Transitional justice has meant new paradigms for societies in Latin America and the Caribbean. Initially associated with post-dictatorial processes or recovery from civil wars, we are witnessing a new wave of demands for transitional justice as a tool for the renewal of the social contract. In particular, the new demands relate to addressing human rights violations, under any type of government. Thus, at first, transitional justice sought to establish mechanisms to establish institutions that would ensure greater respect for the fair and inclusive rule of law. Today, there is a broader call to support the necessary and urgent transformations of the justice and security institutions, to give a voice to the victims of structural human rights violations, and to work so that these events will never be repeated.
The basis for the generation of the rules of the game is based on the ability of societies to generate spaces for consensus within the framework of the rule of law. The context of the health pandemic - which later turned into a governance crisis - has impacted transitional justice processes as States have been forced to focus their efforts on other urgent priorities to curb the spread of the virus. Justice was also placed in "quarantine" due to sanitary restrictions. This leads to transitional justice efforts becoming more relevant to the recovery of the social contract.
The lessons learned from transitional justice processes are key in the recovery phase, which seek non-repetition and systematize experiences to prepare us for new challenges. Without justice, there can be no lasting peace. Reconciliation must be at the center of efforts to promote peace and sustainable human development. The commitment of governments to leave no one behind set out in the 2030 Agenda is being tested as the devastating effects of inequalities unfold in real-time. Supporting transitional justice processes is essential to guarantee the rights of the most vulnerable, accountability, and promote social cohesion.
UNDP has been supporting transitional justice processes for more than a decade to create more peaceful, just, and inclusive societies. This work is carried out from inclusion and sustainable development perspective; focusing on enhancing national capacities and transforming justice and security systems.
UNDP supports experiences that include victim participation, design of participatory processes, and implementation and evaluation of national strategies. It also supports truth-seeking processes, the creation of institutions to promote accountability, reparation programs, and work with civil society organizations and human rights defenders. The support focuses on increasing institutional capacities, promoting the human rights agenda to support guarantees of non-repetition.
UNDP recently launched the global report “From Justice for the Past to Peace and Inclusion for the Future: A Transitional Justice Development Approach”. This is a global exercise that highlights lessons learned from peace-building processes from a perspective of inclusion and sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean. Countries such as Colombia, Guatemala, and Peru have experiences of institutional transformations and knowledge for citizens to promote justice, reparation, memory, and non-repetition of past atrocities. These experiences have special relevance in the Latin American political and social context - impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the governance crisis.
In this context, UNDP, in the Report on Effective Governance Beyond Recovery, reflects principles of NOT using violence as a negotiation mechanism between political and social actors, rethinking the rules of the game, and redefining social contracts based on inclusive justice. Strategic alliances with key United Nations partners, such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Women, and peacekeeping missions are an essential part of these efforts.
The country represents a symbolic case of UNDP's comprehensive support for access to justice for victims, following the Peace Accords (2016) between the Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). This was achieved through the various transitional justice mechanisms established in the country.
An important contribution of the organization was the support for the early enlistment of the three components of the Integral System of Truth, Justice, Reparation, and Non-Repetition months before they were officially institutionalized as autonomous state entities: the Truth Commission, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace and the Missing Persons Search Unit.
In alliance with the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, UNDP has accompanied the judicial representation of victims in all macro cases prioritized by the judiciary, including cases of kidnappings, forced recruitment, extrajudicial executions, and other serious human rights violations. This work is coordinated with 16 civil society organizations and has benefited a total of 2,283 individual victims and 277 groups.
"UNDP has supported the Special Jurisdiction for Peace through first-rate technology for the collection of testimonies in the territories and the live broadcast of audiences. This allowed subsequent work in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic and the support to the offices of the prosecutor's office for their territorial deployment. It has also supported the processes of dialogue and the care and protection of victims with the investigation and prosecution unit. ”Harvey Suárez, Executive Undersecretary, Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Colombia).
The Truth Commission has also been supported in the implementation of more than 60 spaces for dialogue and recognition throughout the country with victims, authorities, and civil society organizations, as well as the collection of testimonies that allowed the contribution of approximately 9,000 people. With the Search Unit for Missing Persons, UNDP supported the territorial deployment, the communications strategy, and is currently assisting in the execution of the Regional Search Plans.
Additionally, the joint work between UNDP and the Unit for Victims of the Government of Colombia since 2017 has allowed the implementation of collective reparation measures and return and relocation strategies for the displaced population. To date, UNDP has supported the implementation of 143 collective reparation measures, supporting nearly 71,000 people, thus helping to redress the collective impacts of the conflict and restore the rights of the victims.
In Guatemala, through the Transitional Justice Accompaniment Program (PAJUST), UNDP supported the process of restoring sustainable peace, after the internal armed conflict (1960-1996). PAJUST has strengthened the capacity of the Office of the Public Prosecutor for Human Rights to promote investigations on sexual violence from a gender perspective.
A historic event was the legal, psychosocial and interdisciplinary support to the Sepur Zarco case - where, together with Women transforming the world (Mujeres Transformando el Mundo) and the Community Studies and Psychosocial Action Team, as part of the Breaking the Silence Alliance (Alianza Rompiendo el Silencio) for the first time in Guatemala, a court condemned sexual and domestic slavery as a war crime for the Sepur Zarco case
A landmark event has been the legal, psychosocial, and interdisciplinary support to the Sepur Zarco case - where together with Mujeres Transformando el Mundo (Women Transforming the World) and the Community Studies and Psychosocial Action Team, as part of the Breaking the Silence Alliance for the first time in Guatemala a court condemned sexual and domestic slavery as a war crime in the Sepur Zarco case.
“We learned to leave fear behind “—Ana Laínez, Maya Ixil, survivor of the internal armed confrontation.
For UNDP, it has been a privilege to contribute to the guarantees of non-repetition through efforts aimed at promoting the teaching of historical memory and the culture of peace in educational processes. Through a partnership with the Ministry of Education, the Technical Roundtable on Education for Peace, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), a pilot for a new citizenship education strategy was implemented (2016). In this plan, more than 600 teachers from 90 educational centers, in 7 departments of the country, were part of the initiative. It benefited around 15,700 students from public and private schools of all educational levels. During the COVID-19 pandemic, self-learning guides and a virtual diploma course were designed in which more than 300 teachers participated.
An important aspect of transitional justice processes are individual and collective reparations for victims of processes of massive human rights violations.
In Peru, as part of the national transitional justice program, a Comprehensive Reparations Plan was enacted in 2005. This Plan includes programs for the construction and adjudication of housing, the legalization of properties, scholarships for higher education, vacancies in universities and public institutes, medical attention for physical and mental health through comprehensive health insurance, acts of public apology, and promotion of memory spaces; as well as the development of productive and infrastructure projects chosen by communities and organizations of non-returned displaced persons.
As a result of this comprehensive approach to reparations, to date, 108,771 individual victims and 3,681 communities and organizations have received reparations in education, health, housing, economic, symbolic, and collective for around 294 million dollars.
On June 11, 2021, the thirty-first list of civil, military, and police beneficiaries of the Economic Reparations Program was approved, which recognizes 191 victims of the period of violence between 1980 and 2000.
After a long process of violence in the country - and the resulting massive human rights violations, including forced disappearances, homicides, and excessive use of military and police force - Mexico has proposed a new approach, including innovative and locally focused transitional justice instruments.
The new National Strategy for Peace and Security 2018-2024 is an advance towards the development of the culture of peace in Mexico. Two important transitional justice mechanisms are highlighted in this Strategy. First, it includes an Amnesty Law that establishes the release of persons deprived of liberty for specific and less dangerous cases, thus facing a problematic focus of high rates of incarceration and the fight against drug trafficking. Secondly, it includes a Voluntary Disarmament Strategy entitled “Yes to disarmament, yes to peace”, which raises awareness about the risk of the use of game weapons, promotes the reduction of firearms possession among the civilian population, and encourages a culture of peace, co-responsibility, and non-violence in the country. To support the correct implementation in the territory of this mechanism, UNDP in Mexico is preparing a methodological manual based on good practices identified in other Latin American countries.
"It is not about winning a war, it is about winning the peace", Rosa Icela Rodríguez, Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection.
Thirty years after the military invasion that took place in Panama in 1989, the process continues to register and make visible the events that occurred, dignify the victims, and build a collective memory for non-repetition.
The elemental piece of this process is the establishment of the Commission on December 20, 1989: For Truth, Memory, and Justice, formed by an interdisciplinary group. The objective of this Commission is to contribute to the clarification of the events, complete information on the number and identity of the victims and the serious human rights violations suffered during the invasion, as well as to make recommendations for necessary reparation measures and demands. A first step has been the creation of the Single Registry of Victims, a historical registry of the victims of these events.
The UNDP and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) jointly supported the design and implementation of the Commission. This Commission is the product of a collaborative construction process led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and civil society, with the aim of supporting the Executive Secretariat of the Commission and the technical investigation teams for the clarification of the facts and the recovery of the truth that allows accountability, justice, and preservation of the Collective Memory in Panama.
Transitional justice processes are not linear and involve long-term strategic planning and vision. In these dynamic contexts, transitional justice strategies offer a set of tools that can be adapted to support societies overcome the legacy of massive human rights violations and rebuild resilient communities. In many cases, this includes addressing impunity and redressing past abuses, building trust between the population and the state, addressing social injustices, including gender inequality, and fostering tolerance and peaceful coexistence.
These experiences are proof that the region is moving towards a transformative justice process that includes more inclusive and people-centered justice systems to “leave no one behind”. UNDP supports processes that promote development, through specific transitional justice mechanisms, and at the same time, promoting national policies that address the structural problems that cause inequalities and subsequent human rights violations in the region.
In the current Latin American context of recovery in the face of the economic, social, and political consequences evidenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, transformative transitional justice is a key piece for the reconstruction of the social contract, taking into account that “everything is stored in the memory".
© 2026 Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD) en América Latina y el Caribe
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