Transitional Justice Matters: Variations of Business Preferences in Transitional Justice in Colombia

• In Event: Power politics and inequality in Colombia: the use of transitional justice mechanisms to bring economic actors to account for their role in past atrocities

Abstract

Powerful businessmen sitting at the same table as the former commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the oldest guerrilla group in the Americas, to decide on trials, mechanisms of truth, reparation, and non-repetition, is a rare image in what seemed to be a scenario reserved for states in defining justice policies in times of transition, just as it was uncommon to see some of the powerful from different regions of Colombia, prosecuted for alleged complicity with armed groups in the past, and yet several thousand of these are currently or being investigated for fact of this kind. However, the model of transitional justice defined between the FARC guerrilla and the Colombian government in the 2016 Peace Agreement resulted from negotiation with other less traditional actors, including business elites, which marked the distinction of those elites between those who participated and those who abstained from doing so. What explains the variation in the preferences of the EE in the definition of Transitional Justice mechanisms in the Colombian case? In order to address the question, a qualitative design is proposed that traces the preferences of the business elites, their variation and light on the effects that the participation of these elites has on their duty of accountability in matters of human rights violations through semi-structured interviews, review of the participation records and speeches of these elites, which allow the issue to be resolved on the basis of the case study of Colombia.

Author

• Lina Chaparro, Universidad de los Andes