The role of survivors and victims' organizations in shaping transformative transitional justice in Colombia

Abstract

More than 50 years of armed conflict in Colombia has left eight and a half million victims, the vast majority of whom were unknown, rejected and neglected by society and the state. However, victims and survivors themselves have emerged as key political actors, exercising their agency by promoting the consolidation of a heterogeneous, solid and vibrant victims' movement, initially gradually and silently and, over the last decade and a half, in a public, active and accelerated manner. This thesis analyses this process of construction and furthers debates within existing literature on the role of victims in transitional justice processes. In this regard, this thesis makes a significant contribution to victim-centered transitional justice scholarship, in particular with respect to themes of the hierarchy of victims, victim participation and agency, the politicization of victims and the role of victims and survivors in shaping transitional justice mechanisms. The thesis makes an important contribution to our understanding of the complex factors shaping how victims respond to serious and massive human rights violations against. The research argues that victims and survivors in Colombia have consolidated themselves as key political actors with the capacity to shape state institutions and government policy, in particular with regard to the rights of victims. Within this context, victims and survivors have undergone a process of politicization in which they have appropriated the political and legal mechanisms relative to International Human Rights Law and Transitional Justice and developed strategies through which to pursue their interests, specifically relating to the satisfaction of their rights and needs. Integral to the thesis is the analysis of how, after 2005, victims' groups closely followed processes relating the state´s adoption and implementation of transitional justice mechanisms linked to negotiation processes with armed actors. The research contends that as a consequence of victim mobilization around issues of transitional justice and victims´ rights, the state has been receptive to victims and survivors´ demands, precipitating a visible impact upon the formulation and implementation of mechanisms relating to their rights. Likewise, this process has had an important effect on the victims by promoting their organization and qualification. Whilst victims were, to a degree, instrumentralized, as other scholarship has demonstrated for cases elsewhere, the Colombia case evidences how they were also able to assert their agency upon state and government-led processes.