The due process with gender focus in Colombia

Abstract

The fundamental right to due judicial process has been one of the main legal achievements in the search of protection of individuals against the abuse of power and injustice. This big field of the law brings together a series of stages, procedures and a set of judicial guarantees that, after being warranted, allows us to reach a legal decision that can be considered as reliable and fair. However, the dynamics and modus operandi that surround gender violence, challenge the way in which, until recently, appropriate evidentiary material to show the violation of rights was understood, particularly in the private sphere because there are no witnesses. This article analyses how, under the development of women's human rights towards a life free of violence, a gender approach applied to due judicial process there is a combined substantive procedural, and methodological content. All this in accordance with international conventions such as CEDAW and the Belém do Pará Convention. Judicial officers are required to pay attention to how gender stereotypes affect women by making more difficult to access to justice; it is required that traditional tests are accompanied by new methods such as psychological and psychiatric profiles; and finally, it is also necessary to implement research methodologies that show the context that produces violence and power relations that generate situations of subordination between genders. In addition, it is stated that the States are responsible for investigating, punishing and compensating victims in accordance with the principle/right to due diligence. Finally, it is proposed to create theoretical links between feminist research methodologies and law, for which the Positionality method proposed by the American academic Katharine Bartlett is analysed.