Political Imaginaries Amidst a Peace Deferred. The Politics of Human Rights Activism in the 2016 Colombian Peace Process

Abstract

The Colombian government and the FARC-EP envisioned to make history when they sealed the 2016 Peace Agreement, ending one of the longest standing armed confrontations in human history, and promised the cessation of protracted violence. In post-accord Colombia, however, this promise has been eclipsed by political polarization, serious setbacks in the implementation process, and the surge of violence against human rights defenders. This thesis investigates the entanglements of hopes and opportunities as well as frustrations and grievances that shape the experiences of human rights defenders in-between the formal end of the armed conflict and the deferred promise of peace. Guided by the overarching research question — how do human rights de-fenders perceive of and challenge the violent political realities during the peace process? — four research articles draw on the canon of deconstructionist, post-foundational philosophy to place the voices of Colombian activists in critical conversation with current research debates in fields such as Human Rights, Conflict Studies, and International Relations. The first article taps into research on the politics of human rights to develop a methodological and analytical framework for studying human rights practices and their capacity to render violence legible. The second article challenges the literature on war-to-peace transition by reading the peace process as a hegemonic crisis where antagonistic conflicts entrap post-accord Colombia in a lingering political moment. The third article maps out the discursive space that human rights defenders have sustained through their peace advocacy, inferring key lessons for critical debates on the ‘co-constitution’ of peace and human rights. The fourth article criticizes the predominant notion that populist mobilization poses a peril to the liberal idea of rights, tracing empirically how human rights defenders imagine transitional justice as a popular struggle. Ultimately, this thesis suggests a shift of perspective in how we research the peace process: From understanding it as a transition to a now ever more distant society without violence towards exploring the politics of human rights activism as a rich way of imagining and, concomitantly, practicing alternatives to violent reality.