Must Our Communities Bleed to Receive Social Services? Development projects and collective reparations schemes in Colombia

The provision of social services in protracted conflicts, such as the Colombian conflict, is scarce and sometimes non-existent. Collective reparations are normally composed of restitution, compensation, rehabilitation and guarantees of no repetition. They constitute what normally would encompass development projects and can provide basic social services in contexts of peace and stability with additional symbolic and psychosocial elements. After more than five decades of conflict in Colombia, it seems that significant political will for transitional justice programmes — and in particular, reparations programmes — has emerged with the 2010 election of President Juan Manuel Santos and the ratification of the 2011 Victim's Law. In 2007, a pilot project of collective reparations programmes was initiated with the support of international development agencies. This paper uses data collected from these pilot projects to demonstrate the complexity of introducing development projects as a form of reparations in conflict-affected communities. It also questions whether it is good policy to require communities to have to ‘bleed first’ to receive basic social services under the auspices of collective reparations and explores the possible problems involved in implementing collective reparations programmes without a comprehensive development policy in post-conflict contexts.