Chapter Eight - Colombian Transitional Justice and the Political Economy of the Anti-impunity Transnational Legal Order

Summary

On October 2 of 2016, Colombian voters rejected a peace agreement between the government and the FARC, a Marxist guerrilla, to put an end to the oldest armed conflict in the western hemisphere. Ex-combatants who fully confessed to their crimes, asked for forgiveness and repaired the victims would have been granted more lenient sentences. Those who criticized the agreement vehemently opposed this kind of justice, claiming that it was an antidemocratic expression of impunity and that it violated international human rights standards. Through the study of the Colombian case, this chapter explains how the conceptions of justice, impunity, and punishment, are a construct that relies on ‘international standards’ – on human rights, criminal justice, the rule of law, and democracy. Such standards have been devised in global north countries and do not necessarily respond to the realities and necessities of global south societies, but, nevertheless, have become predominant and almost uncontested. The chapter also aims to show the ways in which the relationship between political and economic regimes, on the one hand, and the scope and forms that punishment takes, on the other, are constructed and legitimize particular forms of government, both at the national and international levels.