Born of War in Colombia

Tatiana Sánchez Parra is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions 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 related to feminist peacebuilding, reproductive justice, and reproductive violence in contexts of war and political transitions. Her first book, Born of War in Colombia: Reproductive Violence and Memories of Absence, was published by Rutgers University Press in 2024.

‘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, rendering 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.

This seminar is part of an open seminar series, hosted by the Centre for Criminology.