The Armed Victim: Normative and Philosophical Foundations for the Recognition of Law Enforcement Agents as Victims in the Internal Armed Conflict in Colombia

Abstract

Colombian society has experienced violence in various forms, including bipartisan persecution (1930–1948), insurgency (1960s), drug trafficking (1970s), paramilitarism (1970s), criminal gangs (2000s), residual groups of the FARC (2010s), and organized armed groups serving international drug trafficking (2020s). These phenomena have seriously affected millions of citizens who have become victims of these acts of terror (Historical Commission of the Conflict and its Victims, 2015). For more than 70 years, Colombian history has been marked by violence that flares up whenever attempts are made to extinguish it. The result of this hatred expressed through weapons, death, and dispossession is that more than 10 million people have been affected, with close to 11 million displaced by the internal armed conflict, mostly rural populations and agricultural workers. More than a million people have been murdered, more than 262 thousand have disappeared, and about 52 thousand have been victims of sexual violence, mostly women (Single Registry of Victims, 2025). Those who have had to defend the institutional order without stoking or motivating the war are the least talked about. These are the members of the Public Force, exceeding 460 thousand troops. This paper identifies the reasons why victims of the security forces are protected by the same guarantees as victims of the internal armed conflict in Colombia. It analyzes the configuration of the notion of victim based on guilt and the international normative systems that delimit the status of victim. It also examines the key points that characterize the condition of victim.