Eighteen - Decolonising Justice and Democratic Peace in Colombia

Summary

This chapter focusses on legal pluralism and restorative justice in Colombia since 2016. It is a period defined by the agreement reached between the Colombian Government and the most important guerrilla group (FARC), namely the La Habana Agreements which brought to an end a period of political violence that had lasted for more than fifty years. The law of ethnic peoples is one of the forms of collective organisation through which subalternized communities have sought to strengthen their identities, languages, territories, legal systems, and authorities in order to resist old and new colonialisms. The intercultural framework for transitional justice seeks to formulate a concept of justice that responds to the need to heal the wounds associated with past wrongdoings and counteract contemporary forms of injustice directed against various ethnically differentiated victims. Intercultural dialogue must be based on the capacity to listen in such a way as to understand and grant full credibility to the ways in which the silenced voices are intended to be heard. The role of transitional justice is a catalyst in the search for strategies to combat systematic human rights abuses and violations, due to the ravages of historical and existing colonialism. The limitations of JEP (Special Jurisdiction for Peace) may be a factor that prevents it from fully complying with its historical mission, especially if this is compounded by a lack of political will, both on the part of the government in power and the more conservative and extremist sectors of Colombian society.