Truth & Reconciliation in Colombia

Truth and reconciliation commissions are commissions that are tasked with with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government (or sometimes non-state groups), in the hope of resolving conflict leftover from the past. Following a grueling five decades of war —Latin America’s longest running war— Colombia has begun its Truth and Reconciliation commissions. The conflict occurred between the Colombian state and various anti-government rebel groups, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army (ELN). The commission composed of eleven members was founded in 2016 as part of a peace deal between the Colombian government and the FARC. The commission is just one of a trio of organizations started to repair the damages brought on by the war there. During the 50+ years of war, more than 220,000 people were killed, along with an estimated 8 million war victims. The country saw a mass migration, as 10 million of the country’s inhabitants fled to neighboring countries, such as the United States and Canada. The commission aims to heal trauma caused by the armed conflict and migration process. They have held both public hearings and private meetings, between victims and perpetrators, in order to make amends. Since that start of the peace talks and truth commission, the country has seen a 43% drop in violence. The commission is still in the process of reviewing the cases of human rights abuses that have been brought forth, however, they are working diligently to bring peace. 


Cobb, Julia Symmes. “Colombia Truth Commission Starts Work to Give War Victims Answers.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 8 May 2018, www.reuters.com/article/us-colombia-peace/colombia-truth-commission-starts-work-to-give-war-victims-answers-idUSKBN1I92NV.

“Truth, Memory and Reconciliation Commission of Colombian Women in the Diaspora.” Conciliation Resources, 10 Oct. 2017, www.c-r.org/where-we-work/latin-america/truth-memory-and-reconciliation-commission-colombian-women-diaspora.

Tomaselli, Wes Michael. “Colombia Is Trying to End 50 Years of War, but One Rebel Group Won't Stop Its Attacks.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 11 Jan. 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/world/rebel-cease-fire-breakdown-could-imperil-colombias-ruling-party-election-chances/2018/01/11/0e33299e-f64e-11e7-9af7-a50bc3300042_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.50ab55217597.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Emily Routbort Mr. Roddy GPHC R 20 September 2018 Social Sustainability Addressing social sustainability is a challenge for many places in the world. Social sustainability works to reduce factors that negatively affect human social well being (p. 61 in the reading). Some examples of social sustainability issues are corruption, unfit healthcare and education, disempowerment of women, and social inequality. These problems should be dealt with after fulfilling basic needs such as food, water, shelter, and rest. From another standpoint, you might find to achieve economic and environmental sustainability, you must achieve social sustainability before other proceeding to solve economic and environmental issues. My reasoning for this is because you should have a strong established base that you can work off of (where everyone is working in harmony) so we can then proceed to work on other issues. In most of the world though, this is not the case (considering that you place s...
Read more

Zoey Weinstein Sustainability Blog

Zoey Weinstein Mr. Roddy Global Politics 9/19/2018 Sustainability Blog One of the major issues concerning women in America and all over the world today and for the past 88 years is the wage gap or gender pay gap. On average, nationally, women earn approximately 78 cents to the man’s dollar. The wage gap impacts women different ethnic backgrounds even more. According to the huffington post, Latina women earn 56% of what a white man makes and black women earn 64%. The first and most impactful thing the United States needs to do is pass equal pay legislation in all 50 states. Many states have enforced the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), an amendment that ensures that nobody faces discrimination based in their sex, especially in the workplace. This past May, Illinois became the 37th state to ratify this amendment. The first clause of the ERA is “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” This amendm...
Read more

Tackling Environmental Sustainability in my Imagined Country

Image
As the president of any given nation focusing on environmental sustainability, my main concerns would be the conservation of biodiversity, the effects of Climate Change, and the reduction of fossil fuels. One way of increasing the biodiversity in many countries, with the exception of areas whose climate could not support heavy vegetation, is through the commission and propagation of food forests. A food forest as defined by the Beacon Food Forest Permaculture Project is “a gardening technique or land management system, which mimics a woodland ecosystem by substituting edible trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals. Fruit and nut trees make up the upper level, while berry shrubs, edible perennials and annuals make up the lower levels ( “Beacon Food Forest Permaculture Project” ).” This can also be seen in the diagrams below: Through this model of creating functional green spaces, and or partially replacing the nations current agricultural systems with this method of cultiv...
Read more