Transitional justice provides society with a series of transitional mechanisms to address mass human rights violations, recognise victims and rebuild trust between different sectors of society.
In Colombia, different transitional justice mechanisms have been formulated and implemented through the Justice and Peace Law (2005), the Victims and Land Restitution Law (2011), the Legal Framework for Peace (2012) and finally the Final Agreement, particularly Point 5, related to the rights of victims of the armed conflict (2016).
One of the central axes of the negotiation between the government and the FARC-EP was the need to create a comprehensive transitional justice component, responsible for clarifying, judging and punishing the most serious crimes committed within the armed conflict and, at the same time, that those who committed such crimes could contribute to guaranteeing the victims’ rights to truth, justice, comprehensive reparation and non-repetition.
In this respect, the Final Agreement proposed the creation of the Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-Repetition (SIVJRNR), today called the Comprehensive System for Peace. This is composed of a judicial mechanism, called the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, and extrajudicial mechanisms which include: the Commission for Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition, and the Search for Missing Persons Unit, in or because of the conflict. In addition, it was envisaged that the individual and collective reparation measures for victims that were being implemented under the Victims and Land Restitution Law would be strengthened. The idea behind the creation of the Comprehensive System was to have mechanisms that vindicate the rights of victims, based on the following principles: i) recognition of victims, ii) recognition of responsibility, iii) satisfaction of victims’ rights, iv) participation of victims, v) clarification of the truth, vi) reparation for victims, vii) guarantees of protection and security, viii) guarantee of non-repetition, ix) principle of reconciliation, and x) rights-based approach.
In this section you will find analysis and reflections on the journey to reach an agreement on transitional justice measures, in particular the creation of the Comprehensive System for Peace, the mechanisms that comprise it, the challenges of its implementation and the lessons learned.
