The Indigenous communities of Colombia have borne the brunt of the country’s violent history. Since colonial times, the Indigenous communities of Colombia have endured different forms of violence that have caused systematic dispossession of their lands, displacement and the loss of their cultural identity.

On November 12, 2019, the Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz “Special Jurisdiction for Peace” (JEP) produced a ruling (JEP 079/2019) that recognized the Awá, an Indigenous community in southern Colombia, as victims of Colombia’s 50-year armed conflict (JEP, 2019). The JEP is a transitional justice (TJ) tribunal that resulted from the Havana Peace Accords signed between the Colombian government and the largest and oldest guerrilla group of Latin America, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia “Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia” (FARC) in 2016. This ruling by the JEP has a symbolic meaning that illustrates how “historical injuries” (Castillejo-Cuéllar, 2013a) are interpreted through legal mechanisms that seek to address questions of structural injustice.