Reparations are a fundamental pillar of Transitional Justice (TJ) and have become “the leading response in the contemporary wave of political transformation”. Reparations aim to address the needs of the victims who suffered individually or collectively harm and alleviate their suffering to achieve durable peace, justice, and reconciliation. Until now, the dominant underlying assumption has been that the victims must necessarily be human beings. Consequently, reparations have been conceived in anthropocentric terms, focusing solely on the needs of and harm to humans.
Colombia is the first country, in its TJ process, to have recognized a non-human element, a territory, as a victim of the internal armed conflict. By doing so, the Colombian peace process embodied indigenous views, transforming territory from a mere object into a legal subject that can suffer harm and is entitled to reparations.
This project explores how this legal recognition of territory as a victim challenges the anthropocentric and Eurocentric assumptions of the right to reparation and promotes a rethink of the concept.