Nature in Focus: The Invisibility and Re-Emergence of Rivers, Land and Animals in Colombia’s Transitional Justice System

Abstract

ABSTRACT Harms resulting from a 50-year-old conflict in Colombia were out of all proportion. Clashes between organized armed groups, such as guerillas, army troops and paramilitary groups, resulted in countless human rights violations. The emergence, degradation and continuation of the war has shown that, beyond a clash of armed groups, the conflict was and continues to be underpinned by a ‘logic of dispossession, exploitation, and domination.’ In the shadows of the strife, non-armed actors, such as businesspeople, corporations and politicians, benefited from the war, and participated in land grabbing, forced displacement and the illegal possession of land that historically belonged to Indigenous People, campesino and afro-communities. Along with human bodies as the first territory targeted for dispossession, lands, rivers and animals were severely impacted. This article explains how the Colombian transitional justice architecture – anthropocentric and focused only on armed actors’ accountability – is ill-equipped to deliver justice and remedy for victims of corporate abuse and to properly address the harms against land, rivers and animals. This piece also reflects on the endeavours that both transitional justice institutions themselves and civil society at the domestic and international levels have made to effectively respond to the Colombian conflict’s systems of dispossession and, most importantly, to their victims.