Corporate Reparations in Transitional Justice Contexts: A Restorative Justice Approach - The Case of Colombia’s Conditionality Regime

Holding corporate actors accountable for their wrongs in transitional justice settings remains an elusive quest. Over recent years, an increasing volume of scholarship has dedicated attention to legal and non-legal mechanisms that may enable corporate accountability in these contexts. Yet, scant attention has been paid to one of the outputs emerging out of a transitional justice (TJ) accountability process, namely: corporate reparations. The prevailing conceptualization of corporate reparations, in theory and practice, remains essentially materialistic and conceives victims as mere recipients and passive actors in the definition of corporate reparations. Such an approach neglects the agency of victims and their needs, and thus hinders the process of restoring relationships between corporate actors, victims, and communities. To counterbalance such downsides, we introduce a four principles framework based on the body of restorative justice (RJ) to guide corporate reparations in TJ settings. The framework makes evident that to deliver corporate reparations along with the parameters of RJ, TJ accountability mechanisms have to actively manage a trade-off related to their scope, and their degree of systematization. We illustrate these points by discussing the Conditionality Regime under Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace as part of its Integral System of Truth, Justice, Reparation, and non-Repetition.