From global norms to national politics: decoupling transitional justice in Colombia

Abstract

As transitional justice has spread across the world as an expected approach for states dealing with grave human rights violations, seemingly similar global measures have been established in disparate ways. In Colombia, opposing administrations set up diverging types of transitional justice at different points in time: In 2005, President Uribe established a transitional justice approach for paramilitaries to evade intervention by the International Criminal Court and bury the truth. A decade later, President Santos negotiated a transitional justice approach with the FARC that focused on truth-telling and deviated from prison sentences to secure a peace agreement. Moving between global norms and national politics, this study reveals how transitional justice is adjusted, contested, and transformed, as different groups struggle to shape the state’s approach. This generates a more dynamic understanding of the historical, social, and political processes involved in the ways that governments decouple transitional justice in distinct national contexts.