Beyond Victims’ Mere Presence: An Empirical Analysis of Victim Participation in Transitional Justice in Colombia

Abstract

Whereas victims' rights and demands have gained attention in practice and scholarship of transitional justice (TJ), victims are at best consultees and witnesses, not decision makers. Victims' participation as political actors, and the impact of socio-political participation on survivors is still an under-researched area in TJ. This article provides an analysis of how victims' participation is given shape in the everyday functioning of Colombia's Victims' Law. This law offers an excellent case to examine this, since it provides an ongoing and ambitious TJ mechanism with a detailed framework for participation. This allows for a better understanding of this phenomenon in practice, beyond the understanding of victim-centred justice as the mere presence of victims. This article critically engages with victim-centred TJ theories which are based on long-held assumptions of how participation will lead to ownership and citizenship. It moreover explores the impact that participation throughout the different phases of non-judicial TJ procedures has on victims. It asks whether their engagement means that TJ processes indeed respond better to victims' needs, whether victims feel a greater ownership of these processes as a result, and whether victims even want to participate. It concludes by reflecting on the implications for victim-centred TJ, by explaining that participation should privilege genuinely participatory processes which take survivors and their agency as 2 a starting point. This requires recognising and building upon victims' pre-existent internal organisational and decision-making processes and timeframes, to create a more horizontal way of relating.

Women as Embodied Infrastructures: Self-Led Organisations Sustaining the Lives of Female Victims of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Colombia

“…However, most of them were unemployed and struggling economically. As De Waardt & Weber (2019) pointed out, although the participation of victims in the leadership process has been welcomed in the country, this comes at a high economic cost for the victims. A similar point is made by Dietrich Ortega et al (2020), according to whom humanitarian agencies rely on the unpaid labour of local women to implement their pre-formed strategies and programmes (p. 11).…”

‘The law comes first?’: the dynamics of victims’ redress in Bosnia and Herzegovina

“…Beyond the Bosnian case, victim capital can be applied in similar contexts across Southeast Europe and even further afield in contexts dealing with similar legacies and divisions. Indeed, I built on the recent scholarship that foregrounds the nature and quality of victim participation in transitional justice and peacebuilding (De Waardt and Weber 2019;Greenstein 2020;Evrard, Mejía Bonifazi, and Destrooper 2021), namely that victims' agency can respond to policymakers' concerns and engage with it. Rather than understanding redress as a righteous postwar policy, I presented a more practical view.…”

Tramas y conversaciones sobre lo común

“…Desde una asociación reduccionista de lo femenino con la naturaleza, se ha impuesto a las mujeres roles esencializantes de reproductoras, dadoras de vida y cuidadoras (Sylvester, 1989). La construcción de paz feminista, entendida como un común, cuestiona dinámicas que reproduzcan relaciones de poder que les han otorgado un lugar a las mujeres en proyectos de construcción de paz desde esos roles pasivos y estáticos, que asumen que sus contribuciones existen desde una inclinación natural al cuidado y a evitar el conflicto, por ejemplo, manteniendo la armonía familiar patriarcal (Rennie, 1994) o participando en procesos políticos como testigas y no actoras (De Waardt y Weber, 2019).…”