In particular, the EU, through the European Commission’s Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI), has been helping to organise, keep safe for the long term, and make an archive collection available to everyone. This is especially important for people who lived through the conflict.
"When I was 16, the guerrillas came to the village. They raped and killed. Today, my message to the women is to invite them to speak out. I say to the State that it must provide guarantees of non-repetition and support. And to the guerrillas, that they show true repentance". These powerful words from a woman of the Kichwa indigenous community are only one of 15,000 testimonies collected by the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Recurrence (the “Truth Commission”) and now safeguarded by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) and the National Archives of Colombia (AGN) in Bogotá. They testify the extreme violence of the conflict that tore the country apart for more than 60 years, but also the efforts to build a lasting and reconciliatory peace.
This desire for peace came to fruition on 24 November 2016 in Havana, Cuba when Colombian President Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas signed a historic peace agreement. The peace agreement includes plans for Transitional Justice, laying the ground for the establishment of various bodies like the Truth Commission.
From its launch in 2018, this extrajudicial, autonomous and independent institution has sought, sometimes in difficult circumstances, to shed light on decades of atrocities and human rights violations committed during the armed conflict. The victims toll documented by the Truth Commission is overwhelming - 450,664 people killed between 1985 and 2018. Eight out of every ten people killed were civilians. In addition, the violence of the conflict led to the displacement of almost 8 million people and forced thousands of people into exile. The sad litany of figures includes 16,238 cases of forced recruitment of children and adolescents, 50,770 victims of abduction and 121,768 missing persons. "Guillermo, my husband, was a community leader. He received threats and one day he was kidnapped, recalls Carmenza from Sumapaz village in the Colombian Andes. When his body was found, it was in a very small bag, even though he was so tall. I still have doubts as to whether it really was Guillermo's body that was in that bag and whether they were telling me the truth".
Remembering conflict to build peace
Despite, or because of, all this suffering, Colombia has embarked on the difficult and thorny road to peace. From the outset of this process, the country has been able to count on the support of the FPI, which, in 2019, reinforced the capacities of the Attorney General's investigation units. This support has continued at each of the key stages of the peacebuilding process. But these advances could not ignore the reality of a Colombian society that is still battered and a political class that is divided over the agreement. To stem this tide of fragility and anchor the country in a culture of peace, FPI supported the Truth Commission by broadcasting television campaigns focusing on reconciliation, non-repetition and restoring the human dignity of the victims.
To gather the voices of the victims, the Truth Commission opened 28 “truth centres” around the country in the places most affected by the conflict. Its investigators also travelled the world in search of the voices of survivors in exile, in 23 countries on three continents. "We have included victims who were not duly recognised, such as women, indigenous peoples, Afro-Colombian communities, the Ron people and the LGBTIQI community," explains Mauricio Katz, former Secretary General of the Commission.
Time for challenges
In addition to the testimonies, the Truth Commission investigators had to obtain official classified and counter-espionage documents. “It wasn't always easy, admits Catherine Romero, a lawyer who acted as legal advisor to Father Francisco de Roux, President of the Commission, some entities refused to provide us with information, especially classified information. Fortunately, we had the support of the law, which states that no entity or official has the power to oppose our requests on pain of sanctions. It has been a great challenge to collect all these information". With patience and self-sacrifice, the Commission had to create links of trust with the justice, defence, intelligence, counter-espionage sectors. And even with the political class.
After 5 years of work, the Truth Commission team collected 140 terabytes of information, containing more than 15,000 individual and group interviews with around 30,000 people, 730 case studies and 1,200 reports. FPI's support was essential to safeguard these documents, while guaranteeing their security and confidentiality. In addition, this support has enabled the creation of a repository where the archives needed to understand the Colombian conflict and the steps towards peace will be preserved and made accessible to the whole world. This is the first case in which an archive is almost 100% digital, supported with a large dataset of metadata associated to each document or testimony, allowing comprehensive searches of information.
Uniquely in a peace process, the Truth Commission decided that almost all the information contained in the archives will be publicly available. “From the outset, the Truth Commission attached great importance to the work of archiving and remembering, explains Mauricio Katz. Our aim was for these archives to contribute to the truth, to the construction of memory and to the fight against impunity, in order to provide the country with a body of public and historical information".
On 26 May 2023 that the Truth Commission organised the official and symbolic ceremony for the physical transfer of the archives to the National Archives of Colombia. Ivonne Suarez, Director of this institution, stressed that the importance of society embracing these records as a key tool in battling forgetfulness and nurturing hopes for peace. “It's important, she explains, that people have access to the information about what happened during those years of conflict. The vast majority of Colombians want to move beyond these times but are still looking for the truth”.
On the high plateaux of the Sumapaz Andean moor, the guns have fallen silent, but not a day goes by without Carmena López thinking about her beloved husband Guillermo and what he has endured: "Only the truth will allow me to heal my wounds, she confesses, because we need to know the truth in order to build peace. An honest, sincere and just peace".
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