Colombia has been the site of one of the world’s longest internal armed conflicts. Its population has been trapped between different legal and illegal armed groups who have uprooted millions of people and have taken the lives of over 250,000 people. Thousands more have been kidnapped or disappeared.
But now, after several years of peace negotiations between the government and the country’s main guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), an important breakthrough has been made in the form of a new peace accord that is to be signed in March. It sets out a transitional justice process, aiming to achieve a transition to a lasting democracy through truth-seeking about the conflict and its causes, restorative and retributive justice for the perpetrators, reparations for the survivors, and guarantees of non-repetition to prevent renewed conflict.
One of the deal’s strengths is that it enshrines survivors’ rights both to truth and to reparations. This means that in order to be eligible for reduced alternative sentences in a somewhat controversial restorative justice process, all armed groups—not just the FARC, but also the state’s armed forces—will need to commit to telling the complete truth.
