition. In trying to explain the difference between forced marriage in war and arranged marriage in times of peace, the court basically reinforced the rights of parents – in particular fathers – to determine suitable husbands and to demand a bride price in exchange for their daughters. </p>
<p>Many members of the local women’s rights and human rights community were horrified. They had lobbied the court hoping it would help their campaign to end forced and early arranged marriages. The court did the opposite, giving authority back to conservative local elites. I left Sierra Leone early, disgusted and thoroughly disillusioned with the project of transitional justice.</p>
<p>In 2011 I returned to Sierra Leone to explore the legacy of the Special Court for women’s human rights. I was prepared for the worst. But then I was faced with a surprise.</p>
<p>In an interview, the chairwoman of the <a href="http://www.womensforumsl.org/">Women’s Forum</a> (a nationwide coalition of women’s rights activists) told me the court had been very helpful in their campaigning against forced early marriage. She explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We tell them this is against international law, the Special Court says it is wrong.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When I tried to explain that this was not what the judgment said, she gave me a long, patient and pitying look. It became clear that she and other activists had not read it, nor they did not feel it was necessary to read it. </p>
<p>This was not due to ignorance. Rather, it was a strategic choice not to waste their time and energy. The power was in the message that there had even been an international court that had looked at “gender issues” and convicted people. This was sufficient symbolic backing for women in their communities.</p>
<p>As I spoke to more women in different parts of the country, I saw the various ways in which the existence of the court and its prosecutions for gender-based violence opened up a new space that simply did not otherwise exist for women’s rights activists. </p>
<p>The disempowering nature of the court’s internal processes did not diminish the creative and strategic ways in which local actors drew on the court’s symbolic power to add weight and legitimacy to their own cause.</p>
<p>I began to realise the bias that many of us working on transitional justice had. We assumed the only places that mattered in terms of assessing transitional justice were the formal institutions, and that the only voices that mattered were the legal experts. In the process, we were feeding the very issues we criticised: the elite-driven, institution-focused, exclusionary practices of transitional justice.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WodVLq8YRv8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Given their under-representation in parliament, women in Sierra Leone are fighting for access to justice and institutional backing in strategic ways.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What would happen if we started to explore the impact of transitional justice outside courtrooms, parliaments and bureaucratic institutions? Might transitional justice lead another life, be contributing to struggles for social justice in another way? </p>
<p>I was struck by how the Sierra Leonean activists had managed to turn the court and its message into a tool that could be used in their struggle. They subverted its original, intended or actual message in an act of resistance and empowerment that, to my mind, requires our recognition even as we demand better from institutions.</p>
<h2>Sri Lanka</h2>
<p>In May 2009, Sri Lanka’s decades-long civil war ended with the destruction of Tamil separatist movement, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Since then, international and domestic initiatives have aimed to assist Sri Lanka’s “transition” towards a peaceful, more democratic society that can come to terms with its violent past and manage the realities of its multi-ethnic population in the future. </p>
<p>After repeated commissions of inquiry and human rights investigations dating back to the 1990s, one could understand a degree of scepticism about the latest round of transitional justice initiatives.</p>
<p>And yet, when visiting a women’s collective in the war-ravaged town of Mullaitivu in north-eastern Sri Lanka, I was told its members had participated in recent public consultations on reforming the constitution. It had been a long day in a very hot room, so people were eager to head home. But, when I asked, casually as I was leaving, why they had chosen to participate and how, a new energy entered the room. </p>
<p>Suddenly, I was surrounded by multiple women speaking at once. Eyes shining, they were keen to share their experiences while my slightly harried interpreter translated. They told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s always men. [There is] no-one to talk about our issues, so we thought we should go and talk about our issues. And when a lot of women came to speak about their issues it added pressure.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They were realistic about what they expected from the process: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Whether the government accepts our submissions or not we don’t know, but we wanted to prove that we women went and made a submission. So it is there in the history.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143990/original/image-20161101-15783-6uteid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143990/original/image-20161101-15783-6uteid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143990/original/image-20161101-15783-6uteid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143990/original/image-20161101-15783-6uteid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143990/original/image-20161101-15783-6uteid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143990/original/image-20161101-15783-6uteid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143990/original/image-20161101-15783-6uteid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘We wanted to prove that we women went and made a submission. So it is there in the history.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/vikalpasl/14676108142/">Vikalpa|CPA/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Their responses offered an array of rationales for participating: they wanted to contribute to the emergent official discourse, to overcome the limits of their local (patriarchal) community and of the elitist civil society that too often spoke for them in disempowering and inaccurate ways. </p>
<p>Their actions were not free of risk: one of the women who spoke for the group faced an extremely difficult time with her husband afterwards. And yet all expressed great satisfaction at having done it. It gave them confidence and a feeling of political power. All of them told me they would do it again.</p>
<p>While many of us may doubt the effectiveness of these processes in improving democracy and justice, these women certainly felt that this was an important opportunity for them to be heard.</p>
<h2>Pay heed to how survivors use transitional justice</h2>
<p>For this reason I think we need to revisit the question of what transitional justice offers to survivors of war, authoritarianism and atrocity.</p>
<p>We are right to be sceptical of some of the claims made by advocates sitting in Geneva or New York. However, we should not allow our critiques of the macro political situation to overshadow our ability to see what marginalised populations around the world actually do with transitional justice mechanisms and processes.</p>
<p>In Sierra Leone, regardless of the effectiveness of formal legal measures, there has undoubtedly been a shift in local consciousness and public debate. This was achieved not through the outreach activities of formal actors but through the appropriation of legal norms – albeit in a strategic and sometimes subversive way – by local social actors.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka, despite a highly restrictive and authoritarian environment, individuals flock to the quasi-judicial bodies of commissions of inquiry to voice their grievances and make claims for justice.</p>
<p>To treat these actions as merely the pathetic acts of desperate individuals is, I think, to do a disservice to their courage and agency. Given Sri Lanka’s modern history and the lack of tangible outcomes from earlier commissions, I do not see these individual actions as simply reflecting a naïve belief in the system.</p>
<p>Instead, I think we need to focus on how we might approach these engagements by oppressed and marginalised peoples with transitional justice institutions. </p>
<p>While we cannot ignore the hierarchical and often highly exclusionary and oppressive ways in which such institutions are structured, we must also be attentive to the strategic (and sometimes subversive) acts of agency by these oppressed and so-called desperate groups.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67706/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kiran Grewal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How are we to understand why people in different parts of the world continue to demand and participate in transitional justice institutions and processes in spite of the shortcomings?Kiran Grewal, Senior Research Fellow in Human Rights, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/664162016-10-03T16:30:15Z2016-10-03T16:30:15ZWhy Colombia voted ‘no’ to peace with FARC<p>It seemed like a done deal. After 60 years of fighting, three years of detailed negotiations, and a <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-momentous-peace-deal-with-the-farc-so-what-next-for-colombia-64452">peace agreement</a> signed in front of the head of the United Nations, the horrific conflict between the Colombian state and the Marxist Fuerzas Armadas de Colombia (FARC) finally seemed to be over. </p>
<p>The peace process looked set to be a model for future negotiations around the world; all it needed was public approval. And then, in the referendum that was meant to finish the job, 50.24% of voters <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/colombia-referendum-peace-accord-farc-rejected-161002220514696.html">rejected the agreement</a> – with fewer than 40% even showing up. </p>
<p>This wasn’t supposed to happen – but looked at in a different way, it’s far from a surprise.</p>
<p>The negotiations were all but designed to be disconnected from voters, and might as well have taken place on another planet. Sequestered behind closed doors in Cuba, the negotiators represented only the Colombian state and FARC; both sides dealt with the human consequences of their violence by flying in representatives of victims’ groups, and then flying them home again. </p>
<p>As far as securing a deal goes, the design worked. Untroubled by the day-to-day vacillations of popular opinion and safely isolated from the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/07/colombia-farc-rebels-conflict-peace-talks">violence</a> between the two sides, negotiators reached a well thought out settlement to stop the conflict for good – a remarkable achievement after one of the modern world’s longest-running wars. </p>
<p>On paper, it was a remarkable achievement. But on the ground, it was also clear that most Colombians had no interest in what was happening.</p>
<p>There were attempts to engage them: touring meetings and talks where people would be spoken to and have their opinions listened to, adverts and documentaries in which former enemies publicly reconcilled, a <a href="https://www.mesadeconversaciones.com.co/enviar-propuesta/formulario-virtual">website</a> on which people could post their opinions. Nevertheless, the lack of interest was palpable – and for some reason, it apparently didn’t strike the negotiators as a significant problem. </p>
<p>All the expertise and effort was at the negotiating table. If these two sides could resolve the intractable conflict everyone would be relieved, regardless of the deal’s content. There was no need for a Plan B: after all, who would vote against peace? No one would read the thing anyway, and they would vote with their instincts.</p>
<p>But instincts change over the course of 60 years of war, especially a war in which guerrillas fight the state military and police, who themselves collude with or fight paramilitaries, who in turn fight the guerrillas – all of them killing thousands of civilians and displacing millions more. In a climate like this, the norms of justice shift; impunity rules, violence escalates, illegal and legal economies alike are infused with violence. Distrust thrives.</p>
<h2>Personality contest</h2>
<p>In the end, the Yes-No campaign revolved around two men: the dealmaking current president, Santos, and his predecessor, Álvaro Uribe, who <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-colombia-prepares-to-vote-for-peace-with-farc-a-former-president-says-no-64082">campaigned for a No vote</a>. Santos is more unpopular than ever; like many leaders from elite backgrounds, he comes off as uninterested in ordinary people. Uribe’s stock, evidently, is much higher. </p>
<p>At first, Uribe totally opposed any negotiations with FARC; then, once the negotiations were clearly working, he moved on to opposing any deal under which FARC members would avoid proper judicial sentences or be allowed to enter political office. His objections were always unlikely to be met, but he’d hit a nerve: for many Colombians, the social and personal injustices of negotiating an end to war were just too painful to accept.</p>
<p>Uribe also stood to lose out personally from the deal. The central pillar of his legacy was the military campaign that weakened FARC to the point that they would negotiate. Yet, his well-reported connections to paramilitaries who killed thousands of civilians while fighting FARC indicate a dirtier side to this war. Many of his political allies – including his <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-colombia-crime-spy-idUSKBN0NL2DW20150430">head of intelligence</a>, his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/29/colombia-president-alvaro-uribe-brother-charged-death-squad">brother</a>, and his <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12532826">cousin</a> (who was his campaign manager) – are now behind bars for colluding with paramilitaries to advance their political and business ambitions.</p>
<p>By offering reduced sentences to those who confessed their crimes on all sides, the deal could have opened up the Uribe era to unprecedented scrutiny. The media even <a href="http://colombiareports.com/uribe-could-end-up-in-prison-over-war-crimes-colombias-prosecutor-general/">speculated</a> that Uribe himself could face criminal convictions for crimes against humanity. </p>
<p>And yet, Uribe remains surprisingly popular. He was able to mobilise his supporters against the peace process; without his efforts, there might have been a different result.</p>
<h2>In the name of the people</h2>
<p>Many people who voted No are angry. Like Uribe, they view the conflict with absolute certainty: destroy, by any means necessary, or be destroyed. To them, FARC must be contained either through annihilation or incarceration; there is no alternative. Those that voted Yes don’t necessarily support either the deal or Santos, but they saw no option but to accept what was offered. They were prepared to put aside revenge and retribution so that future generations could live without fear.</p>
<p>The high proportion of non-voters, meanwhile, reflects not just popular alienation from the peace process, but also a much longer history of political distrust. Most voters have seen this all before: a deal is done behind closed doors and, outside of election campaigns, leaders take little or no interest in their people’s needs. </p>
<p>Ironically, that’s what started the war, and what perpetuated it. Belligerents on all sides claimed to be fighting for “the people”. But most Colombians recognised that some or all of them ended up fighting for their own interests. For some, continued conflict feels safer than peace by compromise, while others will feel that Colombia has thrown away a chance to offer its next generation a peaceful life. Still others will see this as nothing more than business as usual: a never-ending story of self-interest, lies, corruption, impunity and violence. </p>
<p>It’s hard to know what happens next: more negotiations, another offer, reinvigorated conflict. The already weakened FARC might yet fragment, making another deal less robust; the government might shift back to the right, possibly heralding a return to a war fought through paramilitary proxies.</p>
<p>Whatever happens, Colombia needs to find a way for all its people to discuss their own war – and their own peace – in a way that validates their experiences and does not escalate the violence further.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Newman received funding from The Leverhulme Trust for research in Colombia from 2008-2010.</span></em></p>Given their chance to ratify a deal to end a 60-year war, less than 40% of Colombians voted – and they threw it out.Jonathan Newman, Post-Doctoral Researcher, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/657752016-09-29T20:25:11Z2016-09-29T20:25:11ZNegotiating with terrorists: diplomacy triumphs in Colombia’s peace process<p>On September 26 2016, the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla fighters put an end to half a century of confrontation, violence, and death, by signing a <a href="https://www.wola.org/analysis/a-summary-of-the-farc-government-ceasefire-and-disarmament-accord/">six-point peace agenda</a> that was negotiated over nearly two years. </p>
<p>The agreement, which will be put to voters in a plebiscite on October 2, is an opportunity to forge a new reality for Colombia’s war-wearied citizens. </p>
<h2>Challenges ahead</h2>
<p>The finalisation August 24 of the accords and their September 26 signing were not the end of the process for Colombia. The road to peace is long.</p>
<p>First, the country must vote to ratify the agreements on October 2, a simple “<em>si</em>” or “<em>no</em>” vote. The government and numerous civil society organisations such as <a href="http://www.dejusticia.org/#!/index">Dejusticia</a>, the <a href="http://www.coljuristas.org/index1.php?grupo=1">Colombian Jurists Commission</a>, and the <a href="https://www.wola.org/">Washington Office on Latin America</a> have mobilised to increase public support for the agreements, and the polling is <a href="http://www.eltiempo.com/politica/proceso-de-paz/encuesta-del-plebiscito-si-55-por-ciento/16712325">trending in that direction</a>, but ratification is not assured.</p>
<p>In the immediate term, Colombians must accept transitional, restorative justice. Reconciliation is not easy; it doesn’t depend on logic or convincing other people that you’re right, but on emotions – often very private ones. Grief for the dead will almost always overwhelm rationality.</p>
<p>The FARC’s laying down of arms is only the beginning: its members, who have largely been isolated in rural and jungle settings in a Marxist society of their own making, must learn to live civic life and insert themselves gradually into the political and urban day-to-day rhythm of modern Colombia. </p>
<p>On the other side of the conflict are Colombia’s armed forces. They have battled the FARC for decades and they, too, must be deactivated, a <a href="http://repository.unimilitar.edu.co/bitstream/10654/6749/1/ErasoAgudeloDavidCamilo2012.pdf">no less complicated proposition</a>. Their autonomy and centrality will decrease, and the possibility of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/03/28/colombia-prosecution-false-positive-cases-under-special-jurisdiction-peace">criminal sanctions for abuses</a> and repression hang above their heads. </p>
<p>The effectiveness of two key restorative justice bodies – the Commission for Clarifying Truth, Community, and Non-Repetition; and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace – also remain to be seen. The successful implementation of the accords and the permanence of a total guerrilla ceasefire will present significant challenges. </p>
<h2>A model negotiation</h2>
<p>Colombia’s negotiation, driven by President Juan Manuel Santos, is a model for conflict resolution at the global level. </p>
<p>First, Santos brought in <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/internationalRelations/centresandunits/globalsouth/documents/GSU-Working-Paper-1-2016-(Ucros).pdf">respected mediators</a> who had global credibility, including Dag Nylander of Norway. The talks were held in Cuba, a country that prides itself on political independence, with Chile and Venezuela observing.</p>
<p>Crucially, for the first time in the history of such peace discussions, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-28822683">victims had a seat at the negotiating table</a>. </p>
<p>Each party had advisers who weren’t part of their group, and national citizen forums were held in different places, from the National University of Colombia or in churches, in events where victims could voice their feelings and ideas. </p>
<p>Finally, and crucially, Colombia has opted for restorative justice, not retaliation. The signed agreement proposes community service as a way to atone for damages done, rather than just throwing perpetrators of crimes in jail. This decision demonstrates the intent of both sides to reintegrate their armed combatants into society. Unlike other famous peace negotiations in the region – for example Salvador, where the <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/jpia/past-issues-1/1999/9.pdf">United Nations played a key role in defining the conditions for peace</a> – no external criteria were imposed.</p>
<p>The accords also include provisions for collective rights for Afro-Colombians, drug policy reforms and sustainable rural development.</p>
<h2>Echoes across the continent</h2>
<p>Colombia’s pending peace has great significance for the whole continent. The process is a rebuttal to the repressive military solution other South American nations (and Colombia itself) have historically launched to fight insurgencies or organised crime, for example in <a href="http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756223/obo-9780199756223-0026.xml">Peru</a>, <a href="http://melvyl.worldcat.org/title/logic-of-violence-in-criminal-war-cartel-state-conflict-in-mexico-colombia-and-brazil/oclc/810064938&referer=brief_results">Mexico and Brazil</a>. </p>
<p>The high level of regional support for the peace process was demonstrated by the <a href="https://panampost.com/ysol-delgado/2016/09/26/world-leaders-head-to-colombia-for-signing-of-farc-peace-deal/">presence of multiple Latin American leaders</a> at the recent signing. </p>
<p>Colombia is demonstrating to Latin America – and to the world – that social and economic inequities cannot be resolved through violence, and that ideological differences are not a barrier to political negotiation. </p>
<h2>A global effort</h2>
<p>Colombia has dared to undertake that incredibly risky act: negotiating with terrorists. Throughout the peace talks, the Colombian government used creative diplomacy in pursuit of an agreement. Colombia secured regional and international buy-in, but still manage to maintain its own authority in the process, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-colombia-rebels-plebiscite-idUSKCN10F024">despite significant domestic partisan divide on the issue</a>.</p>
<p>The United Nations, <a href="http://www.unasursg.org/en">UNASUR</a> (a regional governance body), international NGOs, and civil society associations such as the Latin American Continental and Caribbean Students and the Democratic Federation of Women will all help monitor and implement the accords. </p>
<p>This solidarity isn’t just about countries in the region showing support for a neighbour. Rather, it means concrete assistance with the implementation of the accords and with handling the daily tensions that can and will arise along the way. </p>
<p>The diplomacy and transparency with which these negotiations were conducted merits the respect of Colombian society and international observers. Colombia is entering an era of pain and sacrifice. It’s making a big wager: that hope is greater than death, and that even an imperfect peace trumps perpetual war.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65775/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rut Diamint has received research funding from the Open Society Foundations and Ford Foundation.</span></em></p>The peace accords signed by the FARC and the Colombian govenment on September 26 are momentous, but they’re only the beginning of the path to peace.Rut Diamint, Profesora, Torcuato di Tella UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/303282014-08-11T05:14:14Z2014-08-11T05:14:14ZGrandmother’s reunion highlights Argentina’s long road to recovery from its ‘Dirty War’<p>For 36 years, Estela Barnes de Carlotto, one of Argentina’s leading human rights campaigners, has searched tirelessly for her missing grandson. On August 5, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/06/argentinian-grandmothers-find-son-of-woman-murdered-under-dictatorship">she announced that he had finally been found</a>. This discovery was the result of sustained campaigning by Estela and grandmothers like her, who maintained hope that their relatives were still alive, decades after their “forced disappearances” in Argentina’s “Dirty War”.</p>
<p>Estela Carlotto’s grandson, Guido Montoya Carlotto, was born in a military hospital on June 25 1978. The previous November, state agents had kidnapped his mother Laura Carlotto, when she was two-and-a-half months pregnant, together with his father. Both were involved in the left-wing Peronist Youth Movement. Laura was detained at a clandestine detention centre during her pregnancy, her child was taken from her five hours after his birth and she was killed two months later. </p>
<p>Laura’s parents received the body of their daughter, but were never informed of the fate of their grandchild who has only just been identified.</p>
<p>Although at one level, this is a private and deeply emotional story, it is also extremely significant for Argentina and offers hope to those around the world who continue to grapple with the legacy of systematic human rights abuses and search for truth, decades after the crimes were committed. </p>
<p>Carlotto is the President of the <a href="http://www.abuelas.org.ar">Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo</a>, one of South America’s largest human rights organisations. For decades they have worked to discover what happened to babies born to political dissidents and put up for adoption by the military dictatorship during the Dirty War. Guido is the 114th missing child found by the Grandmothers.</p>
<h2>Argentina’s Dirty War</h2>
<p>The Argentine armed forces seized power in March 1976 and established a brutal regime that lasted until their defeat in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/falkland-islands">Falklands/Malvinas</a> conflict. During the dictatorship, whole categories of people and institutions came to be viewed as enemies. Contrary to the military’s propaganda this included not just sympathisers of guerrilla groups, but also citizens who worked towards social change of any sort. </p>
<p>At least 9,000 people, though some estimates put it at as high as 30,000, a figure that received <a href="http://www.lanacion.com.ar/807208-controversia-por-el-prologo-agregado-al-informe-nunca-mas">official endorsement in 2006</a> were imprisoned, tortured or killed. </p>
<p>As illustrated by the De Carlotto story, even babies and young children were at risk of being kidnapped, before having their identities changed and being given to supporters of the regime to raise as their own children. According to the Grandmothers, approximately 500 children had their identities concealed.</p>
<h2>The Grandmothers’ struggle</h2>
<p>From 1977, mothers and grandmothers searching for their disappeared children and grandchildren began staging courageous weekly protests outside the office of the president in the Plaza de Mayo in central Buenos Aires. These protests became a very visible site of resistance to the military regime and, later following the transition, of the women’s enduring demands that the fates of their relatives be investigated. The heroism of these women, coupled with the inexcusable nature of crimes committed against children, enabled the Grandmothers’ struggle to remain one of the most high-profile human rights issues during Argentina’s political transition.</p>
<p>In 1987, the Grandmothers were able to lobby their democratically elected politicians to create a <a href="http://en.mincyt.gob.ar/ministerio/national-dna-data-bank-bndg-23">National Genetic Data Bank</a>, the world’s first DNA bank. In 1992, they were influential in the establishment of a <a href="http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-argentina">National Commission for the Right to Identity</a> to investigate their children’s whereabouts. Both institutions gave official support to the Grandmothers’ search for truth. They continue to function today and played a role in the identification of Guido Carlotto who took a DNA test to confirm his true identity.</p>
<p>The Grandmothers also shaped international law. In 1990, during negotiations on the UN’s <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx">Convention on the Rights of the Child</a>, they successfully campaigned for the inclusion of articles on a child’s right to an identity. These provisions became part of Argentine law following constitutional reforms in 1994. And, these legal developments made it easier to prosecute those responsible for the kidnapping and concealment of children within Argentina.</p>
<h2>Truth and justice</h2>
<p>Due to its indefensible nature, these crimes were explicitly excluded from the amnesty laws introduced following Argentina’s transition to democracy. From the 1990s, legal cases brought by the Grandmothers resulted in convictions of military personnel and the families who adopted the children of the disappeared. </p>
<p>This made visible an anomaly whereby the perpetrators could be prosecuted for the kidnapping of a child, but not for the disappearance, torture or murder of the child’s parents. The anomaly eventually contributed to a Supreme Court decision <a href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2005/06/14/argentina-amnesty-laws-struck-down">to declare the amnesty laws unconstitutional</a>. The decision paved the way for the reopening of hundreds of criminal cases for military-era abuses in Argentina and has been influential in the unpicking of amnesty laws elsewhere in the region.</p>
<p>In the early years of its transition, Argentina was a model to other societies grappling with the legacy of a violent past. It created a respected truth commission and the “junta trials” that prosecuted the leaders of the military regime, going on to make an impressive transition to a stable democratic state. </p>
<p>But human rights organisations continued to denounce the role that perpetrators of previous human rights abuses were able to play within Argentine society, which in some cases involved them continuing to commit violent offences. For example Estela Carlotto was the victim of an attempted assassination in 2002 when gunshots were fired at her house from a speeding car in the middle of the night. It is believed that those responsible wanted to silence her demands for truth.</p>
<p>This event, together with the identification of her grandson, remind us that it can take many decades for societies to recover from mass atrocities. Casting light on the crimes of the past is an essential part of this process, not just to provide a remedy for the victims and survivors, but also to ensure that progress towards protecting human rights is safeguarded.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Mallinder previously received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for research on Argentina. She is affiliated with the Committee for the Administration of Justice.</span></em></p>For 36 years, Estela Barnes de Carlotto, one of Argentina’s leading human rights campaigners, has searched tirelessly for her missing grandson. On August 5, she announced that he had finally been found…Louise Mallinder, Reader in Human Rights and International Law, Ulster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.