This article was originally posted on the Armed Groups and International Law blog as a part of the Beyond Compliance Blog Symposium: How to Prevent Harm and Need in Conflict. The symposium is jointly hosted by Armed Groups and International Law and Articles of War blogs and invites reflection on the conceptualisation of negative everyday lived experiences of armed conflict, and legal and extra-legal strategies that can effectively address harm and need. The symposium’s introductory post can be read here.
Both international human rights law (IHRL) and international humanitarian law (IHL) are premised on a protective framework which requires States to protect (civilian) populations from ‘serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure’. Discussions about protection inevitably evoke the notion of security, which has notoriously expanded from being an aspiration of inter-state relations to embracing human security – for example, in former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s words at the 54th session of the UN General Assembly. Human security is often articulated in the language of rights and predominantly focuses on the tangible. For instance, the Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty on the Responsibility to Protect defines it as the ‘security of people – physical safety, their economic and social well-being, respect for their dignity and worth as human beings, and the protection of their human rights and fundamental freedoms’ (para. 2.21). Yet, this emphasis on the tangible ignores that many societies around the world rely on notions of security that tap into the intangible. In this regard, there is a rich ethnographic literature that maps how African communities turn to spirituality for protection – among which it is worth mentioning a study by Njoku and Dery, which seeks to explain conflict-related sexual violence against men in northeastern Nigeria in light of the notion of spiritual security.
The Ritualising Protection Project, a collaboration between the University of York’s Centre for Applied Human Rights and the Nasa Indigenous Territory of Huellas, Caloto, in Colombia sought to explore how spirituality – and, relatedly, culture – protects Nasa Indigenous communities caught in the midst of armed conflict. In this post, I argue that acknowledging that harm can take forms that transcend the physical dimension requires updating our understanding of human security and, ultimately, of the IHL protective duties incumbent upon the parties to the armed conflict.
Spiritual harm
The point of departure for our inquiry was the interrelated notions of risk and harm, the definition of which cannot be understood if decontextualised from the Nasa cosmovision. Accordingly, risk is defined as ‘a social sickness, something that can harm, that is killing the Nasa people and that is caused by the loss of balance and harmony due to forgetting our own values’ (Pensamiento y acción social & Protection International, p. 15). In the Nasa cosmovision, harm thus manifests as an imbalance or a disharmony. Harmful agents alter the duality that characterises the Nasa’s worldview, which has been richly documented by the Colombian Truth Commission (for example here at p. 37), and as such they negatively impact the Nasa’s spirituality. The recruitment of Nasa children by armed actors in Colombia, for example, cannot be understood simply as the physical and psychological impact on its victims, but should necessarily be read as a loss of the semillas (literally, the seedlings, that is the future) of the family, its immediate community and, most importantly, the Nasa people. It alters the intergenerational balance that ensures the survival – or as the Nasa people define it, the pervivencia – of the entire people (see, for example, here). Balance and duality pertain to the spiritual rather than the physical sphere and, as such, we can speak of a spiritual harm that results from the violence.
Spirituality, in the Nasa cosmovision, is further linked to the Nasa people’s self-determination. Or, more aptly, to their pervivencia. There is no term in the English language that is capable of doing justice to this word, which is itself a Spanish translation from the nasa yuwe, the language spoken by the Nasa people, and captures a much more complex idea. It could be explained as signifying the continuous permanence of the Nasa people in a state of self-determination in time and space through its culture, identity and rituals. Spiritual harm thus constitutes the gravest consequence of violence. The killing of traditional medics or spiritual elders doesn’t simply negate the right to life – or the violation of the IHL principle of distinction between civilian and those participating in the conflict – but it annihilates the spiritual (and cultural) integrity of the Nasa people as a whole (see, for example, here).
There is limited recognition of intangible – let alone spiritual – harm under IHL. Protective duties have traditionally been articulated in relation to civilian objects. The only reference to spirituality can be found in Article 16 of Additional Protocol II to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which states that ‘it is prohibited to commit any acts of hostility directed against historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples’. It has been argued that the adjective ‘spiritual’ may refer to the contribution of such objects to spiritual life (see here). Furthermore, Sassoli (here, at para. 10.181) avers that IHL already ‘protect[s] persons who reali[s]e, transmit and participate in the expression of intangible cultural heritage’. However, neither of these references to spirituality seem to shift the emphasis on the spiritual dimension of harm. This gap – some authors (for example, Sassoli here at para. 10.179, and Rai extensively here) have argued – could be filled by IHRL, in particular the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.
From spiritual harm to spiritual security
Understanding that harm may transcend the physical dimension by altering the spiritual bonds that keep the community together and in harmony with its surroundings should make us interrogate the meaning of human security and, consequently, reassess the community’s protection needs. It is at this juncture that the protective duties under IHL intersect – or rather are given meaning by – the normative content of the catalogue of Indigenous peoples’ rights, in particular the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) which, albeit not legally binding, constitutes an authoritative statement of the commitments endorsed by the international community of States in relation to the rights of Indigenous peoples. Article 8(2) of the Declaration requires States to ‘provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and redress for: (a) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities’ (emphasis added). It is thus the State, as the immediate provider of security – and indeed duty bearer – that should cater for the protection needs of Indigenous peoples within its territory, and it should do so in (meaningful) consultation with Indigenous peoples themselves.
On the back of various decades-long non-international armed conflicts that have generated unspeakable suffering, Colombia has equipped itself with an articulate protection architecture, which finds its constitutional anchoring in Article 2 of the Constitution of 1991. The National Protection Unit (Unidad Nacional de Protección – UNP) is the main State agency entrusted with a protection mandate, which must be carried out with an eye to the ‘specificities and vulnerabilities by age, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and urban or rural provenance of the persons who are the object of protection’ (Art. 2.4.1.2.2(8) of the Decree 1066 of 2015). Yet, despite a rich normative framework that governs the provision of protection, the shortcomings in its implementation are well documented, included by the Ritualising Protection Project (Parisi, Cooper, Secue, with inputs from the Nasa community of Huellas, Caloto, forthcoming).
Nasa communities in the northern Cauca department have often articulated their protection needs in ways that include their spirituality. For example, the protection of sacred places, such as rivers, lakes, and tulpas (where communities meet to discuss spiritual, cultural and political issues), is essential to generating security within the Indigenous territories (on the significance of sacred places see here at p. 14). However, there seems to be scarce willingness – and perhaps resources – to provide this type of protection.
Indeed, as seen above, international law doesn’t seem to offer much anchoring to support this particular way of construing the State’s duty to protect. A relatively recent opening – though limited to redress – can be found in the reparations orderhanded down by the International Criminal Court in the Al Mahdi case. In deciding the reparations to which were entitled victims of a series of attacks against protected objects in Timbuktu, Mali, the Trial Chamber III considered the moral harm caused by the conduct of Mr Al Mahdi. The Chamber noted that ‘Protected Buildings were widely perceived in Timbuktu as being the protectors of the community from outside harm. The attack on the Protected Buildings not only destroyed cherished monuments, but also shattered the community’s collective faith that they were protected’ (para. 86, emphasis added).
Yet, acknowledging that forms of spiritual harm may not only be redressed, but also prevented is key to attuning the protection architecture to the specific environment and circumstances within which the protection need arises. Of course, it would be naïve to think that the State can do it all. Indeed, most of the heavy lifting to mitigate spiritual risk or prevent spiritual harm is probably best left to communities – for example, through their collective self-protection strategies and resistance processes, which we have documented (Parisi and Diaz-Benitez, forthcoming; Parisi and Baltan Salazar, forthcoming; relatedly in this Symposium see here). However, this doesn’t mean that State (protection) agencies should be relieved of their responsibilities to support community efforts or to adapt existing protection schemes to the specific needs of communities. State protection schemes that ignore such needs even risk generating harm for the beneficiaries of protection.
UNP-sponsored protection schemes for women Indigenous leaders offer a clear example of such dynamics. Assigning male non-Indigenous armed escorts to a woman Indigenous leader, while necessary in some cases, may generate collateral negative impacts for both the community and the Indigenous leader. Introducing firearms in Indigenous territories attracts further violence. The refusal by some UNP officers to partake in harmonisation rituals, especially prior to entering Indigenous territory, may generate mistrust in the community and lead to the social isolation of the beneficiary of protection. The gendered dimension of these protection schemes is capable of distancing further the Indigenous woman from her immediate support network, other Indigenous women, and even negatively affect her possibilities to enter romantic relationships (Parisi, Cooper, Secue, with inputs from the Nasa community of Huellas, Caloto, forthcoming).
Reshaping the duty to protect
The experience documented by the Ritualising Protection Project, while limited to the geographic boundaries, cultural, political, and socio-economic conditions of a specific area of Colombia, and the idiosyncrasies of the Nasa people, is by no means unique. As noted above, there is an emerging ethnographic literature that seeks to shed light on the significance of spiritual security. Nonetheless, the leap from acknowledging the existence of spiritual forms of harm and risk to adapting protection architectures has yet to be made. IHL has been so far largely inadequate to embrace a wider definition of harm capable of shaping the content of the States’ duty to protect to include spiritual – as well as physical – protection.
And yet, precisely because security – and even more so spiritual security – is so context-dependent, States would be best placed to adopt domestic protection frameworks that incorporate mechanisms to face spiritual insecurity. To those who are sceptical of the concept, it is important to note that this is normatively supported by the existing framework for the promotion and protection of Indigenous peoples’ rights, as aspirational as it may be. Of course, pragmatism – and, most importantly, respect for the agency of Indigenous peoples – dictates that spiritual protection initiatives should be predominantly led by communities with the support of state protection agencies.
However, so far, spirituality has largely been used as a way to characterise harm simply for accountability purposes. Both the Commission for Historical Clarification of Guatemala and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada have documented extensively how violence sought to dismember the cultural and spiritual cohesion that kept peoples and communities together, which signalled – in the words of the Guatemala’s Commission – ‘the intention to annihilate physically and spiritually the group’ (para. 115). Most importantly for the purposes of this research, the Colombian Truth Commission has extensively discussed the impact of armed and systemic violence on Indigenous peoples documenting the multiple faces of the harm they suffered. Yet, because the survival of Indigenous peoples depends on it, States cannot simply act on the fait accompli; they must collaborate with communities to prevent these forms of harm aimed at disintegrating their cohesion as peoples.
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Piergiuseppe Parisi is a Lecturer at the York Law School and the Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR) at the University of York. He is a co-contributor to the Beyond Compliance Consortium’s country research unit focusing on Colombia. Pier was the Principal Investigator of the Ritualising Protection Project, a collaborative research and impact project co-developed with the Nasa indigenous territory of Huellas (Caloto, Colombia). Prior to that, Pier worked as a researcher for the Generating Respect Project, the Human Rights Defender Hub, and on ‘Shaping a Human Rights-Based Approach to COVID-19 in the City of York’, working co-productively with the City of York Council and civil society organisations in York. Piergiuseppe has consulted for or collaborated with civil society organisations including Amnesty International UK and War on Want, and he interned at the International Criminal Court and REDRESS. Piergiuseppe holds a PhD in International Studies from the School of International Studies at the University of Trento (Italy).