Communities in restorative justice: insights from Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace

While restorative justice recognises communities and victims as distinct key stakeholders, important questions remain about how these categories should be distinguished and why community participation is necessary, particularly in transitional justice contexts where systematic violence may directly affect entire human groups and territories. This article addresses these questions through a conceptual analysis of Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), focusing on Macrocase 05. It argues that, in transitional settings, the distinction between communities and collective subjects recognised as victims becomes blurred, thereby challenging the differentiated roles traditionally assigned to victims, offenders and communities in restorative justice models developed for interpersonal conflicts. Far from constituting a conceptual inconsistency, this convergence is a defining feature of the JEP’s restorative model and contributes to broadening the conventional understanding of the role of communities in restorative justice.