DescriptionThe thesis explores the relationship between international human rights law and the formation of public and private bureaucratic systems in Colombia. Through an ethnographic study of the methods, tools, and mechanisms involved in the implementation of public policy related to victim and land reparation, the dissertation accounts for the statatalization of human rights as well as how these gradually become a part of public social policy. Through the study of diverse institutional and non-institutional settings at different levels within Colombian state bureaucracy, the research demonstrates how civil servants, functionaries, experts and policy clients produce and reproduce specific notions of statehood. More specifically, the research reveals how these civil servants, functionaries, experts and policy clients produce and reproduce in their everyday practices, socio-spatial and epistemological hierarchies such as the “nation-territory” divide. Through a description of how the historical formation of Colombian institutions and systems of bureaucracy are fixed in specific time and spatial configurations (framed within the construction of local administrative and political notions), and how they are produced and reproduced by civil servants, experts and users of the policy, the study explains how global narratives related to humanitarian aid, philanthropy, and development remain trapped in the reproduction of local bureaucratic values, practices, and socio-spatial representations.