Conference: “The Peace Agreement between the Colombian Government and the FARC”
Speaker: Prof. dr. Héctor Olasolo, Chairman, Ibero-American Institute of the Hague for Peace, Human Rights and International Justice (IIH). Chair in International Law, El Rosario University (Colombia), Professor, The Hague University for Applied Sciences.
Date and Venue: 8th December 2016, from 10h00 to 11h30, at the Speaker´s corner of The Hague University for Applied Sciences, Johanna Westerndijkplein 75. The Hague (The Netherlands)
Conference Summary: While the international legal regime of ius cogens crimes is normatively prevalent over the legal recognition of the main elements of transitional justice, it would be a mistake to reject the concerns expressed by transitional justice theorists and practitioners in light of the experience gained in the last twenty-five years.
Similarly, hoping to force a change in its content through a policy of fait acompli, as in the situations in Colombia, Northern Ireland and Spain, is certainly the wrong strategy. In addition to not having the necessary normative legitimacy, they are bound to place the actors involved in permanent legal uncertainty, because no one can guarantee them that the national courts of the States involved, the courts of third countries acting in accordance with the principle of universal jurisdiction, and international judicial bodies such as the International Criminal Court will permanently give up the application of the current normative framework for ius cogens crimes.
What is, thus, needed is to reach some degree of consensus on the nature, goals, reach and content of the different elements of transitional justice, and, on this basis, to make an effort to end this “dialogue of the deaf” that, for more than two decades, has characterized the relationship between those interacting on overlapping fields of application.
