Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace: Advances and Challenges in Transitional Justice—A Conversation with Judge Oscar Parra Vera

In this coffee talk, Judge Parra will describe Colombia’s innovative Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Jurisdicción Especial por la Paz, “JEP” for its Spanish acronym) and contextualize the challenges it faces after 6 years of functioning. Parra will discuss how its public hearings have been critical to providing restorative justice for victims of the conflict and will also refer to various specific cases of ‘false positives’ handled by the JEP.

Speaker Judge Parra Vera is a magistrate for Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace and Senior Research Fellow in the Programme for Studies on Human Rights in Context at Ghent University (Belgium). Parra holds a master’s in criminology from Oxford and a law degree from the national University in Colombia. He has extensive experience, including in the area of reparations, working at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights as well as at the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights.

Moderated by Alicia Ely Yamin who is currently a Lecturer on Law and the Senior Fellow on Global Health and Rights at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School; Adjunct Senior Lecturer on Health Policy and Management at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health; and Senior Advisor on Human Rights and Health Policy at the global health justice organization, Partners In Health.

Coffee and refreshments will be provided.

Presented in collaboration with Human Rights Program Harvard Law School.