Economic Reparations, Entrepreneurship, and Post-Conflict Development: Evidence from Colombia

• In Event: 2247 - Armed Conflict, Displacement, and Peacemaking

Abstract

Discussions about the role of reparations in helping societies recover from civil conflict are divided between those who think reparations have the potential to foster economic development and those who believe that reparations should focus on rights recognition. This debate is particularly salient in Colombia, where the state created an economic reparation plan that granted cash payments to victims of human rights violations that follows the language and practices of micro-finance development projects. I argue that the Colombian government constructed a reparation plan predicated on and sustained by the idea that compensation money is the seed that, if properly tended, will grow into a reconstructed life for the victim. Using interviews, ethnographic observations and textual data I argue that: 1) those in charge of implementing the reparation policy followed the script of micro-finance development interventions; 2) this policy aims at creating a new post-conflict subjectivity that I name the “responsible victim”; and, 3) beneficiaries perform the “responsible victim” in ambivalent ways, embracing the narrative of self-reliant citizens while also requesting more attention and aid from the state.

Author

• Diana Catalina Vallejo Pedraza, University of Virginia