Paper short abstract:

What are the implications and scope of ethnography in transitional scenarios from war to peace as Colombia ?

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses the articulation of processes and mechanisms of restorative justice in a scenario of transitional justice from an ethnographic and comparative perspective of local and international experiences.

This, in the context of tensions and political and academic debates posed by current peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP, as well as the fulfillment of a decade of implementation of the Justice and Peace Law with the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). On one hand, there are those who argue that criminal punishment for the guerrillas is necessary, as a nonnegotiable minimum of justice. On the other, those who defend the possibility of alternative mechanisms of imprisonment. This tension necessarily leads to the question of prisons in our country and the role, function and efficiency of the deprivation of liberty as a means of punishment for serious violations of human rights and, simultaneously, as a suitable mechanism to achieve the objectives of truth, justice, reparation for victims and non-repetition of the violence. The aim of this paper is to examine the role of ethnography in these scenarios as a key methodological perspective to illuminate these tensions and build a set of strategies and tools that serve as an input for decision and public policy makers.