Colombia's Special Jurisdiction for Peace in an Increasingly Illiberal Context of Misinformation and Backlash (original) (raw)
From 2012 to 2016, the Colombian Government and the FARC-EP guerilla group sought to end the region's longest non-international armed conflict. Under the auspices of the international community, this process drew from a complex series of practices and knowledge often known as 'transitional justice'. Indeed, international expertise-in law and other fields-was also actively mobilized by both parties, as well as civil society and the anti-peace opposition, to contest the meaning of these terms. On paper, the peace agreement adopted a cutting-edge and comprehensive system aimed at delivering truth, justice, reparation, and non-repetition (the SIVJRNR), including both judicial and extrajudicial mechanisms following international standards and best practices. Yet in practice, the situation became increasingly dire after the peace agreement was narrowly voted down in October 2016. Two years later, having entered government, the former populist opposition proudly announced its plan to shred the peace accord and the SIVJRNR (including its crown jewel: the Special Jurisdiction for Peace or JEP). In this context, * Lawyer from the Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano, holder of a specialist degree in human rights and international humanitarian law and an LLM from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. He was one of the founders of the Colombian Chapter of the International Institute of Human Rights. Currently, he works at the Revision Section of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace. In addition, he lectures on International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at the Universidad del Bosque and teaches the course 'Armed Conflicts in the XX and XXI Centuries' at the Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano.