Introduction
The history of international law has often been shaped by a male-dominated perspective that prioritizes the contributions of Western men, marginalizing women, particularly those from the Global South. This bias has erased their voices and downplayed their pivotal roles in shaping global frameworks (Nigam, 2020). Latin American women, for instance, made significant contributions to post-war international human rights law (IHRL), as seen in the work of Minerva Bernardino, Bertha Lutz, and Isabel de Vidal during the drafting of the U.N. Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet, their contributions have been largely unrecognized. If even prominent women who managed to attain highly influential positions in international organizations as representatives of their states have been marginalized in the historiography of international law, what recognition can be expected for grassroots women who have been victims of state crimes that are specifically designed to render their suffering invisible?
This Essay aims to highlight the mobilization of a particular group of Latin American women: mothers searching for disappeared persons. The central argument is that the development of international law standards and norms on enforced disappearance cannot be fully understood without considering the leading contributions made by various groups of searching mothers. To illustrate the impact of Latin American maternal activism, we present two specific examples in this Essay: the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (MPM), and the Mothers of the False Positives of Soacha and Bogotá (MAFAPO).
The first Part of this Essay briefly introduces the notion of “maternal activism” as a key concept for understanding the unique characteristics of these groups of women who search for the disappeared in Latin America. The second Part highlights the pivotal role of Latin American maternal activism in shaping international law during the second half of the twentieth century, with particular focus on the efforts of the mothers and grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. In the late 1970s and 1980s, their activism against the Argentinian dictatorship led to significant advancements in IHRL. This includes the recognition of the systematic perpetration of enforced disappearance by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the 1994 Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons, and the development of international standards addressing enforced disappearances in connection with children’s rights. The third Part analyzes contemporary forms of maternal activism, using Colombia as a case study. It focuses on MAFAPO, an organization of mothers that emerged in 2009 to denounce a specific type of forced disappearance and extrajudicial executions. The study of its origins and its struggle in judicial arenas illustrates the contributions that organizations of searching women are currently making to the development of IHRL and international criminal law standards.
I. Maternal Activism in Latin America
Women, especially mothers seeking justice for disappeared persons, have been leading the battle against impunity for human rights violations in Latin America, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. In several countries, the mobilization of searching women was a common denominator of civil society’s reaction to massive and systematic human rights violations in authoritarian contexts and armed conflicts during the second half of the twentieth century. For instance, in El Salvador, the Committee of Mothers and Relatives of Political Prisoners, Disappeared and Assassinated, Monsignor “Oscar Arnulfo Romero” (CoMadres), following the student massacre of 1975 (Guzmán & Mendia, 2013: 37); in Nicaragua, Association of Women confronting the National Problematic (AMPRONAC), established in 1977 (Palazón, 2007); in Mexico, the National Committee for the Defense of Prisoners, Persecuted, Disappeared and Political Exiles, known as “Comité Eureka,” founded in 1977 by Rosario Ibarra; in Argentina, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, which is perhaps the best-known example of searching women in Argentina’s struggle against disappearances and other serious human rights violations committed during the repression of the last military dictatorship (1976-1983); in Pinochet’s Chile, the “Women for Life” movement, organized since 1983 (Maravall, 2012); and in Peru, the National Association of Relatives of Kidnapped, Detained and Disappeared of Peru (ANFASEP), since 1983 (Mantilla, 2006).
A primary difficulty in giving visibility to the role of mothers in the development of international law, in general, has been that they have commonly been associated with conservative values, anchored in stereotypes and traditional roles of women and motherhood, which seem to be in contradiction with the idea of resistance and activism against an oppressive regime. To counter this, we draw on the concept of maternal activism, as developed by scholars such as Adrienne Rich, Danielle Poe, and Kathleen Gallagher, among others. Rich (2019) defines maternal activism as a process of motherhood reinterpretation away from the private sphere toward mobilization and political participation in the public sphere. Motherhood has historically been associated with the private and exclusive role of “the mother in the home,” confined to childbearing responsibilities and often controlled by male figures (husband, priest, state), making it an oppressive institution. In contrast, Rich emphasizes the transformative experience of mothering, highlighting the potential for bonding with children as a source of empowerment. This bond can propel mothers into the public sphere, where their personal pain becomes a catalyst for political engagement and collective advocacy. This transition from a private to a political role transforms the oppressive nature of traditional motherhood into a powerful tool for justice and societal transformation. Maternal activism thus represents a profound shift in how motherhood is conceived.
As Gallagher (2018) explains, this concept is useful to understand maternal mobilization in the context of authoritarian regimes that resort to conservative narratives of motherhood for social control. For instance, during Argentina’s last military dictatorship (1976-1983), a crucial aspect of the “National Reorganization Process” was confining women to traditional roles as wives and mothers. Women were tasked with shielding their children from communist ideologies and subversion while promoting Christian values and Western ideals. Gallagher suggests that various contemporary expressions of women’s activism often invoked these traditional roles as strategic essentialism to gain support and protect themselves. She analyzes the Virgin Mary’s representation in Christian societies as an archetype of motherhood for various political purposes. In the Christian tradition, Mary is idealized as the archetype of self-sacrificing motherhood, who endures great suffering to bring the Messiah into the world and witnesses his violent death. This portrayal of motherhood as self-sacrifice, loss, and martyrdom aligns with the traditional conception of motherhood in Latin America, a social construct historically instrumentalized since the Iberian colonial period to oppress women. Simultaneously, it resonates with reactive activism, which emerges from personal suffering, such as losing a child.
Accordingly, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo can be seen as a prominent example of maternal activism. Formed in April 1977, they began gathering at Buenos Aires’s Plaza de Mayo to demand information about their disappeared children. The mothers, without prior political experience, initially lacked awareness that their actions were inherently political. When regime police forced them to “circulate,” prohibiting them from standing still in groups of more than three to avoid constituting an illegal public gathering under the state of siege, they inadvertently began a form of political marching. By October 1977, the mothers strategically decided to make their presence felt during a massive Catholic procession. To stand out among the large religious crowd and amplify their demands for the lives of their disappeared children, they chose to wear their children’s cloth diapers as veils, evoking a Catholic symbol while subverting it for their protest (Zarco, 2011). Using an artifact of their private life in the public sphere as a symbol of political resistance, they subverted the passive roles imposed on women by the regime. Initially, their primary goal was to protect their children and raise awareness of the dictatorship’s atrocities (Ortiz, 2012). Over time, divisions emerged within the movement. One faction, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, focused on recovering children born in captivity or those who disappeared during the dictatorship. Another split occurred in 1986, leading to the formation of two groups: the Association of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, under the leadership of Hebe de Bonafini, and the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Founding Line. For the purposes of this Essay, we will refer to the “Mothers of Plaza de Mayo” or “MPM movement” as encompassing all these groups.
II. Contributions of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo to International law
The influence of the MPM movement has driven female mobilization at the national and international levels and has framed legal and social discussions that previously escaped the scope of women’s roles. Some of the specific achievements of MPM include the delimitation of the concept of disappeared persons, the discussion over the minor’s rights covered by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the reintegration of the disappeared children into their biological families.
At the beginning of 1980, Hebe de Bonafini and María Antokoletz, two founding leaders of MPM, were invited by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to Geneva to discuss the disappearances in the Southern Cone. They emphasized that there was insufficient evidence to generalize that all the disappeared persons were dead. The issue gained prominence when organizations such as Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, the International Federation of Human Rights, the Argentine Commission for Human Rights Activists, and the Commission of Solidarity with Relatives of the Disappeared in Argentina began to address the matter. These dialogues had such a significant impact that they served as a prelude to the international law debate on enforced disappearances as an imprescriptible crime against humanity (D’Antonio, 2018).
The first binding international treaty on enforced disappearance was the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons (CIDFP), adopted in 1994 in Belem, Brazil. However, the phenomenon was discussed in the OAS as early as 1976, at the initiative of the IACHR, and the first draft of this treaty was started in 1987. In the IACHR’s 1987-1988 annual report, some conceptual parameters on enforced disappearance were established, and OAS member states and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were invited to submit their contributions and observations. Among the NGOs that offered valuable contributions, the IACHR mentioned the “Vicaría de la Solidaridad” of the Archdiocese of Santiago, Chile; the “Socorro Jurídico Cristiano ‘Arzobispo Oscar Romero’” of El Salvador; the “Federación Latinoamericana de Asociaciones de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos” (FEDEFAM); the Executive Committee of the Coalition of NGOs Concerned with Impunity for Violators of Human Rights of New York; “Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo,” “Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS),” “Familiares de Detenidos y Desaparecidos por Razones Políticos,” and the “Grupo de Iniciativa para una Convención Internacional contra la Desaparición Forzada de Personas” (see Chapter V of the OAS Annual Report 1987-1988). That same year, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued its first ruling in the case of Velásquez Rodríguez vs. Honduras, laying the foundation for considering enforced disappearance as an autonomous crime.
Subsequently, as Montes de Oca (2019) explains in detail, the OAS Permanent Council Committee on Juridical and Political Affairs created a working group to draft the convention. A highly contested draft was presented in 1992, prompting the Committee to use studies from regional NGOs to revise the draft. The inclusion and participation of MPM, grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, and CELS led to significant changes in the text. Notably, they were very influential in the debate around Article 4 on categorizing enforced disappearance as a crime against humanity, which was ultimately included in the final draft presented in Belem in 1994. This categorization recognizes the greater severity of this crime, its non-prescriptible character, and the possibility of international prosecution.
Latin American debates on enforced disappearance were highly influential on a global scale, bringing the objective of negotiating a treaty to set universal standards on the issue to the U.N.’s agenda. Within the negotiation process of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances (CED), female-led organizations such as MPM, the grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, and FEDEFAM played a very prominent role (Elsemann, 2012).
As Cocomá Ricaurte (2022) explains, FEDEFAM was founded in 1981 as an NGO comprised of associations of relatives from Latin American countries where enforced disappearances were practiced. It mainly consists of and is directed by women. By 1991, FEDEFAM comprised 21 grassroots organizations, predominantly led by mothers and sisters of the disappeared, including MPM. FEDEFAM pushed for an international binding convention against enforced disappearances since its foundation in 1981, resulting in the U.N. General Assembly approval of the CED in 2006. MPM’s and FEDEFAM’s persistent lobbying was crucial to achieving this outcome. However, their work was officially recognized only several years later. According to Cocomá Ricaurte, this exemplifies systemic silencing and underrepresentation of women in the international law arena.
Estella de Carlotto, an MPM activist, notes that another significant achievement of women was MPM participation in drafting the Convention on the Rights of the Child, defending children’s rights to have their parents, live with their families, and be raised by them, except in particular situations. According to Carlotto, the group managed to delineate Articles 7, 8, and 11 of the Convention concerning the care, custody, the right to identity, and protection against illicit transfer abroad, which are recognized as Argentine contributions (Villalta and Gesteira, 2019). Before these rights were enshrined in the Convention, during the period of democracy, the grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo contributed to the creation of the National Genetic Data Bank (Law 23.511 of 1987) for recognizing their grandchildren through the Grandparenthood Index, with support from the U.S. government. In 1992, the National Commission for the Right to Identity (CONADI) was created to promote the search for disappeared children and those born in the captivity of their parents. The Argentine government has acknowledged that thanks to the tireless activism of the grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, at least 130 children have recovered their family histories and identities, and their relatives have regained their right to know the truth about what happened (Ministerio de Educación de Argentina, 2022: 45).
III. Maternal activism in the Twenty-First Century: The Case of the Mothers of False Positives of Soacha and Bogotá
While MPM is a prominent example of the impact maternal activism had on international law in the late twentieth century, it is important to note that this type of mobilization has not been confined to that period. Similar movements, based on maternity, have continued to emerge in the Latin American societies of the twentieth century, with notable intensity in Colombia, within the context of its armed conflict.
According to the 2013 General Report by the Historical Memory Group Basta Ya!, in Colombia, nine out of every ten missing persons are men; as a result, women bear the brunt of coping with the aftermath of these disappearances at home. The Truth Commission’s Final Report (CEV, 2022) also highlighted that women have been the first to search for their missing family members, demand investigations from the authorities, and seek to make the cases public. The Commission emphasized that women’s involvement in human rights organizations stemmed not from ideological or political reasons, but, as sociologist Elizabeth Jelin pointed out, from a “logic of affection”—the emotional ties and sense of responsibility toward their families. The Commission acknowledged that women’s associations were founded on the pain of losing their loved ones, leading to a shared sense of solidarity among women, enabling them to cope with the aftermath of violence while also advocating for the dignity of the victims.
A broad overview of the key activists against forced disappearances in Colombia enables us to recognize various grassroots women’s organizations that, like MPM, have centered their fight on reshaping motherhood as a political act. Noteworthy are the mothers of La Candelaria, Mothers of Las Delicias, Mothers for Life, the mothers of “false positives” of Soacha and Bogotá (MAFAPO), and, in general, other mothers of victims of forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings who are affiliated with organizations such as the Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE), Association of Relatives of Detained and Disappeared (ASFADDES), Nidya Erika Bautista Foundation, or similar groups. Following the 2016 Peace Agreement with the FARC, the Truth Commission and the Search Unit for Missing Persons in the context and due to the Armed Conflict (UBPD) adopted the term “searching women” (mujeres buscadoras) to emphasize the leading role of these women.
This Part focuses on MAFAPO, an association comprising the mothers and relatives of nineteen victims of “false positives”, fourteen from Soacha and five from Bogotá (CEV, 2018) It aims to explain why MAFAPO’s advocacy has been crucial in pursuing justice through ICL, IHL, and IHRL, and how their pivotal role in Colombia could contribute to advancing international law. First, it is necessary to understand the specific characteristics of “false positives” and the challenges of their legal classification under current international standards. Second, a brief explanation will be provided on the transition of the Mothers of Soacha from the private to the public sphere, to illustrate how their organization aligns with the previously described characteristics of maternal activism. Third, we will explain how MAFAPO has invoked international legal standards to frame their demands before ordinary criminal justice (2009-2017) and transitional justice (2018-present). Finally, some contributions of twenty-first-century maternal activism to international law are outlined.
A. The Notion of “False Positives”
In Colombia, the euphemism “false positives” is commonly used to describe a pattern of state crimes. These crimes include arbitrary detentions, torture, forced disappearances, homicides of protected persons, and murders of civilians, which are carried out outside of armed confrontations. The perpetrators then present these acts to the authorities and civil society as legitimate deaths of guerrilleros in the context of combat, aiming to demonstrate positive outcomes in the anti-terrorist, anti-drugs, or counter-insurgent efforts and to gain different advantages.
The first recorded case of a “false positive” in Colombia is that of Luis Lalinde, a sociology student and member of a leftist youth movement who was captured, tortured, and murdered by an infantry patrol of the National Army in 1984. He was subsequently registered as N.N. with the alias “Jacinto” and reported as having been killed during an alleged escape attempt. According to the Truth Commission, following the enactment of the National Security Statute of 1978, there was a surge in instances where the armed forces engaged in actions against civilians, including arbitrary arrests, torture, forced disappearances, and home raids without judicial authorization. It is estimated that between 1989 and 1997, there were around 158 cases with the described pattern (Barbosa & Ciro, 2020).
The Foundation for Education and Development (FEDES, 2010) reported a rise in extrajudicial killings during Álvaro Uribe’s presidency (2002-2010). This occurred within the framework of the Democratic Security policy, which aimed to combat drug trafficking and reclaim territorial control in areas dominated by guerrilla groups (Rodríguez, 2014). The policy received substantial funding from the U.S. government through what was known as Plan Colombia. Consequently, there was significant pressure, both domestically and internationally, to demonstrate progress in achieving the strategy’s objectives. As a result, seemingly guerrilla casualties became a crucial metric for measuring military success. This pressure filtered down to the army through a complex system of threats and incentives (e.g., promotions, paid leave, vacations) directed at the military units.
During this period, a criminal network involving both state and non-state actors was established. Through this network, civilians were kidnapped, transported to conflict zones, executed, and then presented as guerrilleros killed in combat. These killings were later “legalized” by officials such as forensic doctors, notaries, and prosecutors. The soldiers responsible were awarded with honor medals and other benefits. Testimonies provided by numerous soldiers before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) have since revealed that, in several military units, a significant percentage of reported casualties were, in fact, “false positives.” The methods employed varied across conflict zones. In some cases, “social cleansing” operations targeted demobilized individuals or disadvantaged youth in low-income urban areas; in these instances, the crimes were often motivated by a desire to eliminate stigmatized populations. In other instances, in rural areas influenced by illegal groups, victims were accused of collaborating with guerrillas based on intelligence work and subsequently executed. A third modality involved the killing of individuals captured or rendered hors de combat during initially legal operations. There were also cases of Colombian soldiers who refused to participate in these crimes and ultimately became victims themselves.
According to the JEP, between 2002 and 2008, approximately 6,402 people were murdered and then presented as guerrilleros killed in combat. Cases began to decline after 2008, when women from Soacha publicly denounced the disappearance and murder of their sons.
B. The Origins of MAFAPO
The term “Madres de Soacha” was coined by the media to refer to the women who brought to light the disappearances of young men from Soacha, falsely presented as combat casualties. According to Gutiérrez (2020), following the activism of these mothers, women from various regions of the country started coming forward with stories from different years that matched the pattern used to make the young men from Soacha disappear and be killed.
Soacha is an impoverished city on the outskirts of Bogotá and a resettlement area for thousands of internally displaced persons. For the Colombian army, it was an ideal location to find victims, as it was unlikely that their families could afford the costs of judicial investigations, and it could be argued that the disappearances were due to guerrilla or gang recruitment. The pattern used in Soacha by members of the Colombian army was as follows: false job offers were advertised, targeting young people from low-income backgrounds. Once the youths accepted the offer, they were transported to areas with a guerrilla presence. After a period of illegal detention, they were selected to be killed. The army would report a combat, and months later, the bodies of the young men would appear in mass graves dressed in guerrilla uniforms.
An interview with one of the mothers from Soacha reveals how the families experienced this situation. Gloria, the mother of Daniel, explains that her son was persuaded by a neighbor, Pedro Gámez, with a false promise of employment. According to the information provided, Daniel was last seen by his mother on February 6, 2008. Gloria mentioned that her maternal instincts made her wary of Pedro Gámez, but Daniel was convinced that the job he was offered would help ease her workload. Consequently, on that February morning, the young man bid farewell, promising to return and assist with the household expenses. He never came back. The last contact the family had with him was on Friday at noon. As Gloria remembers, he got in touch with one of his sisters, without disclosing his whereabouts, and asked her to take care and to convey to his mother that he wouldn’t be able to keep the promise he had made. From that moment on, Gloria, accompanied by her daughter, embarked on an eight-month-long search, holding onto the hope of finding Daniel alive. Unfortunately, the reports of the disappeared men in Soacha were on the rise. Through a contact at the Prosecutor’s Office, Gloria’s daughter was able to confirm that Daniel had passed away and was buried in a mass grave in Ocaña, about 632 km away from home. Like Gloria, other mothers from Soacha experienced the disappearance of their children. This situation, along with the efforts of Fernando Escobar, the personero (human rights attorney) of Soacha, prompted the mothers to gather at Plaza de Soacha while they asked for legal assistance.
In the early days of October 2008, no one could believe that these crimes had been carried out by the military (Rodríguez, 2010). Alongside the families, Fernando Escobar started to denounce the deaths of the young people from Soacha. However, the authorities vehemently denied any accusations. Then-President Álvaro Uribe himself defended the official version presented by the army, claiming that the young men from Soacha were guerrillas killed in combat, encapsulated in his infamous statement: Those boys wouldn’t have been picking coffee.
This statement deeply impacted the mothers of Soacha. In 2009, MAFAPO was first established, bringing together families of the victims, predominantly women. The association currently welcomes victims of false positives from all over the country, recognizing the nationwide occurrence of this phenomenon (CEV, 2021). This is why they are identified as the leading advocates for the victims of false positives in Colombia. MAFAPO includes not only the mothers of victims, but also all the women who, from their various roles (wives, partners, sisters, aunts, grandmothers), participate in the organization and have had socio-legal impacts resulting from disappearances. MAFAPO adopted multiple elements from other victim movements in Latin America, with the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo serving as a constant reference point in its public articulation.
C. MAFAPO’s Legal Struggle Before Colombian Courts: Leveraging International Law for Justice
Since its inception, MAFAPO’s core struggle has been pursuing the investigation and criminal prosecution of those responsible for the disappearances and murders of their children. In this regard, two distinct phases can be identified: between 2009 and 2017, the Mothers of Soacha had to turn to the ordinary criminal justice system. The second phase began in 2018, when all cases involving crimes committed in the context of armed conflict up until December 2016 were transferred to the JEP.
During the first phase, the mothers’ primary objective was to prove that their children were innocent civilians who had been abducted by army personnel and subsequently murdered to be falsely presented as legitimate deaths of guerrilleros in the context of combat. This required challenging the official narrative promoted by the national army and the government. Consequently, the mothers faced numerous obstacles in the criminal justice system. Judgments took almost a decade in some instances, and charges were not even brought in time. The defense often used delay tactics, like postponing hearings due to the resignation of the implicated military personnel’s lawyers. Furthermore, the members of MAFAPO encountered various institutional barriers when trying to access regular justice. For instance, they faced stigmatization and disrespectful treatment by the authorities, who suspected the victims of being criminals. There were also issues with the acceptance of disappearance reports and inadequate guidance during the initial stages of the investigation. Additionally, hearings were held in cities favoring the accused’s appearance but far from the victims’ residences, leading to confusion about jurisdiction and causing delays in the suspects’ legal process. Outside the courts, searching women also had to deal with threats and attacks (Toro, 2015).
Despite facing these challenges, thanks to MAFAPO’s relentless advocacy, several judicial victories were achieved in Colombia’s ordinary criminal justice system before the cases transitioned to the JEP. In 2012, a first-instance criminal court convicted military personnel for the disappearance and murder of Fair Leonardo, son of Luz Marina, a MAFAPO cofounder. The court found them guilty of conspiracy to commit a crime, aggravated homicide, and forced disappearance. In 2013, a second-instance court partially overturned this decision, reclassifying the acts as crimes against humanity due to their elements of systematicity and generality (Tribunal Administrativo de Norte de Santander, 2014). Ultimately, this ruling became final after the Supreme Court of Justice rejected the cassation appeal filed by the defendant (Bonilla, 2017). And in 2017, another first-instance criminal court convicted 21 soldiers, including a colonel, characterizing their actions involving other Soacha victims as crimes against humanity (CAJAR, 2017). That same year, one perpetrator received a 44-year prison sentence for his role in these atrocities (MOVICE, 2017).
Just as the mothers were beginning to achieve significant judicial victories—exposing state crimes, securing exemplary sentences for the perpetrators, recognizing their children’s innocence, and acknowledging the systematic and widespread nature of their disappearances and murders—a substantial change occurred in Colombia’s judicial system. In December 2016, the peace agreement with the FARC guerrilla was signed, establishing the creation of the JEP. It is a transitional justice institution designed to investigate, judge, and sanction FARC combatants, members of the Colombian Armed Forces, and third parties involved in the Colombian armed conflict. The JEP has exclusive competence to process criminal acts related to armed conflict, particularly the most serious crimes that cannot be pardoned. Consequently, all criminal proceedings related to these crimes were transferred from the ordinary criminal justice system to the JEP.
The official transfer of “false positive” cases to the JEP started in July 2018, when the JEP’s Chamber of Recognition of Truth and Responsibility and Determination of Facts and Conducts (SRVR, 2018) began to investigate macro-case 03, which was titled, “illegitimate deaths falsely reported as combat casualties by state agents.” Several women from MAFAPO strongly opposed the JEP jurisdiction, as this transition seemed to require starting from scratch. A major fear was that the JEP would differ from ordinary justice in recognizing the conducts committed as crimes against humanity. They might, for example, categorize these deaths as war crimes of homicides of protected persons (art. 8.2.c.i ER), deny their systematic nature, or subsume forced disappearances that preceded the deaths within the crime of murder. Such reclassification would undermine the investigation of national patterns and limit accountability for high-ranking officials, paramilitary groups, and civilians complicit in planning and concealing enforced disappearances, with the risk of prosecuting only direct perpetrators. Victims also argue that subsuming forced disappearance within the crime of murder would fail to treat disappearance as a central mechanism of systemic repression under the doctrine of the “internal enemy.” Therefore, victims have repeatedly urged the JEP’s SRVR to prioritize enforced disappearance as a standalone crime.
In this regard, it is important to clarify that the JEP is a transitional court with the authority to directly apply binding norms of IHRL, IHL, and ICL (see transitory article 5 of Legislative Act 1 of 2017 and article 23 of Law 1957 of 2019). Specifically, the legal qualification of the conduct is based on the Colombian Criminal Code and the Rome Statute. The JEP is thus obligated to uphold the classifications and standards established under international law when determining the nature of these crimes. This means that it must recognize crimes against humanity and war crimes when the necessary elements are present. MAFAPO’s advocacy in this second phase focused on ensuring that the JEP recognizes that the crimes committed against their sons were crimes against humanity. This acknowledgment would make it possible to pursue the chain of command, thereby holding not only the direct perpetrators accountable but also the high-ranking military and civilian commanders responsible for orchestrating these acts.
To clarify the impact of the testimonies and documentation submitted by MAFAPO mothers to the JEP on the legal classification of the conduct, we conducted a pair of interviews with Judge Oscar Parra from JEP’s SRVR, who is one of the three reporting judges of macro-case 03. He emphasized the crucial role of the victims’ testimonies in enabling the Chamber to identify the correct criminal patterns. In fact, with Auto 125/2021, macro-case 03 was renamed as “murders and forced disappearances presented as combat casualties by State agents.” The name change highlights the classification of these actions as crimes against humanity, and confirms that enforced disappearances, which were carried out to cover up the facts, conceal the identities of the victims, or deny their detention, were not subsumed under the murders. Instead, they would be examined as an autonomous crime. Judge Parra highlighted the significance of MAFAPO’s mobilization in achieving this outcome, which has contributed to a better understanding of the complexity of this particular phenomenon.
Macrocase 03, initially investigated through regional subcases, entered its national phase in July 2024. This stage aims to determine whether macro criminal patterns documented in regions like Antioquia and Norte de Santander were replicated in other areas. This national phase seeks to reveal whether systematic practices of “false positives” were part of a nationwide pattern, holding commanders accountable while advancing truth, justice, and comprehensive reparations for victims. The JEP focuses on establishing high-level military responsibility, summoning former officials and senior officers, including Generals. The JEP is also accrediting new victims from previously excluded regions, ensuring their active participation in hearings and observations. Meanwhile, the mothers of MAFAPO continue to push for the criminal prosecution not only of high-ranking military commanders from that period but also of top civilian authorities. Furthermore, they continue to argue that the practice of “false positives” was a nationwide state policy and pursue subsequent recognition of state responsibility for those crimes.
D. Contributions of Twenty-First-Century Maternal Activism to International Law
In line with the principle of complementarity, international crimes are primarily intended to be prosecuted at the domestic level, so national courts are conceived as courts of first resort. This is one of the reasons why international criminal law has largely developed based on various national experiences in prosecuting these crimes. In this sense, the Colombian experience can offer numerous lessons for ICL, as its transitional justice model is filled with legal innovations that may be useful in other transitional processes, while also directly applying ICL to resolve its cases. Once the JEP reaches a verdict on macro-case 03, it has the potential to become a landmark case internationally if it convincingly defines and systematizes the elements of this crime and its different patterns. It is unlikely that an international treaty on false positives will emerge or that the Rome Statute will be amended to classify this crime as an autonomous offense. It is more probable, however, that the JEP’s jurisprudence on the matter will significantly influence how similar cases are analyzed by the International Criminal Court. Due to the dynamics and timelines of cases before the ICC, this impact will only become evident in some years. However, the transformative potential of the JEP and the contribution of victims of the Colombian armed conflict should not be underestimated.
In this context, the contributions of MAFAPO and other women-led organizations to the development of ICL are manifold. First, MAFAPO has consistently advocated for the systematic nature of “false positives” and the national scale at which they occurred, framing them as part of a broader State policy. Their stance has been crucial in conceptualizing “false positives” as a multi-offensive phenomenon that violates several human rights and involves several crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute. Second, their emphasis on the criminal prosecution of high-ranking civilian and military officials (under their slogan “Who gave the order?”) has strengthened investigations into the chain of command and the responsibility of superiors in these cases and has even led to the public acknowledgment of the state’s responsibility. Third, their efforts have driven progress in recognizing the gender-differentiated impacts of international crimes, prompting reflection on gender-sensitive approaches to reparations, truth-telling processes, and other rights of women as victims in armed conflicts.
Regarding the broader question of the visibility of women’s contributions to international law, searching women are achieving some recognition within the Inter-American human rights system. In 2022, in the case Movilla Galarcio et al. v. Colombia (concerning the forced disappearance of a union leader), the Inter-American Court explicitly addressed the differential impacts of forced disappearance on searching women, highlighting the importance of their role in combating impunity and defining concrete state obligations. According to the Court (see paragraph 181 of the judgment), “[t]he State parties to the American Convention on Human Rights have an obligation to undertake actions to recognize and guarantee the efforts of women searching for their loved ones as part of the prevention and investigation of forced disappearance. They must also guarantee that those efforts are carried out without obstacles, intimidation or threats, ensuring the personal integrity of the women concerned and recognition of their rights to political participation acknowledged in the Convention. States parties must also address the historical and cultural obstacles that limit their search, and guarantee that the women and their dependents can continue to pursue their lifetime ambitions in decent conditions. This must include reparations, which should be ordered in such a way that they do not reproduce gender stereotypes but rather reflect the ways in which women seeking their loved ones wish to be represented.” These obligations were confirmed in the cases Tabares Toro et al. v. Colombia (May 2023) and Guzmán Medina et al. v. Colombia (August 2023).
However, this recognition alone does not correct the dominant narrative of international law, which tends to deny or diminish women’s agency in its development. Achieving this requires a broader understanding of the process of constructing international law, including the struggles of social groups in the Global South driving these advancements. It also demands a shift in attitudes among international law scholars, starting with addressing this problem of exclusion.
Conclusion
The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and the Mothers of Soacha and Bogotá share numerous commonalities. They began as small groups of women who denounced the military for crimes so heinous that they seemed unbelievable, leading the authorities to dismiss the mothers and treat them as locas de la plaza. Through their courage and perseverance, grounded in their love for their disappeared children, they ultimately proved their assertions correct. Their efforts led to decisive impacts on the identification and recognition of these crimes on a massive scale, as well as on the criminal prosecution of those responsible, including high-ranking military and civilian commanders. The success of their maternal activism rests on various factors linked to specific political, social, cultural, and religious conditions. They are proof that even in environments with limited opportunities for agency, women can resist gross human rights violations of patriarchal regimes. In that sense, they serve as an inspiration for other grassroots movements in different countries, as long as these movements remain aware of the specificities of their own contexts. When there was little room for hope, these Latin American women shared the pain of losing their children and transformed it into the driving force behind their public mobilization, confronting the leaders of their States. In this process, they not only changed the history of their respective countries but also contributed to the creation and development of international frameworks for the protection of human dignity, offering a legacy of resilience that transcends generations.
Acknowledgements: We thank all contributors to this research, especially the victims who shared their stories, and the editors and reviewers of the Yale Journal of International Law for their valuable feedback.
* Lawyer. Research assistant at the Laboratory of Inter-American Constitutionalism, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla (Colombia).
** Lawyer. Research assistant at the Laboratory of Inter-American Constitutionalism, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla (Colombia).
*** PhD in public law (Humboldt University of Berlin). Law professor, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla (Colombia).