CLAS/Handa Center Lecture: Colombia's Peace Process: Legal Limitations and Implementation Challenges

Claudia Josi, Adjunct Professor at SCU Law School, and Guillermo Ruiz Pava, PhD Candidate at Los Andes School of Management, Bogotá, Colombia, discuss the legal limitations and challenges of implementation of the Colombian peace process.

A centerpiece that stirred opposition to the original peace agreement was the so-called justice agreement. One of the main criticisms of this part of the peace agreement was that the applicable sanctions amounted to impunity for the crimes committed in the 50-plus years of conflict. Concretely, the justice agreement establishes alternative sanctions, such as restriction of movement, combined with other reparation measures, such as community work, instead of prison sanctions for certain perpetrators. It is to be seen though, whether these alternative sanctions are indeed contrary to international law, as claimed by the opponents. Also, implementation of the agreement faces significant challenges in all components, but especially the new special jurisdiction of peace. In fact, the implementation of this transitional justice system required major institutional changes before the negotiations with FARC rebels. Then, assuming a comprehensive perspective on the peace process reveals that the implementation of this system is one of many instruments to break the routine of conflict, to deepen democratic institutions, to solve the drugs problem, and to perform an agrarian reform.

Claudia Josi is a Swiss-Peruvian human rights lawyer who also specializes in transitional justice issues and international humanitarian law. She has extensive experience working with civil society and government institutions engaged in post-conflict management in Latin America, as well as in Europe and North Africa. At Santa Clara, she teaches International Humanitarian Law and Transitional Justice. She also serves as Director of the Geneva Summer Abroad Program on International Law and Co-Director of the Costa Rica Summer Abroad Program on International Human Rights Law. From 2015-2016, she held the position of Interim Managing Director of the Center for Global Law and Policy at Santa Clara Law. Before joining Santa Clara, she worked as an attorney at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica and as independent consultant with a number of international and non governmental organizations. In Peru she worked on behalf of victims of the Fujimori dictatorship who seek reparations and justice for the crimes committed by the state during the armed conflict. She also assisted in the creation of good governance protocols aimed at developing more responsive and participatory public administrations in Bolivia, Peru and Venezuela. More recently, she worked in Tunisia and Algeria as consultant to local human rights groups and victims organizations within the context of the “Arab Spring”, and with the ICRC on the Colombian Peace Process. She is a guest professor on human rights, humanitarian law and transitional justice at the Inter American University, in Puerto Rico, and the World Peace Academy, in Switzerland. Since 2008 serves as the director of the working group on transitional justice of the Latin-American Society for International Law (LASIL).

Guillermo Ruiz Pava is a doctoral student at Los Andes School of Management, Bogotá, Colombia, and he is a visiting student researcher at CLAS. With a B.A. and a Master’s Degree in Economics, his current research focuses on how social structures inside organizations enable or hinder innovation. In particular, he is interested in a specific social structure known as the routine. Other research interests include the economic theory of entrepreneurship, innovation, public administration, organizational theory, and political economy.