El acuerdo de paz colombiano ante la obligación internacional de persecución penal y castigo

Abstract

This article analyses the consistency of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP), envisaged in the Peace Agreement that was signed by the Colombian Government and the FAARC-EP with the international duty to prosecute and punish those responsible for international crimes and gross human rights violations. Firstly, it describes the content of this duty and the existence of two opposed interpretations of it. Special attention is paid to the position of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and of the International Criminal Court regarding this point. Secondly, with a flexible interpretation of the international duty as a starting point, the article analyses three elements that are especially critical in the SJP, that is, the amnesty for political crimes and related offences, the “own sanctions” and “alternative sanctions” and the policy for the selection of cases and definition of priorities. The aim is to demonstrate that all these mechanisms do not infringe the duty to prosecute and punish and that, on the contrary, they are necessary and valuable tools for achieving peace.