This briefing provides a background to the SJP, explores its activities, and looks at how it diverges from international justice practices. This piece was written by Nathalia Ramirez and edited by Joe Card.

Background of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace
Colombia’s transitional justice regime is rooted in the conflict-ridden upbringing of its Internal Armed Conflict. This Conflict emerged from a ten-year-long civil war called ‘The Violence’ (La Violencia) (1948-1958), costing the lives of nearly 200,000 people, after the assassination of the Liberal presidential candidate Jorge Eliecer Gaitan. La Violencia, mirroring present-day hostilities, characterises an asymmetric war, including but not limited to, the Colombian government, far-left guerillas, far-right paramilitaries, and criminal gangs.
Overall, these actors are driven by political objectives for the ‘proper’ Colombia by employing various, often violent, sources of war financialization. The Colombian government, desperate for control of isolated territories throughout the country, contests its authority with far-left guerillas who desire control of power for a ‘just society’ controlled by the proletariat. Meanwhile, far-right paramilitaries maintain a security objective against guerillas committing political violence on civil society, especially in rural territories. Socialised in these vicious cycles of violence, criminal gangs demand political status and legitimacy for their criminal sources of dominance.
While Colombian history portrays an oscillation between the prevalence of corruption and failed attempts for sustainable peace accords, on 24 November 2016, President Juan Manuel Santos foregrounded a comprehensive initiative toward recognition of the conflict’s growing, nearly 10 million victims. The ‘Final Agreement to End the Armed Conflict and Build a Stable and Lasting Peace’ (Final Agreement) (Acuerdo Final para la Terminación del Conflicto y la Construcción de una Paz Estable y Duradera) was signed with the Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP), which was the largest guerilla that formed during La Violencia.
Although the Final Agreement does not include La Violencia, it consists of 11 sections and 24 volumes with the official temporal boundary for the Conflict as 27 May 1964 (the start date) and 1 December 2016 (the end date). Notably, 27 May 1964 symbolises an attack by 1000 Colombian soldiers on guerilla men in the municipality of Marquetalia, which was considered a ‘communist independent republic’ where the FARC-EP geographically originates. However, it is the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP) (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz) — a transitional justice mechanism investigating and possibly sanctioning individuals for responsibility in crimes committed during the 50-year-long conflict — conveying the Final Agreement’s unique character.
The SJP is situated within the justice segment of the Final Agreement called the ‘Integrated System of Truth, Justice, Reparation, and Guarantees of Non-Repetition’ (Integrated System) (Sistema Integral de Verdad, Justicia, Reparación y No Repetición). It embodies a restorative justice mandate, referring to efforts toward a shared dialogue between victims and offenders for the ‘restoration’ of four principles within the name of the Integrated System: truth, reconciliation, reparation, and non-repetition.
The SJP guarantees these four principles via its comprehensive institutional structure, sanctions, and centrality of victims by responding to crimes committed before 1 December 2016. As for the SJP’s structure, it has a Tribunal for Peace with four sections and three judicial chambers, an Investigation and Prosecution Unit composed of different ‘groups’ of investigation, and an Executive Secretary monitoring the administrative tasks of the SJP.
Each of these bodies were created to cover the multidimensional nature of criminality. For example, the section on the Absence of Acknowledgement of Truth and Responsibility for Facts and Conduct initiated the trial of Coronel Publio Hernán Mejía. Coronel Mejia is indicted for seventy-two false positives (falsos positivos) between the two departments of Cesar and Guajira in 2002 and 2003. As alluded to by the name of this section, Coronel Mejía denied responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity, particularly for the alleged conspiracy executed by the government against him. Due to denial, his trial is deemed adversarial (i.e. retributive justice or criminal punishment) rather than dialogical (i.e. restorative justice), which are the two primary routes the SJP distinguishes to mandate operations for these bodies and the next feature, sanctions.
There are three types: 1) Special Sanctions (Sanciones Proprias); 2) Alternative Sanctions (Sanciones Alternativas); and 3) Ordinary Sanctions (Sanciones Ordinarias). These sanctions apply to several actors, including the State, the FARC-EP, third parties, and non-Colombians, where each must have a clear, direct, or indirect involvement in the Internal Armed Conflict.
The dialogical route characterises the reintegration of offenders into civil life if they acknowledge responsibility and continuously contribute to the SJP’s truth-building process. Special Sanctions, in particular, have no criminal punishment but five to eight years without liberties and those indirectly involved receive two to five years. These time frames under a ‘deprivation of liberty’ are spent in many psycho-social community initiatives that repair Colombia’s social fabric.
For example, alongside the support of international and national actors, one of the SJP’s restorative programs is called ‘Harmonizing Us’ (Armonizándonos). Ex-members of the FARC-EP and the indigenous community of Awá in the south of the Nariño department engage in symbolic acts of peace through the restoration of road infrastructure to the House of Wisdom ‘Marcos Pai’ (Casa de la Sabiduría 'Marcos Pai') ― a pivotal, socio-cultural and spiritual meeting place of the Awá.
The adversarial route rejects restorative programs for Alternative Sanctions, where the individual faces five to eight years in prison for acknowledging the truth only before sentencing. The complete denial of responsibility leads to Ordinary Sanctions with sentences between fifteen and twenty years in prison.
These three sanctions embody the SJP’s macro-criminality approach to violations of international humanitarian law. Macro-criminality refers to the “phenomena of mass crime, of a collective and politically conditioned nature.” This context leads to the creation of a ‘macro-case,’ whereby ‘superior responsibility’ individuals (máximos responsables) or those playing a significant role in the organisation of a crime are subjected to the SJP. In other words, the SJP prioritises a holistic punishment paradigm by focusing on the most serious and representative crimes committed during the fifty years.
The SJP proclaims these macro-cases ensure an effective and timely completion of expectations within its allotted fifteen-year-long period of function, despite the possibility of extension. There are currently eleven macro cases, where Case 01 was opened on 18 July 2018 for the ‘Hostage Taking, Serious Deprivation of Liberty and Other Concurrent Crimes Committed by the FARC-EP.’
Finally, the centrality of victims foregrounds the restorative justice features of the SJP. It vitally emphasises: “Listen to the victims to give voice to their experiences, understand their suffering, dignify their struggles, question ourselves as a society, and build paths of non-repetition.”
The participation of an accredited victim (víctima acreditada) is both voluntary and free, providing a reparative effect on violence in Colombia through the de-invisibilization of victims’ lived experiences, including people and nature. Victims, either as an individual or collective, become ‘accredited’ once the SJP recognises their voluntary participation, their condition as a victim, and a ‘victimising’ event (e.g. a macro-case). Victims can also partake in an existing macro-case or create a new one, where they profoundly contribute to truth and reconciliation in panels of victims’ observations or being witnesses in a trial.
These processes can produce re-traumatisation and induce fear of socio-political repercussions, thus, as with certain offenders, victims are entitled to psychosocial support and anonymisation. Anonymisation mirrors one of the SJP’s commitments to accessible justice, operating in twenty-five cities across Colombia, not just in the capital of Bogota. These efforts accommodate two of the primitive factors that catalysed the Internal Armed Conflict: violence in isolated territories lacking governmental control and Colombia’s geographical division into 32 departments and 1123 municipalities.
International Frictions
While the SJP pioneers restorative initiatives, a critique of the SJP’s efficacy centres on its dynamic relationship with the international community. Colombia adopted the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on 5 August 2002, alongside Article 124, which is the temporary, seven-year-long period where the ICC does not have jurisdiction over the state’s war crimes. Arguably, this date marks when Colombia has since ‘diverged’ from international standards.
This divergence is also present in the SJP’s macro-criminality approach that provides opportunities for psycho-social repair and reduced sentences. The ICC, on the contrary, prioritises individual criminal responsibility (i.e. retributive justice) with a maximum of thirty years in prison and centralises restorative justice only for victims.
This dilemma points to a broader difference in the conception of impunity: does the SJP legitimise impunity in Colombia by not enforcing ‘enough’ retributive justice and instead ‘decriminalising’ offenders?
The same narrative of impunity resonates with another attribute of the SJP’s sanctions: the de jure (i.e. by law) and de facto (i.e. without rule or law) ability to grant amnesties, pardons, and special treatment after proceedings. As for de jure measures, these are guaranteed by the Amnesty Law or Law 1820 passed on 30 December 2016 under President Santos. De facto measures the SJP employs fall outside the scope of Law 1820 but were granted to the SJP. Notably, state officials are the only individuals with access to special treatment. It is also prohibited to grant amnesty to crimes depriving liberty, including gross human rights violations, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
The clash with the international community is rather simple: the ICC does not grant amnesties, pardons, or special treatment.
Notably, international pressure ‘diminished’ after the closure of the ICC’s preliminary examination of Colombia upon signing the Cooperation Agreement on 28 October 2021. This called for measures on the financialization and cooperation among actors for Colombia’s transitional justice mechanisms. The investigation was previously opened by former ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, who assigned the country a status of ‘positive complementarity’ or a ‘successful’ progression of its autonomous transitional justice measures.
Conclusion
The understanding and use of ‘macro-criminality’ presents spill-over effects to the national and domestic levels of Colombia. These levels embody the previously discussed tensions with the international community but more specifically, the SJP’s somewhat ‘contentious’ decision-making processes for which individual legitimately counts as a maximo responsable and what counts as ‘truth’ for a macro-case to the general public.
Contrary to the SJP’s intention, it can be argued macro-criminality is a generalisable term that does not always consider the full extent of criminality, particularly as these macro-cases tend to be committed by complex organisations like guerilla groups rather than a single maximo responsable individual. This means it ignores the four principles of the Integrated System: truth, reconciliation, reparation, and non-repetition.
It also begs a question resonating with a broader, local audience: why are the individuals who consciously executed the order to commit a crime directed by the maximo responsable not equally responsible? The SJP can only counterbalance these lingering ambiguities by redirecting public focus to this same principle, namely a victim’s right to truth.
Further, the SJP has ‘pivoted’ by opening ‘sub-cases’ within each macro-case to target its specific details, especially after truth hearings of the accused individuals revealing their criminal partners.
Sub-cases may provide necessary attention to the minutiae of the Conflict and more importantly, the individual stories of victims. However, this may also contradict the coherence of the SJP’s macro-criminality approach and perhaps delay the existing macro-cases. Coronel Mejia’s trial, for instance, is expected to last several months due to new sources of information, which partly explains the absence of formal charges by the SJP since its inception on 29 March 2017 ― a possible criticism of its efficiency.
However, another question is worth mentioning: what should we reasonably expect the SJP to accomplish within its purview of transitional justice?
The SJP continues to attempt to both dialogically (i.e. with shared dialogue) and dialectically (i.e. with contrasting positions) contribute to the broader goals of transitional justice in the Final Agreement. The unique character of the SJP, despite these varied claims on how to ‘do justice,’ characterises a hybrid, victim-centred approach that seeks to bridge retributive and restorative justice. Whether the Special Jurisdiction for Peace will ‘succeed’ in completely realising the Final Agreement’s ‘Total Peace’ (Paz Grande) — however defined — remains unclear.
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