REPORTE CONVERSATORIO DE PAZ BRISTOL

10th Conversatorio de Paz – University of Bristol, School of Modern Languages

This Conversatorio took place on the 20^th November to discuss the fifth point in the agenda in the ongoing peace negotiations in La Havana, Cuba, regarding the victims. The guest speaker was Dr. Lara Montesinos Coleman (Lecturer in International Relations and International Development, University of Sussex) and Francy Carranza (PhD Candidate, SOAS) acted as moderator. Dr Matthew Brown (Reader in Latin American Studies, UOB), and Dr Karen Tucker (Lecturer in Political Science & International Studies, UOB) also joined and contributed greatly to this Conversatorio. This report shows the points discussed and the different views and opinions that were exchanged between the speakers and the public. Two questions came to articulate the discussion: how to determine who is a victim and what is the role of the victims during the negotiations. Our discussions focused around three main topics: participation, recognition and identity.

 

Participation

 

The Colombian Constitution states that the whole population has the right to participate in decisions that affect them. However, this ideal is far from reality as there is a wide part of the society that has been marginalised, excluded from the decision-making apparatus and that often become the victims from the armed conflict. As a consequence, their inclusion in the negotiations should not only be welcomed, but should be a vital part of the peace process.

However, there are certain points that should be addressed: for one, the participation tends to be defined by those national and international institutions that represent the status quo and within the boundaries of a neoliberal agenda. Thus, the participation of victims in the negotiating table was initially restricted to some degree by the framework that was established by the negotiators, which in turn implied some gendered, racial and class biased forms of participation. As such, the conditions of the debate inhibited representation from a wide cross section of victims and thus, unfairly dictated whose voices were to be heard publicly. For instance, Colombians living abroad – including those in exile due to threats against their life or to their families – were disenfranchised for a long time, yet formed a vital part of the process. However, the victims’ associations have been working to modify the framework and have become a very important pressure group in assuring fairer representation.

Additionally, the approach from the agreements in the negotiating table and the Victim’s Law (1448/2011) may?? favour some market-oriented agendas through a variety of bureaucratic mechanisms such as returning mainly unproductive lands to the victims, ignoring the dispossession product of other activities such as mining or forcing the victims to practices that undermine their real return or profit from the land they were displaced from in the first place.

 

Recognition

 

In order for the peace process to move forward there needs to be recognition of who the victims are and what is the responsibility of the perpetrators. Fundamentally, the official recognition of the state’s involvement with the paramilitary project is a necessary step to bring justice to the victims and jail for the perpetrators. Additionally, numerous problems inherent to the Colombian judicial system – including its infiltration by criminality and the frequent threats to judges and other civil servants – poses enormous difficulties for an effective and objective providing of justice. The truth about the real causes, perpetrators and beneficiaries from the violence still needs to be addressed to overcome the high levels of impunity in the country.

Added to this is the fact that the victims of forced displacement face a lengthy legal process in order to be officially recognised as victims and receive the compensation they deserve. Furthermore, they also have to face other difficulties such as the need to prove their ownership to claim their land back and the imposition of economic activities and state approved crops.

Fundamentally, there needs to be recognition that the conflict and the associated problems are ongoing. Dr Montesinos Coleman pointed out that there is a huge overlap between what has been put on the negotiating table and the paramilitary agrarian aims. Meanwhile, up until February of 2014, only 22 paramilitaries had been convicted of human rights offences. In contrast, 78 human rights defenders were killed in 2013. Therefore, this situation of impunity for crimes committed by paramilitaries continues and the victims live in fear of threats and deadly attacks.

Identity

How is the concept of victim defined in the context of the peace negotiations? As stated in the Victim’s Law (1448/2011), the victim’s status applies to those acts of political violence that took place from 1985 onwards. However, victims then encounter various other challenges before they can be considered for compensation and recognition from the government:

• The legal process brings victimhood into narrow definitions, reducing identity to either victim or perpetrator. To move forward, alternative definitions of victims could be discussed that embrace the cultural and ethnical diversity of the country and the differences in experiencing the conflict.
• There is a need for a wider definition that embraces the political motivations behind the violence, for instance, the need of understanding the deadly attacks to union as collective – rather than individual – victims. Equally, the victims of sexual violence, including the systematic attacks to LGTB population have been largely ignored.
• The divide between experiences of urban and rural populations, and the difficulties for the latter group in accessing national media to expose the facts of atrocities and also, in seeking some sort of legal justice.
• On occasions, the misrepresentation and misinformation on the part of the media has enabled paramilitaries to instil more fear as the image of the atrocities is one they want to uphold. As result, there has been a top-down approach in narrating the conflict, as it is the government – or even the paramilitaries – who control the discourses on historical events, portraying the victims as the silent suffers, dispossessed of any political agency.
• These challenges are entangled with the difficulties of the central government in reaching the regions. Could the concept of ‘regionalisation of justice’ be proposed?

The concluding thoughts in this Conversatorio revolved around the question of how victims can be protected during this process as fear and reality of re-victimisation still exists. Equally important is to highlight the need that the results of the peace process, ultimately, must be beneficial for the victims.