Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Juridicción Especial para la Paz, JEP) has charged six former leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC) guerrillas with war crimes for the forced recruitment and use of 18,677 children from 1971 to 2016. In addition to forced recruitment, the charges encompass torture, killings, reproductive and sexual violence, and targeted violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) children.
The JEP, a transitional justice mechanism created by the 2016 Peace Accords between the Colombian government and the FARC, is tasked with trying crimes, including crimes under international law and grave human rights violations, committed during Colombia’s armed conflict.
“Macro-case” 07 before the JEP is focused on child recruitment and involves 9,854 victims, including 8,903 who belong to five indigenous communities and 951 others, including survivors and families who continue the search for missing recruited children.
The JEP’s Chamber of Recognition of Truth charged the former FARC leaders with heinous crimes, including the mistreatment, torture, and homicide of recruited children; reproductive violence affecting recruited girls; and sexual violence against recruited boys and girls, including torture, rape, and sexual slavery.
In a historic first under a transitional justice mechanism, the chamber also charged the former leaders with violence against recruited boys and girls based on prejudice related to the children’s sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. The chamber found that several LGBT girls and boys “suffered sexual violence and abuse as a way of ‘correcting’ or ‘punishing’ them.” This unprecedented recognition of violence targeted against LGBT children sets a new standard for addressing discrimination as an element of human rights abuses in conflict.
These findings follow landmark charges related to crimes perpetrated against LGBT people during the armed conflict in “macro-case 02” which focused on abuses in Nariño state and “macro-case 03” focused on extrajudicial executions by the army. Civil society organizations like Colombia Diversa and Caribe Afirmativo, who represent victims and documented crimes during the armed conflict, have pushed to ensure the violations that LGBT people suffered during the armed conflict are recognized as part of the transitional justice process.
These indictments go a long way in addressing the impunity that has long characterized Colombia’s armed conflict. The JEP should now make sure that defendants are fairly prosecuted and, if found guilty, appropriately punished for their crimes.
