Bogota, 23 August

The “International Observatory on the DDR Process and the Implementation of the Justice and Peace Law”, led by CITpax in Colombia, was invited to a self-evaluating workshop of the Justice and Peace Unit within the General Prosecutor’s Office on 23-24 August, with the goal of assessing the activities carried out during the three years since the adoption of the Justice and Peace Law. In this context, the Director of the Justice branch of the Observatory, Alejandro Aponte, presented the prosecutors with the results of the follow-up that the team had made of a series of “open confessions” in Barranquilla, Bogota, and Medellin, in which the demobilized that had agreed to the Justice and Peace process related the circumstances of the crimes in which they had participated as members of illegal armed groups. The observations referred to operational questions and the form in which judicial proceedings were carried out, as well as background issues related to the discourse used by the demobilised to justify their actions, the guarantees for victims, and the role of prosecutors in the formulation of charges according to international criminal law.