Feminist trajectories from Peru to Colombia: taking violence experienced by women into account in truth commissions

ABSTRACT

International human rights law has long ignored women’s realities, reproducing an epistemological blind spot that has impacted transitional justice mechanisms such as truth commissions. In the early 2000s, this blind spot was challenged by Peru’s Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (CVR; Truth and Reconciliation Commission). The lessons learned in Peru about including gender in transitional justice processes have nourished the application of transitional justice in Colombia. This article examines the inclusion of a gender perspective in Peru’s CVR and highlights the advances and lessons that inform Colombia’s Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, la Convivencia y la No Repetición (CEV; Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Repetition). Furthermore, it underscores the innovative contributions of Latin American decolonial and communitarian feminisms to reframing the inclusion of gender in the context of Colombia’s CEV. We argue that these feminisms allow the recognition that “woman” is a plural subject intersected by race and class; challenge liberal feminist conceptions of gender; propose a reconceptualization of time; provide a historical explanation of the reasons behind violence against women; and give an important centrality to nature, territory, and the sacred in the explanation of violence and in peacebuilding.

RESUMEN

El derecho internacional de los derechos humanos ha ignorado por mucho tiempo las realidades de las mujeres al reproducir una ceguera epistemológica que ha impactado mecanismos de la justiciar transicional como las comisiones de la verdad. A principios del siglo XXI la Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación del Perú enfrentó esta ceguera. Las lecciones del caso peruano en torno a la inclusión de la perspectiva de género en los procesos de justicia transicional han nutrido la aplicación de esta justicia en Colombia. Este artículo examina la inclusión de la perspectiva de género en la Comisión de la Verdad y la Reconciliación de Perú y visibiliza los avances y lecciones que esta Comisión lega a la Comisión de la Verdad, la Co-existencia y la No Repetición de Colombia. Adicionalmente, este análisis identifica las contribuciones que los feminismos comunitarios y descoloniales de América Latina ofrecen para profundizar la inclusión de la perspectiva de género en el contexto de la Comisión de la Verdad colombiana. Argumentamos que los feminismos descoloniales y comunitarios latinoamericanos contribuyen a las comisiones de la verdad con el reconocimiento de un sujeto mujer plural cruzado por la raza y la clase, y por otras variables de opresión; con visiones críticas sobre las concepciones feministas liberales del género; con una reconceptualización del tiempo; con una explicación histórica de las razones por las cuales las mujeres han sido violentadas; y con una lectura sobre el lugar de la naturaleza, el territorio y lo sagrado en la violencia y en la construcción de paz.

KEYWORDS:

• Truth commissions
• women
• Peru
• Colombia
• decolonial and communitarian feminisms

PALABRAS CLAVES:

• Comisiones de la verdad
• mujeres
• Perú
• Colombia
• feminismos descoloniales y comunitarios

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 We take the notion of an epistemological blind spot from Lugones (2008), who uses it to indicate how some feminisms ignore racialization as constitutive of the reality of women.

2 This research is coordinated by the University of the Andes in Colombia and brings together universities from that country, Peru, and the United States (US), as well as two Colombian feminist organizations.

3 For more on international jurisprudence in relation to this topic, see Alencar (2011).

4 Gender stereotypes are generalized views or preconceptions “about attributes or characteristics that are or ought to be possessed by women and men or the roles that are or should be performed by men and women” (Cook and Cusack 2011, 183).

5 In its most recent jurisprudence, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has tried to make up for its disregard for gender during the first decades of its operation. By studying cases dealing with women’s human rights violations, the Court has recognized gender as a relevant category (ACHR 1969, Article 1.1) and has commented on the structural conditions that generate gender-based discrimination and the differentiated impact of violence on Indigenous women and women who have been forcibly displaced.

6 In fact, in Colombia, this Resolution was central to the work of women’s and feminist organizations, which employed it to demand the inclusion of women in peace processes and transitional justice mechanisms, such as truth commissions.

7 This engagement with decolonial and communitarian feminisms focuses on the geopolitical context of Latin America; broader communitarian debates are beyond the scope of this work.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of the Andes (Grant Number PVI0120113).

Notes on contributors

Diana Gómez Correal

Diana Gómez Correal is an Associate Professor at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Development Studies (CIDER) at the University of the Andes, Colombia. She is the director of the research project “Inclusión de las afectaciones vividas por las mujeres y sus procesos de resistencia en las Comisiones de la Verdad de Perú y Colombia: miradas retro y prospectivas de la justicia transicional,” on which this article is based. She is co-editor of the decolonial feminist reader Tejiendo de otro modo: feminismo, epistemología y apuestas decoloniales en Abya Yala (2014).

Pascha Bueno-Hansen

Pascha Bueno-Hansen is an Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies/Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware, USA, and author of Feminist and Human Rights Struggles in Peru: Decolonizing Transitional Justice (2015).

Julissa Mantilla Falcón

Julissa Mantilla Falcón is a lawyer and Professor in the Department of Law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Peru. She was in charge of the Gender Unit of Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.