The Colombian government recently concluded a decades-long civil war by signing a peace agreement with the largest of its opposing guerrilla armies: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC). It has also been involved in negotiations with the other major rebel group, Ejército Nacional de Liberación (National Liberation Army, or ELN). Both groups have been fighting the Colombian government since the early 1960s. Divisions in Colombian society over how to end the war with the FARC that bedeviled the protracted peace negotiations in Havana, Cuba, and led to the Colombian people’s initial rejection of the peace agreement are enduring challenges to a sustainable peace. These divisions are likely to reappear as the rebels demobilize, surrender their role in narcotics trafficking, and re-enter Colombian society and politics.

On August 24, 2016, the Colombian government of President Juan Manuel Santos and leaders of the FARC rebel movement (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) signed a peace agreement designed to bring to an end the FARC insurgency that had lasted since 1964. One provision of the agreement was that it would be put to a vote in a plebiscite for Colombian citizens to ratify or reject. On October 2, 2016, the plebiscite was held and, surprisingly, 50.2 percent of voters rejected the agreement. Shortly thereafter, the Colombian government and FARC negotiated and signed a revised agreement and sent it directly to the Colombian legislature for ratification, bypassing a second referendum. Both houses of the Congress ratified the agreement, marking a formal end to the war between FARC and the government of Colombia.

Colombia has embarked on one of the most complex and multifaceted efforts at building peace and delivering justice the world has ever seen. The sheer size and scope of the Colombian government’s agreement with the FARC guerrillas ensure the path will be neither easy nor short. In fact, there is more than one available path to peace and justice; those destinations may be accessed through a variety of new and novel trails, as well as well-worn roads. Some paths are narrow and difficult, while others “promise” a straight and wide transit to a brighter future. In this world of possibilities, the Colombian peace process offers no guarantees. The journeys are as diverse and difficult to traverse as Colombia’s geography. In this conclusion, we review the progress we have made in understanding how this journey will unfold, what challenges and opportunities may be waiting up ahead, and when and how the scholarly community can best explain how the future might look. More often than not, we must be content with posing the questions that we ought to pursue in the hope of finding these answers.

INTRODUCTION

In 1994, the United Nations began articulating the contours of “human security” in the context of international relations. Broadly defined as having two components – “freedom from fear” (absence of violent conflict) – and a much broader dimension – “freedom from want” (socioeconomic security), both are vital in post-conflict societies (Kaldor 2007; Lautensach and Lautensach 2013; UNDP 1994). Human security exists when individuals can live without threats of violence to their personal and bodily integrity, and when they can live in conditions where basic human needs are met, including work, health, security, and employment. These issues of human security are especially critical in the context of witnesses testifying before international courts, for not only are nearly all of these individuals victims of war who have needs resulting from these conflicts, they are also courageous individuals who have stepped forward to contribute to national and international justice. The act of testifying brings with it human security consequences that are critical to witness well-being, as well as the ability of international tribunals to conduct trials. One only has to look at the problems the ICC has faced regarding witness safety and its subsequent decision to suspend the Kenyatta trial involving election violence in Kenya to understand that witnesses are a sine qua non of international criminal justice.

In this chapter, we examine the impact of witnesses testifying in the context of human security issues and consequences to better understand the degree to which they face social, economic, and physical consequences and which factors are most associated with the occurrence of threats to human security. In the first section of this chapter we review the findings of the survey to document the problems faced by witnesses, the sources of these problems, and the steps taken by witnesses to address them. In the second section of the chapter we analyze the role of the three theoretical lenses on human security – wartime trauma, ethnicity, and gender – to better understand how these three factors shape the witness experience. We find that while ethnicity can help us gain a better understanding of which witnesses are most likely to experience threats to human security, the level of wartime trauma and whether the individual is an ethnic minority in their community are among the more powerful factors associated with such threats.

INTRODUCTION

The justice cascade (Sikkink 2011) and the increasing resort to international tribunals to confront the atrocities perpetrated during wars and government repression have led to increasing interest in studying the impact of these international institutions and what it means for international justice (Akhavan 2009; Barria and Roper 2005; Clark 2014; Gilligan 2006; Greig and Meernik 2014; Jo and Simmons 2016; Kim and Sikkink 2010; McAllister 2014; Meernik 2005; Simmons and Danner 2010; Stover and Weinstein 2004). In addition to their fundamental mission to provide justice and redress through legalized dispute resolution, these international courts have also been charged with advancing deterrence, promoting peace, and fostering reconciliation. Whether these are appropriate goals for judicial institutions far removed from the scenes of war and atrocity, with no tools beyond the power of their words of condemnation, and in the face of frequent international indifference to their mission, is debatable. Tribunals and their supporters have often embraced these ideals and used them to rally support for international justice. As former ICC President Philippe Kirsch declared, “By putting potential perpetrators on notice that they may be tried before the Court, the ICC is intended to contribute to the deterrence of these crimes.” Former Chief Prosecutor of the ICC Luis Moreno-Ocampo asserted that, “Experience has taught us that… law is the only efficient way to prevent recurrent violence and atrocities.” Indeed, as critics of international justice as a mechanism for conflict resolution have pointed out (Mendeloff 2004; Snyder and Vinjamuri 2003), there is no shortage of such expressive idealism from those inside and outside these courts. Is such optimism warranted? Can international justice be an effective means by which to deliver justice, punish the guilty, and deter future violations of international laws?

We examine the subject of the impact of international justice by analyzing the witnesses’ perceptions of the work of the ICTY. The perspectives of individuals about international justice are increasingly important in evaluating their prospects of success.

INTRODUCTION

This was never going to be an ordinary survey project. Surveying individuals who have experienced the horrors of war and lived to tell their story to an international tribunal is no easy undertaking. Yet such compelling research is necessary if we are to understand fully the “justice cascade” and how transitional justice mechanisms can be used to hold accountable those who have violated human rights (Sikkink 2011). While great strides have been made in developing the rule of law and international legal institutions to discourage governments and rebels from violating humanitarian laws and human rights, there is an intensely personal component to the judicial proceedings that can often be overlooked. The witnesses – whose experiences are the foundation of a tribunal's search for truth – are vital for exonerating or convicting the accused, and their testimony helps establish the historical record. They are the indispensable stakeholders for whom the core mission of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is to ensure that equity and fairness are applied throughout the testimonial process. And as critical and as difficult as the testimonial process is, the witness experience does not end with the court's final judgment. The witnesses go back to their lives and face the consequences of returning home to shattered communities after testifying. What paths and pain take the witnesses from war and its aftermath to the rarified courtrooms of an international tribunal? How do the witnesses’ experiences and perceptions in the post-testimonial phase help us better understand and develop justice systems that ensure justice is done? How can we better gauge the short-term and long-term impacts on witnesses who testify? And most especially, how can legal institutions ensure that these individuals are not re-traumatized by the process and protect those who have come forward from backlash within their communities? Our most fundamental purpose of this unique survey was to examine more fully the witness experience by exploring these and other questions through an in-depth survey and short interview with a cross-section of witnesses who have testified before the ICTY.

INTRODUCTION

There is a tendency to think of witnesses who testify before an international criminal tribunal in terms of how the individual is affected by the experience. The witnesses, however, are not passive vessels whom the Tribunal shapes. Witnesses appear before the ICTY with their own unique set of experiences, reasons for testifying, and interpretations of what this testimonial process has meant to them. Their personal encounters with the international justice system are the subject of this chapter as we seek to understand the reasons that motivate individuals to testify, what they know about this foreign court that has called on them to bear witness, and how they perceive their own personal treatment by the ICTY. We examine the micro- or individual-level impact of the ICTY to ultimately understand what this process means to the individual. We take up separately in Chapter 6 the witnesses’ assessments of the ICTY as an international institution that is charged with administering justice, advancing deterrence, and promoting peace.

This chapter proceeds as follows. First, we look at witness knowledge and preparation regarding the testimonial process before describing the reasons why individuals testify, their own assessments of the fairness with which they were treated by various actors involved in the judicial process, and finally, their own sense of personal satisfaction with their performance on the witness stand. The second part of the chapter focuses on an in-depth and multivariate analysis of two of the most critical issues pertaining to the witness experience. We examine how ethnicity, gender, and wartime trauma are related to the reasons why some individuals feel more compelled to testify than others. We find that while individuals who identify as Croatian or Serbian are less likely to report being motivated to testify because of a desire to “tell their story,” almost all witnesses regardless of ethnicity report being motivated to testify because of larger, external concerns such as “speaking for the dead” and “as a moral duty to all victims of wars.” Those individuals who suffered the most trauma, however, are more likely to report testifying for both external reasons and internal reasons.