Born of War in Colombia: Reproductive Violence and Memories of Absence by Tatiana Sánchez Parra

CLAS OPEN SEMINARS - Michaelmas 2024

Book Launch - Born of War in Colombia: Reproductive Violence and Memories of Absence

Tatiana Sánchez Parra (University of Edinburgh)

Chair: Pedro Mendes Loureiro (University of Cambridge)

Abstract:
‘Born of War in Colombia’ addresses why children born of conflict-related sexual violence remain unseen within human rights and transitional justice agendas. In Colombia, there are generations of children born of conflict-related sexual violence. Whispers of their presence have travelled outside their communities in the form of naming practices that associated them with their biological fathers, perpetrators of all forms of violence. They also exist in their mothers’ testimonies of sexual violence and within the country’s domestic reparations programme, which was the first in the world to include them as victims entitle to reparations. These forms of visibility, however, have yet to translate into concrete strategies for working with them and their mothers, understanding their situations, and guaranteeing their well-being. The book draws on feminist ethnography with an Afro-Colombian community that endured a four-year paramilitary confinement and of the country’s domestic reparation programme. It reveals how a harm-centred model of transitional justice has converged with a restricted notion of gendered victimhood and the patriarchal politics of reproduction to render the bodies of people born of conflict-related sexual violence unintelligible to policymakers and scholars seeking to address the consequences of war in Colombia. The book also engages with the reproductive justice framework and directly addresses issues of reproductive violence. In that way, it also contributes to broadening notions of gendered victimhood and reproductive freedom.

Tatiana Sánchez Parra is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. Her background is in anthropology, human rights, and sociology. Tatiana’s research is situated at the intersection of socio-legal, feminist, and Latin American studies. Her research focuses on issues of feminist peacebuilding, reproductive justice, and violence in contexts of war and political transitions.