Nearly five years ago, then-President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos signed a peace deal with the nation’s most dominant guerilla group — a feat for which he would win the Nobel Peace Prize. In theory, President Santos’ accord with the FARC, or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, had ended a 52-year civil war that had claimed the lives of some 220,000 Colombians. In practice, the war continued.
The Santos peace deal authorized the Special Jurisdiction of Peace (JEP), a tribunal tasked with “investigating, clarifying, prosecuting and punishing the most serious crimes committed over the more than 50 years of armed conflict in Colombia.”
Colombia’s new president, Iván Duque Márquez, has made several efforts to block and alter the tribunal. In 2019, he vetoed six of its articles for “reasons of inconvenience.” This move was intended to fuel popular support by bashing the unpopular tribunal. In response, a coalition of Colombian human rights activists wrote to the United Nations, “we express our deep concern at the attempts to seriously damage the Agreement’s implementation.” Little ultimately came of the dispute; the JEP continued to hear cases of wartime violence.
However, even as the JEP considers past war crimes through a lens of reflection and reconciliation, guerilla violence persists throughout rural Colombia. FARC has officially disarmed itself, but smaller rebel groups like the National Liberation Army (ELN) and The Gulf Clan continue to terrorize the country’s most at-risk communities.
The outcome? A nation whose judicial institutions mask ongoing violence with rhetoric that evokes an undue sense of closure. Although it’s hard to denigrate any institution which advances justice — even if slowly — the Colombian government would be better advised to spend its resources fighting the continuing violence rather than reviewing a conflict that hasn’t yet ended.
A Weak and Untimely Tribunal
The JEP was established in Santos’ 2016 peace agreement as the mechanism by which the government and rebel groups could initiate transitional justice, closing a bloody chapter in Colombia’s history as more than 7,000 FARC guerillas relinquished their arms.
“Transitional justice” is an important term to note here, as it has been employed as an excuse for the tribunal’s relatively light sentences. “Transitional justice, by definition, is modest,” said Nestor Raul Correa, the tribunal’s first director, in 2018. The tribunal has the power to sentence guilty defendants who do not initially admit their culpability to between 15 and 20 years in prison. But defendants who plead guilty from the onset may receive merely two to five years of an “alternative sentence,” which often does not include any jail time. These sentences are largely restorative rather than punitive, including house arrest and community service. Unsurprisingly, many Colombians decry the tribunal’s weak executive arm.
Outrage regarding the mildness of the sentencing stems from the conflict’s brutality, which began in the 1960s when left-wing activists took up arms against the Colombian government. Most of these guerilla groups, including FARC, opposed the government’s move to privatize natural resources and claimed to fight for lower-class rural interests against those of urban elites. Instead of hurting those in power, the wrath of these guerilla groups was felt most by poor countryside residents. Guerilla landmines, many of which lay in the rural warzones, have killed or maimed nearly 4,000 civilians and counting. Further, the National Center for Historical Memory, a Colombian agency, reported that 80,000 of the people who went missing during the conflict have never been recovered. Yet, many of the FARC militants who committed these war crimes will walk free.
In a 2016 statement, Amnesty International said they have “repeatedly criticized the fact that the sanctions will not reflect the gravity of some of the crimes committed.” The group also commented on the need to halt further violence: “The armed conflict with the FARC may officially be over, but other conflicts remain … while paramilitary groups continue to be the most serious threat to human rights, especially in the countryside.”
Indeed, they are. Regardless of the tribunal’s own efficacy (or lack thereof), violence rages on in the jungle villages throughout Colombia’s northwest.
Rural Colombia Now
Just last August, at least 1,150 people were forced to leave their homes when guerilla violence broke out in the rural village of Dipurdú del Guasimo. Members of The Gulf Clan stationed themselves in the village and, after interrogating villagers and vandalizing property, clashed with ELN fighters later that week. The two groups are locked in conflict over illegal gold mines and drug trafficking routes, both of which the FARC controlled before their disarmament left a power vacuum. Village residents were forced to flee by foot or by boat to neighboring communities like Medio San Juán.
In September, Medio San Juán itself was hit by guerilla violence. 347 residents left the municipality when the threat of inter-group conflict became imminent. Many of those same Dipurdú del Guasimo residents had to flee yet again.
Paradoxically, these forced nomads are trapped. As Human Rights Watch explains, “Fears of landmines, threats by armed groups, and getting caught in the crossfire have limited the ability of nearly 2,800 people in Chocó to leave their communities, a situation known as ‘confinement.’” Civilian groups are forced to wander from one community to another, simultaneously unable to remain in one place nor truly escape.
These communities represent only one example within the larger network of Colombian guerilla violence, which threatens broad swaths of rural Colombia. Dissident militants who previously fought for FARC are active in the rural eastern and northeastern provinces of Colombia, where human rights groups say villagers face “murder, sexual violence, child recruitment, kidnappings, and forced labor.” In January 2019, a car bomb in Bogotá — allegedly placed by the ELN — detonated outside a police academy, killing 22 cadets.
Does the Future Hold Hope for Reconciliation?
The JEP’s moral legitimacy is not a straightforward issue: It is difficult to denigrate an institution that advances “justice” in any capacity. Yet the tribunal has brought justice slowly and mildly, ignoring existing violence as it lumbers on.
President Duque, ineligible for a second term, will cede the presidency next May. Some claim his political party, the Democratic Center — among the most conservative and powerful in the Colombian government — is losing support. Thus, the prospect of a peaceful future will depend on his successor.
Duque faced fiery criticism in 2019 for opposing the JEP and FARC peace deal; critics charged that he “undermined the deal’s prospects for success.” The potential of a new administration offers hope for a departure from the anti-justice rhetoric that has plagued the Colombian political sphere throughout Duque’s term.
So the ELN guerillas believe, anyway. “Let us not forget that those who are now in government were radically opposed to the peace processes,” stated ELN commander Aureliano Carbonell in an interview with Brasil de Fato and Peoples Dispatch. “But in any case, the ELN is willing, and has expressed it publicly, to reestablish a space for negotiations.”
Hopefully, with a new political administration and a renewed disdain for violence, the Colombian government will funnel resources into aiding rural conflict zones and providing humanitarian support to civilian victims. While violence persists in the northern rainforests, the JEP’s reconciliatory language is an affront to current victims of guerilla abuses.
With smart and appropriate government action, Colombian leadership can one day bring both justice and peace.
Image Credit: Image by the Institute for National Strategic Studies is in the Public Domain
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