Peacebuilding from the ground up: participatory budgeting as a transitional justice mechanism in Colombia

Dajer Barguil, Diana

Abstract:

On November 6 of 2013, the Colombian Government and the FARC-EP guerrilla signed an agreement on measures to encourage citizen and political participation. This document comprises common commitments and consensus of the parties on one of six points of a broader peace agreement to end more than fifty years of armed conflict. With the title Political participation: democratic openness to build peace, the agreement drafts key guidelines to create and promote mechanisms to boost participation as a condition to build peace at the local level in Colombia. One of these mechanisms is participatory budgeting. Although different exercises of participatory budgeting have been implemented in Colombia since 1996, the agreement on citizen and political participation suggests an interesting role for participatory budgeting exercises that has not been studied so far: the capacity of participatory budgeting to be a transitional justice mechanism; i. e., a transitional justice measure that seeks to guarantee the victims’ rights to justice, truth and reparation, and at the same time achieve institutional reform, demobilize combatants, foster reconciliation and lead to a long-lasting and stable peace. In this context, the paper studies previous experiences of participatory budgeting in Colombia and other countries to explore how and why could participatory budgeting encourage the creation of a stronger democracy in Colombia and, ultimately, contribute to build peace. Likewise, taking into account that in the last decade the exercises of participatory budgeting worldwide have been complemented with the use of digital tools, the paper will also analyse how ICTs could be used to enhance peacebuilding in Colombia, using participatory budgeting as case study.

Área(s) temática(s):

• 2. Gobierno, Instituciones y Comportamiento Políticos

Año:

2016

Tipo de publicación:

Paper/Extenso Congresos GIGAPP

Número:

2016-530

Serie:

VII Congreso Internacional en Gobierno, Administración y Politicas Públicas. GIGAPP 03-05 octubre 2016.

Dirección:

Madrid, España

Organización:

GIGAPP. Asociación Grupo de Investigacion en Gobierno, Administración y Políticas Públicas

Mes:

Octubre

Nota:

AVISO IMPORTANTE: CUALQUIER PERSONA O PARTICIPANTE EN CONGRESO GIGAPP DEBERÁ REMITIR UN EMAIL AL AUTOR(A) PRINCIPAL, EN CASO QUE DESEE ACCEDER A UNA COPIA ELECTRÓNICA DE ESTE DOCUMENTO diana.dajer@law.ox.ac.uk

Comentarios:

La ponencia presenta avances preliminares de mi investigación en el doctorado que actualmente curso en la Universidad de Oxford.