By Julia Symmes Cobb
BOGOTA, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Budget cuts proposed by allies of Colombia's new right-wing president would crimp investigations and trials of human rights abuses by the country's transitional justice court and hinder efforts to locate and identify 137,000 people who disappeared during the country's ongoing conflict, the court, the disappeared unit and advocates say.
Congress has until October 20 to decide how next year's $195 billion budget will be distributed.
The Special Jurisdiction
for Peace (JEP) court and the Search Unit for Disappeared People (UBPD), created under a 2016 peace deal, both said lawmakers are discussing steep proposed cuts to their budgets.
The court investigates and tries leaders from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels and military personnel for crimes against humanity, war crimes and human rights abuses.
Set to operate through 2033, it has sentenced FARC leaders to reparations work for their role in kidnappings and military personnel involved in extrajudicial executions. The court has nine ongoing cases, including into sexual violence and child recruitment.
Joint committees from the Senate and lower house have initially approved cutting the JEP's 2027 funding by nearly 17% from this year's level, which the court says would endanger the rights of victims and defendants. The cuts still need to be approved by the plenary to become law.
The court said it has already implemented austerity measures. This month, it asked Congress for a 2027 budget of 821 billion pesos, about $250 million, which is below its original funding request.
Senator Enrique Gomez, a close ally of new President Abelardo De La Espriella, spearheaded a proposed cut of 100 billion pesos, about $30 million, to the JEP, which he says has been too slow on convictions and is too expensive to operate as is. He wants to reassign the funding to the regular court system.
The joint committees backed that cut and an additional 70 billion peso trim, which would give the JEP a budget of about $200 million next year.
The court is "an enormous bureaucratic machine," Gomez told local Blu Radio in September. "By every measure, that branch of the transitional justice system has been an operational failure. It has not fulfilled its purpose, it systematically offends victims and, ultimately, it amounts to a permanent guarantee of impunity, especially for crimes against humanity."
De La Espriella, a lawyer who represented people connected to right-wing paramilitaries, initially promised to dismantle the JEP, later saying he would respect the court but subject it to rigorous oversight. He has backed Gomez's proposal.
Neither Gomez nor De La Espriella's office responded to requests for comment.
The JEP, like all public entities, has shared a breakdown of its spending every year and is committed to adjusting to fiscal constraints, Magistrate Catalina Diaz told Reuters last week.
"What we do not believe would be fair would be to compromise victims' rights in the years ahead," she said.
Cuts would make it difficult to hold hearings in rural areas hit hardest by the conflict, provide victims with lawyers, psychological support and travel expenses, and ensure alleged perpetrators have their rights safeguarded, Diaz said. Security schemes to protect victims and former combatants would also be at risk, she added.
Some 90% of ex-combatants accused by the JEP have recognized their crimes, Diaz said, leading to moving scenes at public hearings where some victims have offered forgiveness.
"We have seen that restorative justice works and bears fruit," she said. "But the entire restorative methodology is costly because it is intensive in both human resources and time."
The JEP is only able to sentence perpetrators to jail time, up to 20 years, if they refuse to accept responsibility. Those who acknowledge their crimes serve reparations sentences like helping with exhumations of disappeared people.
The court will need to adjust to budget limitations, said Paula Vargas of the Institute for Integrated Transitions, an NGO which advises countries transitioning away from conflict, including by streamlining investigations into combatants who were not top leaders.
She said lawmakers must not handicap the JEP so much that it is doomed to failure.
"It's one thing to ask them to be more efficient and render their accounts. It's another to wipe them out," Vargas said.
Proposals to end the JEP's mandate in 2028 or require military courts to review sentences against former soldiers are unlikely to secure the two-thirds majority needed to pass in a deeply divided congress.
Potential funding cuts under discussion for the UBPD disappeared unit would reduce its operational funding by nearly 22%, to some $18.2 million for next year. Officials said this would threaten DNA collection from families and some 10,000 planned exhumations of remains.
“The reduction in investment funding directly affects the two pillars that make searches possible: interdisciplinary investigation and the territorial deployment of investigative and forensic teams, who carry out most of their work in remote and hard-to-access areas,” UBPD Director Luz Janeth Forero said in a September statement.
The unit has called on Congress to keep its operational budget at some $23.4 million for next year, the same funding it received for 2026.
(Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by David Gregorio)
