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Paper short abstract

What happens when truth-telling must be addressed at once to victims and former commanders? This paper examines “double recognition” in Colombia’s transitional justice process, drawing on ethnography from within the JEP to analyse justice as a relational practice during and after violence.

Paper long abstract

What if what ultimately became a war crime originated as an internal infraction within the guerrilla organisation? This paper explores the everyday making of justice within Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) through the lens of what I call double recognition: a structural difficulty faced by accused former combatants who are expected to acknowledge responsibility simultaneously before victims and before audiences shaped by wartime hierarchies, including former commanders and legal defence structures. This duality complicates truth-telling, confession and accountability in ways that are often obscured by normative models of transitional justice.

Based on ethnographic research conducted from within the institution, the paper examines how judicial proceedings unfold while the social and organisational legacies of war remain present. It shows how acts of recognition are shaped not only by legal expectations, but also by enduring relations of authority, loyalty and fear that continue to structure interaction. Justice emerges here as a negotiated and contingent practice, produced through everyday judicial work rather than as a linear transition from violence to peace.

Methodologically, the paper reflects on the possibilities and challenges of ethnography conducted from inside justice institutions addressing mass political violence, including questions of positionality, access and the instability of archives and testimony. Substantively, it contributes to anthropological debates on justice during and after violence by foregrounding justice-in-the-making, and by questioning the assumption that accountability processes operate in a social vacuum once war is declared over.