This paper interrogates the role of technologies (such as forms and protocols) within rights restitution as a sociotechnical arrangement enacting official recognition and post-conflict statehood.
Paper long abstract:
This paper traces the trajectories of the Formato Unico de Declaracion (FUD), the official form currently used for registering and recognizing claimants as Victims of the armed conflict in Colombia. Along such trajectories, I am interested in actors whose experiences are shaped by the FUD, and how it is used to produce official numbers and narratives of rights restitution and post-conflict. Moving across assistance centers, governmental offices, and places where registered and rejected claimants live, work, and protest, this study revisits rights restitution as a sociotechnical border: an arrangement comprised of claimants, expert functionaries, forms, databases, and official numbers enacting boundaries of official recognition. This paper is part of an ethnography that examines three synchronic and deeply interwoven spaces: recognition, reparation, and alternative organisation. A description of these relations is briefly outlined.