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Through an ethnographic study of the policy of reparation to victims in Colombia, this article examines the processes of the production of expert knowledge along different scales and disputes of humanitarian bureaucracies in Colombia. These emerge from the institutional deployment of development and peacebuilding paradigms, at least since 1982, with the creation of the National Rehabilitation Plan (PNR), the Social Solidarity Network (RSS) in 1994, the Presidential Agency for Social Action and International Cooperation in 2002, and the Department of Social Prosperity (DPS) in 2011. With the subjugation of some paramilitary groups in 2006 (Justice and Peace Law), the Victims and Land Restitution Law in 2011, and the peace agreements with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People’s Army (FARC-EP) guerrillas in 2016, transitional institutions associated with truth, justice, and reparation proliferated, and with them, specific bureaucracies and expertise. Thus, the article specifically examines the technical and political tensions between different professional and ideological configurations associated with the implementation of reparations policy and how these disputes are essential to understanding the moral and ideological dimensions of humanitarianism and development in Colombia. It also studies the role of cooperation agencies in inter-institutional strengthening as a specific dimension of the formation of the Colombian State. These articulations configure a moral economy of humanitarianism characterized by institutional experimentalism and the formulation of social projects, expectations, plans, and ideas that never reach the status of having been realized. This strips such policies of any transformative or emancipatory potential. Thus, from an ethnographic perspective, the article provides an account of the techno-political tensions of humanitarian bureaucracies at the middle scales of regional, national, and global institutional structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a descriptive-evolutive, dogmatic and comparative study on the collective processes of the European Union (EU). On November 25th, 2020, the Union adopted one of its most awaited legal instruments: the first legislation, that is supposed to create a European collective action mechanism for monetary relief. According to Directive 2020/1828 on representative actions for the protection of the collective interests of consumers, and repealing Directive 2009/22/EC, member States have to adopt the transposing measures by December 25th, 2021, and give effect to them on and apply them to representative actions that are brought on or after June 25th, 2023. The European movement for collective litigation started approximately three decades ago. It earned official European recognition in competition law in 2005, owing to the European Commission's Green Paper on Damages Actions for Breach of the EC Antitrust Rules, followed by the White Paper of the same title in 2008. From 2013 to the emission of the recent 2020 directive, the particularity of community collective redress and inhibitory guardianship has proven to be holistic, unlike the US class action model. This paper analyzes the three pillars of the European vision on collective redress seeking, namely: a) the extrajudicial alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, b) the regulatory and public policy mechanisms, and c) the collective processes or litigation. The interplay of these three pillars makes the European Union's view on the matter singular as it proposes a system of incentives, prudence and safeguards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collective redress is currently the most common way to start proceedings involving a plurality of plaintiffs who suffered damages in the same event. When plaintiffs are located in a unique state, legal issues remain manageable. Difficulties arise when different states are involved. In light of the growth of international trade in the last few years, as well as the characteristics of the European Single Market policies, it has to be determined whether European laws are capable of responding to these situations, especially when its own citizens are affected. Additionally, the present paper analyses if victims have any other procedural alternative, focusing on the consumer law field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The black communities in Colombia, mainly those settled in the Department of Chocó, suffer serious violations of their human rights, both individually and collectively, due to the internal armed conflict. These communities have been uprooted from their territories which are used by the different armed actors for illicit cultivation and illegal mining. The present investigation is characterized by being descriptive, qualitative and having a documentary design. It describes the progress made in the process of collective redress for victims of black communities in the department of Chocó, the background and motives that gave origin to said process. It was evidenced, first, that the processes of elaboration and agreement of Law 1448 of 2011 and Decree Law 4635 of 2011, were made without observing the fundamental right to free and informed prior consultation; secondly, that the few advances that have been made to the process of collective redress for black communities in Chocó is mainly due to the lack of political will. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]