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Julieta Lemaitre (JEP -
2 February 2021 by Andrés Bermúdez Liévano
A first in Colombia: eight FARCs charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity Last Thursday, Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace announced its first major decision, accusing eight top leaders of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia of war crimes and crimes against humanity, in what has be [...]
Torn American flag
19 January 2021 by Thierry Cruvellier
How Biden’s America can reverse its course on international justice On January 20, Joe Biden becomes the president of the United States. Stanford University professor Beth van Schaack was Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues (now Global Criminal Justice) under the Obama administ [...]
7 January 2021 by Andrés Bermúdez Liévano
How Colombia’s Truth Commission navigated a pandemic year Colombia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission had to reinvent itself in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Having had to scrap its public hearings, it has rolled out an impressive array of live-streamed conversations, podcasts, T [...]
5 November 2020 by Andrés Bermúdez Liévano
FARC revelations on three political murders: a test for Colombia The former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia dropped a bombshell, last month, claiming responsibility over the murders of three high-profile public officials in the 1990s. As missing truths begin emerging, they’re testing whe [...]
16 October 2020 by Andrés Bermúdez Liévano
Colombians pressure FARC into admitting child soldiers Last month, Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace – known as JEP – has decided to allow public preliminary hearings. This has helped former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia to be more forthcoming about the [...]
6 October 2020 by Cira Palli-Aspero
Historical Clarification Commissions: Revisiting the Colombian experience Societies emerging from conflict are often left rooted in a complex ground of competing narratives, transforming the past into a space of contestation. The work of the Historical Memory Group, operative from 2007 to 2011 in Colomb [...]
6 October 2020 by Thierry Ogier
In Brazil, it’s reparation time for Volkswagen During the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985), Volkswagen denounced several trade unionists and communist militants who were then arrested and tortured by security agents. Following an out-of-court agreement between victi [...]
21 September 2020 by Marie-Laure Josselin
Marie Wilson: “It is too early to say Canada had great success with the Truth Commission” JUSTICEINFO.NET IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS Marie Wilson Former Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada The Canadian government has just put residential schools on the official list of national historic events. F [...]
14 September 2020 by Andrés Bermúdez Liévano
Colombia: The Hall of Never Again sends out distress signals The Hall of Never Again is one of Colombia’s best known memorials. It was conceived by victims of the civil war in Granada, a town that has become an icon of reconstruction and resilience. But the recent damage caused by a water l [...]
31 August 2020 by Astrid Nonbo Andersen and Martine Lind Krebs
Activists demand mental decolonization in Greenland This summer’s surge of activism against colonial statues also affected Greenland. Is removing a colonial statue an erasure of the past, or does keeping it indicate that memories of colonial violence have been erased? This was the [...]
25 August 2020 by Andrés Bermúdez Liévano
Colombia: Uribe vs transitional justice Former president Alvaro Uribe, Colombia’s most powerful politician and a staunch opponent to the 2016 peace deal, was placed under house early this month for alleged witness tampering. He is retaliating by attacking two crucial ju [...]
31 July 2020 by Andrés Bermúdez Liévano
Why Colombia’s TRC lacks business support Two major oil companies presented, on July 30, 2020, a report to Colombia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, documenting more than 3,600 attacks on oil infrastructures during the armed conflict. A rare exception, while since i [...]
29 July 2020 by Yuvraj Joshi
Let’s add affirmative action to the transitional justice "toolkit" Those looking to implement traditional transitional justice measures in the United States must first understand the country’s leading transitional measure over the past half-century-affirmative action, explains Yuvraj Joshi. For m [...]
13 July 2020 by Andrés Bermúdez Liévano
How Covid-19 can derail reparations in Colombia’s Amazon The Covid-19 pandemic is devastating the entire Amazon basin, just as one of Colombia’s most ambitious redress programs for indigenous victims in this remote rainforest region is poised to kick off. A program that is the result of [...]
30 June 2020 by Tim Murithi
A U.S. Truth Commission? Insights from South Africa The continued recurrence of U.S. police brutality against black people suggests that the discriminatory and racist mindsets that prevailed during slavery and Jim Crow segregation are still intact within American society and will n [...]
12 June 2020 by Marie-Laure Josselin
Canada: A “year of inaction” on genocide of indigenous women It was a shock on 3 June 2019 when Canada's National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls pointed to an ongoing genocide of indigenous people as being at the root of these specific violations. A year on, the [...]
4 June 2020 by Andrés Bermúdez Liévano
The Colombian transitional justice’s paramilitary dilemma Colombia’s transitional justice has a seemingly clear mission, to prosecute former members of the FARC and of the military who committed war crimes during the 52-year-long conflict. But another party keeps popping up every now and [...]
11 May 2020 by Andrés Bermúdez Liévano
Covid-19 pushes reparations further away in Colombia The Covid-19 pandemic has severely disrupted the work of Colombia's transitional justice since the country went into mandatory lockdown at the end of March. While the truth commission and the judicial system are on pause, the vict [...]
9 April 2020 by Andrés Bermúdez Liévano
FARC’s kidnappings: from “retention” to criminal confinement The legal case on kidnappings by FARC will be a major test for Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace – the judicial arm of the country’s transitional justice system. Two thousands victims have been accredited in the case. But [...]