The Forum on Peace Culture and Transitional Justice held by the Office of the Attorney General in coordination with the Ibeo-American States Organization (in Spanish OEI), the Department for Social Prosperity (in Spanish DPS), Historical Memory National Center (in spanish Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica), Unit for Assistance and Reparation to victims and Vivamos Humanos Foundation began today in Bogotá.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Jorge Fernando Perdomo highlighted at this event which was attended by former president Ernesto Samper Pizano and the OEI Regional Director, Ángel Martín Peccis, the need to include Law Enforcement authorities into Transitional Justice and the implementation of this differential model to prosecute their members to assure true, justice and reparation for victims of conflict.
“Cases like the massacre committed in Mapiripán and Palace of Justice could be prosecuted under the benefits of Transitional Justice. The Transitional Justice differential model for law enforcement authorities assures that those possible excesses committed by state officers don’t happen again” stated senior officer.
Perdomo emphasized that cases such as the false positives and gender-based violence in which law enforcement authorities have participated must be investigated and penalized by individually.
This academic meeting that was focused on the victims right to reparation, is part of the third and last phase of a series of forums on transitional justice in which issues like true and justice in the Colombian context were also addressed. Significant peace processes were shared also by International Experts.
Ebrahin Ismail Ebrahim, a prominent south African activist and currently, a parliamentary counselor in his country; Naomi Roth Arriaza and Lisa J. Laplante, academics specialized in International Criminal Law, Human Rights and Transitional Justice; along with representatives of victims of the armed conflict and public servants are part of the international guests who will discuss among other issues, individual and collective reparation, reparation mechanisms, as well as assistance models.
This forum ends with the participation of victims from all the country in a panel discussion whose aim is to search for efficient mechanisms to assure besides the integral collective and individual reparation, that serious violations of human rights do not occur again.