Social work in special jurisdictions (JEP and community justice) in Colombia, from a human rights approach

Social work in the legal and forensic field has a long history and has consolidated, throughout the world, a theoretical and methodological corpus. However, it usually refers to formal justice systems such as national courts, administrative tribunals, constitutional courts and international courts (e.g., the International Criminal Court), and specialized courts (e.g., family courts or labour courts). For this reason, this chapter addresses professional work in parallel areas to the formal system, such as the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) and community justice. The JEP is part of the Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-Repetition. SIVJRNR was established as a cornerstone of the 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The JEP exercises judicial functions, with the mission of investigating, clarifying, prosecuting, judging and punishing serious violations of human rights and serious infractions of International Humanitarian Law that took place in the context of the armed conflict. Regarding community justice, the Political Constitution of 1991 gives it a charter to promote effective access to justice for marginalized and excluded populations, through a positive and transformative approach to conflicts, which has mediation as its main tool. The role of social work professionals in the main mechanisms of JEP and community justice is analysed, which could be summarized in the following: collective reparation, pedagogy of memory, harmless action, mediation and conciliation, oversight of implementation of the agreements and, in parallel to all the previous ones, accompaniment of resistance processes. As main conclusions, the importance of intervention from community social work in processes of memory and collective repair is identified and the fundamental role that social workers can play in the exercise of new citizenships and in putting into practice a focus on human rights.