Evaluating the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace

The Elliott School Book Launch Series invites you to the book launch for Associate Professor Elvira-Maria Restrepo's new book: Evaluating the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace: The Power and Limits of Judicial-Based Truth.

About the Event

• 11:30AM, Welcoming Remarks, Alyssa Ayres, Dean, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University
• 11:35AM, Operning Remarks, Diana Pardo Pedraza, Assistant Professor, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University
• 11:45AM, Author's Remarks, Associate Professor Elvira-Maria Restrepo, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University
• 12:15PM, Q&A

This will be a hybrid event. Guests are welcome to join us in-person at the Elliott School or online via Zoom. Please register for more information on in-person and online attendance.

About the Book

Evaluating the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace: The Power and Limits of Judicial-Based Truth examines one of the deepest paradoxes of Colombia’s transition: how a peace agreement and its most innovative institution, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP), came to divide the nation so profoundly, even as international institutions and experts hailed it as a pioneering model of transitional justice. Part 1 provides historical context for Colombia’s long search for peace, the creation of the SJP, and explains why it generated fear, anger, and political backlash across broad sectors of society. Part 2 centres on the nearly 9 million victims who have borne the gravest consequences of the conflict, through an in-depth analysis of two major SJP macro-cases involving all principal conflict actors. Part 3 examines both the transformative power and the jurisdictional limits of the SJP, especially its uneven capacity to reach the full range of actors implicated in the conflict. The book ultimately asks whether the SJP’s attempt to construct a comprehensive judicial truth can do more than illuminate the past: can it also help narrow the moral and political divide between victims and sectors of the elites that benefited, directly or indirectly, from the conflict? Drawing on extensive fieldwork, interviews, primary sources, media, social media, local knowledge, and first-hand observation, this book offers a critical and original account of the SJP as one of the most ambitious efforts anywhere to reinvent justice after mass atrocity.

About the Author

Elvira Maria Restrepo is Associate Professor of International Studies at GW. She has a Ph.D. in Politics from Oxford University, an LLM from Harvard Law School and a JD from the Universidad de los Andes, Bogota. Her current research and teaching interests cross the disciplinary boundaries of Peacebuilding, Cybercrime and online behavior and deliberation. Between 2016-2017 she spent one year as a special advisor for President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, on peace building. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Universidad de los Andes.

Many thanks to the Elliott School's Athena Initiative, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Initiative, Latam@GW, Masters in International Affairs Program, and Security Studies Program for their kind co-sponsorship of this event.