Channels of Trust: Advising Colombia’s Truth Commission on Collecting and Sharing the Stories of Survivors
The conflict in Colombia claimed the lives of more than 450,000 people from 1958 to 2013. To help those affected and begin to bridge historic divides in the country, GIJTR has engaged civil society actors in the country since 2017. It has focused especially on facilitating grassroots truth-telling workshops to ensure that the experiences of marginalized communities during the conflict, including youth, women, Indigenous groups, families of missing and disappeared persons and survivors of conflict, are collected, preserved and shared. Alongside these informal processes, GIJTR worked closely with the country’s Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non- Repetition (2018-2022), by advising them on the best tools for collecting, documenting and sharing the stories of the conflict’s survivors. As Lucia Gonzalez, a member of the Truth Commission, explains: “Throughout the mandate of our Truth Commission, [GIJTR] has been one of the most constant collaborative organizations, helping with the development of community methodologies in the first months of the Commission; mapping the archives of civil society organizations and developing their capacities to prepare digital archives for us; and sharing the successful experience of Latin America in participatory truth-seeking.” After the close of the Truth Commission, civil society organizations trained by GIJTR in digital human rights archives formed an oversight committee to ensure public access to the Truth Commission’s reports, documentation and archives. As a result, the government granted an additional term to these institutions to complete the data transfer with protocols ensuring a policy of maximum access far into the future. GIJTR and local partners are also developing exhibitions on the findings and recommendations of the Truth Commission for young audiences as well as community podcasts highlighting the resilience of survivors and their recommendations for the country’s future.
“However well-intentioned the Truth Commission is—and I truly believe it is— it cannot include the reports of hundreds of thousands of people or anywhere near that. What Colombia needs are places for victims and their families to share their stories—[GIJTR] provides those spaces. They are successful because they are rooted in communities—and communities are channels of trust. In GIJTR projects, it was the communities doing the talking, doing the interviewing. Not the Truth Commission or other transitional justice mechanisms, not even GIJTR. It was the communities telling and sharing their experiences, asking the questions and digging out the truth. Formal transitional justice outlets cannot do that.” —Darío Colmenares Millán, GIJTR Program Director
Colombian Truth Commissioner Lucia Gonzalez (center) visits a GIJTR truth-telling session in July 2019.
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GIJTR’s Impact In Depth: External Spheres and Actors
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