Transitional Justice

The Transformative Potential of Gender Justice in the Land Restitution Programme in Colombia

Citation:

von Au, Anne Kathrin. 2013. "The Transformative Potential of Gender Justice in the Land Restitution Programme in Colombia." Revista Deusto de Derechos Humanos 11: 207-39.

Author: Anne Kathrin von Au

Abstract:

ENGLISH ABSTRACT:
This paper studies the existence of elements of gender justice in the ongoing land restitution process in Colombia, in order to analyse the potential of the Land Restitution Programme to contribute to the elimination of structural violence against women and the resulting gender inequalities. In this context, the sources of the analysis comprises the Victims’ and Land Restitution Law of 2011, the implementation programmes by the Land Restitution Unit, and the sentences by the specialized judges for land restitution. The paper argues that the land restitution programme could contribute to the elimination of structural forms of discrimination and exclusion of women in the Colombian society, if the elements of gender justice are applied in a coherent and systematic way and if it is accompa- nied by additional measures aimed at reducing the high security risks for internally displaced women in the land restitution process and changing the patriarchal system deeply rooted in the Colombian society.
SPANISH ABSTRACT:
Este artículo estudia la existencia de elementos de justicia de género en el actual proceso de restitución de tierra en Colombia para analizar el potencial del Programa de Restitución de Tierras en la contribución a la eliminación de violencia estructural contra mujeres internamente desplazadas y las inequidades resultantes. En este contexto, las principales fuentes de datos para el análisis son la Ley de Víctimas y Restitución de Tierras de 2011, las programas de acción de la Unidad de Restitución de Tierras y las sentencias de los jueces especializados en la restitución de tierras. Este trabajo sostiene que el programa de restitución de tierras podría contribuir a la eliminación de formas estructurales de discriminación y exclusión de mujeres en la sociedad colombiana si los elementos de la justicia de género son aplicados de una manera coherente y sistemática, y si van acompañadas por medidas adicionales enfocadas a reducir el alto riesgo para mujeres internamente desplazadas en dicho proceso y a cambiar el sistema patriarcal, firmemente arraigada en la sociedad colombiana.

 

Keywords: transitional justice, displacement, land restitution, gender justice, structural violence, transformative justice, differential approach, justicia transicional, desplazamiento, restitución de tierra, justicia de género, violencia estructural, justicia transformativa, enfoque diferencial

Topics: Displacement & Migration, IDPs, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Gender Equality/Inequality, Justice, Transitional Justice, Rights, Land Rights, Security Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2013

Legacies of Violence and the Unfinished Past: Women in Post-Demobilization Colombia and Guatemala

Citation:

Tarnaala, Elisa. 2019. “Legacies of Violence and the Unfinished Past: Women in Post-Demobilization Colombia and Guatemala.” Peacebuilding 7 (1): 103–17.

Author: Elisa Tarnaala

Abstract:

This article examines the historically grounded social acceptance of impunity and the role of unwanted actors in peace and transitional processes. The article argues from a post-demobilization violence perspective that counter-democratic developments, which have historical and global roots, condition peacebuilding and impose important limits on the deepening of inclusion. In Colombia and Guatemala, internationally backed peacebuilding activities occurred in the same regions where the local authorities continued their partnership with criminal and authoritarian actors. Thus, parallel to the shift towards greater political and economic stability at the national level, attacks against human rights activists and environmental activists, intra-community violence, violence against women, prostitution and the trafficking of girls continued at the local level and in some areas increased.

Keywords: Colombia, Guatemala, demobilization, women, violence, historical legacies

Topics: DDR, Democracy / Democratization, Gender, Women, Girls, Gender-Based Violence, Justice, Impunity, Transitional Justice, Peacebuilding, Trafficking, Human Trafficking, Violence Regions: Americas, Central America, South America Countries: Colombia, Guatemala

Year: 2019

Principled Pragmatism and the ‘Inclusion Project’: Implementing a Gender Perspective in Peace Agreements

Citation:

Bell, Christine, and Kevin McNicholl. 2019. "Principled Pragmatism and the ‘Inclusion Project’: Implementing a Gender Perspective in Peace Agreements." feminists@law 9 (1). 

Authors: Christine Bell, Kevin McNicholl

Abstract:

UN Security Council Resolution 1325 of 2000 provided that peace agreements should adopt a ‘gender perspective’. This commitment has been reiterated in women, peace and security resolutions since that time. This article uses a mixed qualitative and quantitative analysis to consider when and how peace agreements have adopted a gender perspective, using a new PA-X peace agreement database to analyse over 1500 peace and transition agreements from between 1990 and 2016.  It goes further to consider how inclusion of women is related to the other forms of political and group inclusion contemplated to form part of the new political settlement. The article begins by examining what might be meant by a ‘gender perspective in peace agreements’.  It maps out when and how peace agreements provide for women, girls and gender, but also for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans communities, and for ‘men and boys’ and ‘family’ at different stages of a peace process.  The article provides new data on the implementation of agreement commitments and specifically those issues singled out for attention by UNSC 1325. Finally, we consider the inclusion project on offer to women and its relationship to the conceptualisation of the conflict and its solution, by considering the relationship between gender, power-sharing and transitional justice. In summary, analysis of the dataset provides three main findings.  First provision for women is still largely limited to once-off provisions, or issues relating to the victimhood of women, with holistic attempts to adopt a ‘gender perspective’ relatively rare.  Second, the inclusion of women in peace agreement texts tends to be located in the more comprehensive stages of the agreement, with little consideration given to women and gender at either pre-negotiation stages of a peace process, or implementation stages. Third, surprisingly perhaps, political power-sharing is shown to be strongly correlated with several measures of gender inclusion rather than marking an exclusive focus on the inclusion of the groups at the heart of the conflict.  In conclusion we argue that peace agreements indicate the presence of ‘principled pragmatism’ whereby elite commitments to political equality are used by a range of groups to push for a more pluralist conception of the peace settlement as also concerned with the political equality of groups beyond the conflict actors.

Keywords: women and conflict, gender perspective, peace processes, power-sharing, transitional justice, constitutions

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Justice, Transitional Justice, LGBTQ, Post-Conflict, Political Participation, Peace Processes, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325

Year: 2019

Mujeres, Polifonías y Justicia Transicional en Colombia: Narrativas Afrocéntricas de la(s) Violencia(s) en el Conflicto Armado

Citation:

Garcia, Paula Medina. 2018. "Mujeres, Polifonías y Justicia Transicional en Colombia: Narrativas Afrocéntricas de la(s) Violencia(s) en el Conflicto Armado." Investigaciones Feministas 9 (2): 309-26.

Author: Paula Medina Garcia

Abstract:

SPANISH ABSTRACT:
A través de una lectura feminista interseccional del escenario de “postconflicto”/post-acuerdo en Colombia, este trabajo analiza: i) la violencia contra las mujeres en contextos de guerra como poder exhibido e instrumental; ii) el impacto de las violencias contra las mujeres afrodescendientes en el conflicto armado –para lo cual se ha utilizado tanto la información disponible del Registro Único de Víctimas (RUV) como los relatos de las víctimas; iii) las múltiples violencias superpuestas que sufren las mujeres afrodescendientes, como parte de un continuum, entendiendo la guerra como un escenario en el que éstas se encarnan y letalizan de forma pública; y iv) la justicia transicional como arena en disputa, especialmente a raíz de la firma de los Acuerdos de Paz. Para ello, se parte de las propias narrativas de las mujeres afrodescendientes como sujetos políticos activos en el proceso de justicia transicional –verdad, reparación y garantías de no repetición–. En esta línea, se parte de una revisión de la víctima qua víctima, adoptando una mirada constructivista de esta categoría –en un intento por superar concepciones esencialistas y paternalistas de la misma–, y abogando por la resignificación de la capacidad de agencia de dichas mujeres para retejer y disputar al Estado el control sobre los procesos de justicia, verdad, reparación y memoria. 
 
 
ENGLISH ABSTRACT:
Through a feminist and intersectional reading of the “post-conflict”/post-agreement context, this study analyses: i) the violence against women as an instrumental and displayed power in war contexts; ii) the impact of violences against afrodescendant women during the armed conflict, drawn from Official Victims’ Registries as well as from their own narratives; iii) the multiple overlapped violences that afrodescendant women suffer, as part of a continuum, understanding war as the setting where the violences are embodied and become more lethal publicly; iv) the transitional justice as contested arena, specially with the signing of the Peace Agreements. For that purpose, the work focuses in the narratives of afrodescendant women as political and active subjects in the transitional justice process, in order to provide truth, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition to victims. In this regard, it reads through the victim qua victim, assuming a constructivist approach to understand this category –as well as we try to overcome essentialist and patronizing perspectives. Finally, this research proposes the resignification of agency ability of these women to redefine and dispute over the State’s control of justice, truth, reparation, and memory processes.

Keywords: afrodescendant women, continuum of violences, transitional justice, Colombia, mujeres afrodescendientes, continuum de violencias, justicia transitional

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnicity, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Justice, Reparations, Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict, Race, Peace Processes, Violence Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2018

Buried in the Heart: Women, Complex Victimhood and the War in Northern Uganda

Citation:

Baines, Erin. 2018. Buried in the Heart: Women, Complex Victimhood and the War in Northern Uganda. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Author: Erin Baines

Annotation:

Summary:
In Buried in the Heart, Erin Baines explores the political agency of women abducted as children by the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda, forced to marry its commanders, and to bear their children. Introducing the concept of complex victimhood, she argues that abducted women were not passive victims, but navigated complex social and political worlds that were life inside the violent armed group. Exploring the life stories of thirty women, Baines considers the possibilities of storytelling to reclaim one's sense of self and relations to others, and to generate political judgement after mass violence. Buried in the Heart moves beyond victim and perpetrator frameworks prevalent in the field of transitional justice, shifting the attention to stories of living through mass violence and the possibilities of remaking communities after it. The book contributes to an overlooked aspect of international justice: women's political agency during wartime. (Summary from Cambridge University Press)

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Girls, Justice, Transitional Justice, Sexual Violence, SV against Women, Violence Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Uganda

Year: 2018

Guarantees of Non-Recurrence of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence against Women after the Khmer Rouge

Citation:

You, Sotheary. 2019. "Guarantees of Non-Recurrence of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence against Women after the Khmer Rouge." Swiss Peace Cambodia Working Paper Series 6/2019, Center for the Study of Humanitarian Law, University of Basel, Basel.

Author: Sotheary You

Abstract:

Four decades after the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodian women continue to suffer from discriminatory social, cultural and economic norms and to experience gender injustice in social and political spheres. Against this background, this paper asks whether and to what extent transitional justice has contributed to providing guarantees of non-recurrence of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) against women in Cambodia. This paper examines how the transitional justice process addressed SGBV committed under the Khmer Rouge regime. It shows that transitional justice has not adequately recognized SGBV against women under the Khmer Rouge, that there has been lack of representation of women in the process and that an unfair redistribution of resources after the Khmer Rouge contributed to further discrimination. Drawing from the concept of guarantees of non-recurrence and feminist scholarship on gender justice, this paper highlights how a lack of gender-transformative policy and the government’s lack of capacity to comply with international legal standards has shaped women’s experiences after the Khmer Rouge. It argues that, in order to guarantee the non-repetition of SGBV against women, transitional justice initiatives should aim to address social and cultural injustice effectively; to subvert patriarchal and oppressive norms; and to promote women’s participation in social, economic and political development in Cambodia. It concludes with policy recommendations.

Keywords: Khmer Rouge, guarantee of non-recurrence, transformative reparation, transitional justice, Cambodia, sexual and gender-based violence

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Justice, Transitional Justice, Political Participation, Sexual Violence, SV against Women Regions: Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Cambodia

Year: 2019

Women in Post-Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction in Africa

Citation:

Scanlon, Helen, 2019. "Women in Post-Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction in Africa." In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, edited by Thomas Spear. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Author: Helen Scanlon

Keywords: post-conflict resolution, post-conflict reconstruction, transitional justice, peace-building, gender-based human-rights violations, truth seeking, security sector reform, sexual violence in conflict (SVAC)

Annotation:

Summary: 
Women’s experiences of conflict have been the subject of increased international attention since the end of the Cold War and this has been accompanied by a concomitant growth in attention to the role of women in peace and security initiatives in Africa. Alongside the rise of humanitarian interventions, new trends have emerged in the realms of conflict resolution, accountability, and post-conflict transformation. As a result, post-conflict experiences in Africa in the 21st century have revealed numerous opportunities for the advancement of gender justice. Experiences from countries emerging from conflict on the continent provide some important examples of promoting women’s rights through accountability mechanisms, furthering access to government, producing gender-sensitive reform, challenging discriminatory laws, and advancing economic opportunities. However, while women’s needs and rights have been increasingly recognized through international and national commitments, women continue to face widespread gender-based violence as well as socioeconomic challenges in the aftermath of conflict. Thus, understanding intersectional experiences of conflict and the role of enduring gender power relations are critical to revisiting how transitions might be transformative. (Summary from Oxford Research Encyclopedias)

Topics: Economies, Conflict, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Justice, Transitional Justice, Peace and Security, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Peacebuilding, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights, Security Sector Reform Regions: Africa

Year: 2019

Gendered Impact of Zimbabwe's Transitional Justice: Too Little Too Late

Citation:

Chaminuka, Lilian. 2019. "Gendered Impact of Zimbabwe’s Transitional Justice: Too Little Too Late." International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science 3 (3): 94-100.

Author: Lilian Chaminuka

Abstract:

The gendered impact of transitional justice after Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle is similar to early efforts in other countries to try and address massive and systematic human rights violations that are largely gender blind. The paper takes a historical analysis highlighting how government chose not to specifically address sexual violence, nor did they examine how women had been distinctly impacted by the war of liberation. There was a pervasive silence regarding violence against, harm to, and the degradation of women with female ex combatants becoming recipients of piecemeal policies and fragmented efforts to accommodate them. The process and what has been done for the Zimbabwean woman is either too little or has been done too late as the legacy of this violence endures long after independence was achieved in 1980. This is not to say government has done absolutely nothing as some gains have been made in building a gender balanced society that factors in contribution of women. The study which employed the qualitative approach, revealed that women are not particularly happy as they feel more can be done as the realities they face today under study show a continuum in the violence exercised against them, their subordinate role, their oppression, the threats and harassment they endured in the past and present lack of economic resources to live a dignified life. The paper is based from a broad study that was undertaken by the author in her studies at the Africa University in 2014.

Keywords: Gender, human rights, women ex-combatants, reintegration, transitional justice

Topics: Armed Conflict, National Liberation Wars, Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Justice, Transitional Justice, Rights, Human Rights, Sexual Violence, Violence Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Zimbabwe

Year: 2019

Testimony Under Threat: Women’s Voices and the Pursuit of Justice in Post-War Sri Lanka

Citation:

Hoglund, Kristine. 2019. "Testimony Under Threat: Women’s Voices and the Pursuit of Justice in Post-War Sri Lanka." Human Rights Review 20: 361-82.

Author: Kristine Hoglund

Abstract:

This paper foregrounds how women’s public testimony as part of a formal transitional justice initiative is shaped by the particular context in which a commission operate, including the political and security environment. While the literature has engaged with the gendered predicaments of truth commissions after peace agreements and during transitions away from non-democratic rule, the function of such initiatives in more authoritarian and in immediate post-war contexts is generally overlooked. I examine women’s testimonies from Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), and contend that pervasive militarization and insecurity, and the conduct of the Commission, influenced the stories that came forth. Women’s testimonies in the war-torn areas primarily represent pleas for information about missing family members and reflect important silences about the women’s own experiences of abuse, including ongoing post-war insecurities. The analysis raises questions about what may be expected from transitional justice efforts in difficult post-war contexts.

Keywords: Gender, Sri Lanka, public testimony, LLRC, human rights, transitional justice

Topics: Gender, Women, Justice, Transitional Justice, TRCs, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Post-Conflict, Security Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Sri Lanka

Year: 2019

Decolonial Sketches and Intercultural Approaches to Truth: Corporeal Experiences and Testimonies of Indigenous Women in Colombia

Citation:

Santamaría, Angela, Dunen Muelas, Paula Caceres, Wendi Kuetguaje, and Julian Villegas. 2020. "Decolonial Sketches and Intercultural Approaches to Truth: Corporeal Experiences and Testimonies of Indigenous Women in Colombia." International Journal of Transitional Justice 14 (1): 56-79.

Authors: Angela Santamaría, Dunen Muelas, Paula Caceres, Wendi Kuetguaje, Julian Villegas

Abstract:

This article explores the corporeal and testimonial memories of a group of female indigenous ex-combatants and victims in the Colombian Caribbean and Amazon. Although these groups have often been analyzed in the transitional justice literature, our primary objective is to analyze two local processes for retrieving indigenous women’s memories and possible feminist participatory action research methodologies in the Colombian postconflict context. We examined empowering intercultural and intersectional methodologies to promote the political participation of indigenous women – both ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ – in the Colombian Truth Commission implemented after the peace agreement was enacted. We explain how participatory action research should be used, including techniques such as indigenous women’s body mapping, creating testimonial spaces and conducting ethnographic observations. The article is based on a transitional justice ‘from below’ perspective as well as local transitional justice practices.

Keywords: indigenous peoples, women, ex-combatants, Colombia

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Justice, Transitional Justice, Peace Processes, Political Participation, Post-Conflict Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2020

Pages

© 2024 CONSORTIUM ON GENDER, SECURITY & HUMAN RIGHTSLEGAL STATEMENT All photographs used on this site, and any materials posted on it, are the property of their respective owners, and are used by permission. Photographs: The images used on the site may not be downloaded, used, or reproduced in any way without the permission of the owner of the image. Materials: Visitors to the site are welcome to peruse the materials posted for their own research or for educational purposes. These materials, whether the property of the Consortium or of another, may only be reproduced with the permission of the owner of the material. This website contains copyrighted materials. The Consortium believes that any use of copyrighted material on this site is both permissive and in accordance with the Fair Use doctrine of 17 U.S.C. § 107. If, however, you believe that your intellectual property rights have been violated, please contact the Consortium at info@genderandsecurity.org.

Subscribe to RSS - Transitional Justice