Transitional justice as a driver of transformation in Colombia: New Policy Brief CAPAZ
We present a new Policy Brief published by the editorial project of the Colombo-German Institute for Peace – CAPAZ. It is called “Transitional justice as a driver of transformation in Colombia“. It was written by Paul Gready, José Antonio Gutiérrez Danton, Piergiuseppe Parisi and Simon Robins.
Authors/researchers
- Paul Gready: Co-director of the Centre for Applied Human Rights of University of York, and holds a unesco Chair in the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Expansion of Political Space. He is the co-editor of the Journal of Human Rights Practice, and has published widely on transitional and transformative justice.
- José Antonio Gutiérrez Danton: Post-doctoral research fellow at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ulb) and lecturer in Universidad Santo Tomás in Colombia. His research centres on agrarian conflict, transformative justice, governance, and peace-building.
- Piergiuseppe Parisi: Lecturer at the Centre for Applied Human Rights and the York Law School, University of York. His research focuses on compliance generation in international human rights and humanitarian law, human rights defending, and indigenous rights.
- Simon Robins: Practitioner and researcher in humanitarian protection, human rights and transitional justice. Over the past decade, he has blended academic research with consulting for international agencies with his expertise primarily lying in states transitioning from conflict and violence.
Summary
This Policy Brief proposes a notion of transformative justice in response to the serious human rights violations resulting from the armed conflict in Colombia, as well as its underlying causes rooted in impunity and structural violence, based on the findings and recommendations of the Truth Commission. To this end, we analyse the limitations of the traditional concept of transitional justice and propose the pillars of a justice system that can serve as an engine for transforming the structural causes of the conflict. These pillars include rethinking democracy and empowering marginalised communities, seeking solutions to structural violence, implementing transformative reparations, and combating impunity. Concrete recommendations are then presented for the Colombian government to successfully turn transitional justice into a transformative force for the country.