Volume 6 Issue 1 October 2018​

R​eintegrating FARC’s Female Combatants: The Challenges of Addressing Gender Binaries in Transitional Justice

ALEISHA EBRAHIMI-TSAMIS
Against the backdrop of the 2016 Colombian plebiscite and the subsequent peace treaty, the female Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia/Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) face insurmountable obstacles in returning to civilian life. Long-standing gender disparity, largely amplified by socio-economic inequality, manifested with an estimated 40% female guerrilla membership. This article argues that the financial incentives, physical protection and sense of equality offered by FARC posed a strong lure to females who were otherwise at a natural disadvantage within Colombian society, resulting in a large number of female combatants facing gender-specific challenges now that FARC has formally ended their existence as an armed group. Whilst considering female victims of human rights (HR) violations, deeper consideration is given to the symbiotic and conflicting duality of a female who may fulfill the roles of both victim and abuser, and the inability of present transitional justice (TJ) mechanisms to approach and adequately address such a dyad.