Colombian Peace Research Articles

Declining Support for the 2016 Colombia Peace Accord: Colombian Attitudes Toward Peace and Transitional Justice

Declining Support for the 2016 Colombia Peace Accord: Colombian Attitudes Toward Peace and Transitional Justice

From Cantonments to Settlements: Lessons for Reintegration of Former Combatants from the Colombian Peace Process

ABSTRACT Temporary collective relocation of former combatants in cantonments plays a vital role in Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration (DDR) programmes. Existing research emphasizes the necessity of implementing limited-duration cantonments to mitigate potential security dilemmas. The 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP) provides a unique experience, deviating from conventional practices by maintaining cantonments over an extended period, with some evolving into permanent settlements. What are the effects of this strategy on community-based reintegration? Drawing upon original data from interviews, ethnographic observation, and surveys conducted in conflict-affected communities, this paper compares two cases: a cantonment successfully transformed into a permanent settlement and another initially promising cantonment that ultimately failed to achieve permanence. This study argues that long-term cantonments contribute to community-based reintegration benefiting former combatants and receiving communities by maintaining internal cohesion, supporting the local economy, and rebuilding the social fabric in conflict-affected territories. However, specific conditions, particularly land ownership and security, are crucial for such a development. Without these conditions, long-term cantonments face the risk of being closed or relocated, threatening peacebuilding outcomes. The displacement of ex-combatants to other territories hinders community access to the benefits offered by the collective reintegration process.

Inclusivity in Practice: Patchworks of Inclusion at Multiple Tracks in the Colombian Peace Process

ABSTRACT This article investigates the inclusion/multi-track nexus in the Colombian peace process. It theorizes inclusion in terms of design principles and process dynamics, analysing how they are enacted at track 1, track 3, and at the ‘intertrack’ level. Through semi-structured interviews with negotiators from elite talks, Colombia’s national dialogue of 2019, and grassroots dialogues the article shows how the inclusion/multi-track nexus plays out in practice, spelling out challenges of inclusion on different tracks. It shows how active participation and space for contestation is challenging and messy to implement, not least in contexts of power asymmetry, and yet visible in several contexts.

Where to negotiate peace: the internationalization of Colombian peace, 1980-2023

Where to negotiate peace: the internationalization of Colombian peace, 1980-2023

Territorial Peace and Baroque Ethos in Southwestern Colombia: The Intercultural University of the Peoples

Este artículo, resultado de investigación, presenta una lectura inédita sobre la configuración de la Universidad Intercultural de los Pueblos (UIP) en el Sur Occidente colombiano. En la introducción, se contextualiza el problema y la teoría de los cuatro ethos históricos del filósofo de origen ecuatoriano, Bolívar Echeverría. Luego, se aborda el concepto de paz territorial y la configuración de la Universidad Intercultural de los Pueblos (UIP) como expresiones del ethos barroco y se clarifica el método de la investigación. La tesis central es que dicha universidad es un modo singular de organización comunitaria para resistir en el territorio a las diversas formas de violencia ejercidas sobre ella y posibilidad abierta en la construcción de paz territorial. Se concluye que, tanto la Universidad Intercultural de los Pueblos (UIP) como la constitución de paz territorial en el sur occidente colombiano son la materialización del vínculo entre imaginación moral y geográfica, a partir de la educación-investigación en derechos humanos y la construcción de planes de vida comunitarios en la reconfiguración de los pueblos.

Emerging trends in peacebuilding: The case of Colombia

AbstractThe implementation of the 2016 Peace Agreement has produced one of the most comprehensive and exhaustive peacebuilding efforts to date. The ambitious peace agreement, centred around six core themes, has expanded the scope of peacebuilding into areas that traditionally have been largely ignored or overlooked by policymakers. While the implementation process is still maintaining an overall trajectory that can be considered as success, the same process is still poised with a range of engdogenous and exogenous challenges that may undermine both the pace and the quality of peacebuilding efforts. This article surveys the current trends in the implementation phase, highlighting the key dynamics that stand in the way of an effective and timely implementation of the Colombian peace plan. In addition to exploring the emerging challenges to the liberal peacebuilding approach, this article also highlights the significance of concurrent opportunities and liabilities that stem from developmental approaches to peacebuilding.

Ripe for better post-war governance? The impact of the 2016 peace agreement on the reestablishment of health services in Colombia

A peace agreement represents a chance for the state to renew its social contract with the conflict-affected population. Conflict may reoccur if their expectations of a peace dividend are disappointed. However, in the existing literature there is a lack of focus on post-war public services and the challenges to re-establishing effective state governance, especially in areas with significant rebel presence. Much of the literature still assumes that conflict zones are ripe for better governance and the post-war impact of rebel governance remains largely unanalysed. Drawing on original survey data, interviews and focus groups, this mixed-methods article analyses the impact of the 2016 Colombian peace agreement on health services in areas with high conflict intensity and sustained rebel presence. In the most conflict-affected areas, it finds an increase in demand for health services but no improvement in the perceived quality of this care. In fact, in municipalities hosting FARC reintegration camps, which were specially targeted for improved healthcare, we find a decline in both demand and perceived quality. Three key obstacles are identified: 1) favourable views of wartime healthcare services provided by the FARC; 2) difficulties establishing state presence locally; 3) high expectations and mistrust of government provisions. This demonstrates the lasting impact of wartime rebel governance, and the challenges it poses to post-war state legitimacy, and adds to our knowledge of the underlying mechanisms of uneven state capacity. It thereby makes an important and original contribution to our understanding of peacebuilding obstacles and to the growing literature on rebel governance.

COLOMBIA: ASSESSING THE ROLES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION IN CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND PEACEBUILDING

Colombia’s internal armed conflict, dating back to the 1960s, has garnered interna tional attention and become a priority for many donor countries. The resurgence of violence in the 1990s, combined with the influx of drug trafficking funds and the emergence of new illegal actors, resulted in fresh humanitarian crises and human rights violations. Concurrently, the internationalization of the armed conflict, spearheaded by the government of Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002) through the policy of diplomacy for peace, brought the shared responsibility approach to drug control onto the global stage. The European Union has played a significant role in Colombia, particularly in conflict resolution, peacebuilding, and supporting the country’s development process. In contrast to US cooperation, European engagement has been characterized by a less militaristic approach to addressing the ongoing armed conflict in Colombia. This approach is evident in intervention strategies more directly linked to civil society. These strategies encompass cooperation in peacebuilding and the promotion of human rights. This research aims to elucidate and analyze the strategies employed by the European Union in resolving the conflict and fostering peace in Colombia, while also as sessing their effectiveness. Keywords: European Union, Colombia, strategies, peacebuilding, conflict resolution.

Variations of Peace in Colombia

ABSTRACT Peace and conflict are not the same across territories and scales. Conceptualizing peace, as a process based on three core functions of society and related norms – provision of security, participation and conflict transformation – allows us to identify variations in peacebuilding needs and perceptions. Methodologically, the article first develops a conceptual framework and then tests it with a case study of Colombia – a subnationally diverse country with a long history of violence and peacebuilding. The entanglement of different scales shapes the diversity of peace and highlights the opportunities and challenges of peacebuilding and related norms, along with their diffusion and contestation.

Peacemaking through the lens of participation: Revisiting the 2016 Colombian peace accord

AbstractHow should we analyze democratic participation mechanisms created to end a civil war? This article examines participation in the design and ratification of Colombia's 2016 peace settlement. By analyzing theoretical participation approaches and reviewing official reports, proceedings, and formal rules engendered by the peacemaking, we consider the ways in which the stakeholders participated to formalize the agreement between the government and rebels in the Revolutionary Armed Forced of Colombia–People's Army. The case argues that inclusion does not necessarily mean control of civil society over the peacemaking process; the participation of the political society and insurgency groups is a precondition.

Effects of the Colombia Peace negotiation process on gross domestic product per capita

AbstractThis article attempts to determine whether the peace negotiation process initiated in Colombia that culminated with the Peace Treaty in 2016 had a positive economic effect, using the National Gross Domestic Product per capita as a measure. We apply a synthetic control method that is appropriate for a policy evaluation. Considering the anticipated and realized effects on economic variables, our results suggest that the Peace Treaty has positively influenced gross domestic product per capita. Furthermore, this positive effect has been maintained through 2021, the last available year of data. Data to 2021 show post‐pandemic Colombia is better off when compared with a hypothetical Colombia—or synthetic Colombia—that did not begin a peace negotiation process.

The face of the government: presence and responsibility in the Colombian peace process with the FARC‐EP

AbstractThe face of the government is the interface through which citizens come into contact with and perceive the government via representation and face‐to‐face encounters. This article focuses on Colombian government officials in charge of delivering ‘peace pedagogy’ to explain to society the peace negotiations with the FARC guerrillas, before and after a polarizing referendum which narrowly rejected the 2016 peace agreement that sought to end fifty years of war. It builds on their idiom of ‘giving face’ (dar la cara), denoting the work of representing the government to society in face‐to‐face encounters and assuming responsibility as the government, and explores its resonance with academic and popular discourses about the state having many ‘faces’. It brings this idiom, and theories of the face, into the anthropology of the state, calling for the study of governments as discrete entities within states, and examining the way that a government's overarching character or ‘face’ is interactively co‐produced in the public gaze through embodied acts of representation by officials with their audiences, and intertwined with people's macro‐political opinions. It offers a framework for analysing government‐society relations, giving insight into how all governments ‘face’ society, and highlights presence and responsibility as key dimensions of this relationship.

Images from Exile

This roundtable discussion brings together the teams of two online participatory photography projects with exiled victims of the Colombian conflict, Tejiendo Vidas [Weaving Lives] in Spain and Fotodiásporas [Diaspora Photos] in the USA. Both projects were linked, in distinct ways, to the Colombian state’s efforts to provide recognition and reparations to victims of the country’s armed conflict as part of wider transitional justice and peacebuilding processes underway since the signing of the historic Colombian peace accord in 2016. The participants in these projects were some of the estimated one million people who have left Colombia as a result of the armed conflict between 1982 and 2020. They used photography as a means to process and make sense of their experiences, to heal through building connection and dialogue and to be seen. Bringing together the multi-disciplinary teams made up of photographic facilitators, psychotherapists and transitional justice researchers who ran these two projects, this roundtable discusses the responsive methods, logistics and dynamics of virtual and hybrid projects that fused participatory and therapeutic photography approaches. Reflecting on the outcomes, similarities and differences between the two projects, the conversation explores, in a context where economic and material reparations are slow to emerge, the role that participatory photography projects have to play in enabling symbolic reparations for Colombians whose lives have been permanently changed by conflict.

Understanding mechanisms of knowledge co-production in peace research projects supported by international cooperation

ABSTRACT Although critical studies on peace and conflict studies have addressed the topic of knowledge production and peacebuilding, this is not a highly discussed issue in the literature. There is no unique or unambiguous conceptual framework to analyze this topic. This article shows conceptual elements that must be considered to understand the interaction between local and scientific knowledge in research projects on peace and peacebuilding; and reflects on what types of problems emerge when local and expert knowledge interact within the context of international cooperation projects. Based on the evidence collected during one workshop with Colombian researchers and the analysis of fifty research proposals funded by the German Colombian Peace Institute (CAPAZ) between 2017 and 2021, this article identifies topics, methodologies and products that suggest the existence of hybridization and co-production practices of knowledge when research on peacebuilding and conflict is designed and conceived.

Equity, diversity, and inclusion in the construction of journalistic and training agendas for peace in Colombia

Since their early stages, developing narratives has been characteristic of human beings, allowing them to create community and generate cohesion—one that has endured for thousands of years is “peace”. However, in some territories, excessive ambition, fear imposed by force, and power over laws have proliferated. In the case of Colombia, war as an industry empowers different sides that are either endorsed or rendered invisible in the narratives of traditional mass media. Media content has always favored war journalism and neglected two vital approaches: peace journalism (PP) and university journalism. This study’s relevance lies in its use of big data, automated lexicometry, and statistical discourse analysis to understand how university journalism built a peace journalism agenda, taking the narrative of the Peace Agreement in Colombia as a framework of observation, with a clear result in the importance of equity, diversity, and equality in a peaceful transition scenario in Colombia. The study reveals that university journalism has a diverse narrative approach, focusing on presenting the social problems and inequities, the lack of political capacities within communities, the need for a transitional approach toward peace, and the pursuit of truth. The study used mixed research techniques where students narrated their individual perspectives that informed a collective view by integrating the voices of those who suffer the conflict daily. Simultaneously, they showed how academia, from its training function, develops exercises that may compromise the integrity of the axiological values of communication and journalism. The main implication of our study suggests the need to strengthen pedagogical processes of peace in the curriculum and training that enable the next generation of journalists in the country to potentially shift their discourse toward peace journalism and divergent solutions, as opposed to those proposed by traditional media. In conclusion, including youth opinions that were supported by experts on the process introduced an element of community empowerment and recognition of victims within the context and social structure of the Colombian conflict.

Some restorative experiences within the framework of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia

Some restorative experiences within the framework of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia

Brief notes on the interactions between Indigenous justice and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia

Brief notes on the interactions between Indigenous justice and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia

Introducing the Mapping Attitudes, Perceptions and Support (MAPS) dataset on the Colombian peace process

This article introduces the Mapping Attitudes, Perceptions and Support (MAPS) dataset, which provides rich survey data from more than 12,000 respondents in Colombia. Our panel survey – carried out in two separate waves in 2019 and 2021 – is representative at the level of each ‘Program for Development with a Territorial Focus’ (PDET, for its acronym in Spanish), the most war-affected regions and those targeted for peace agreement implementation. We describe the sample and compare support for the peace agreement in MAPS to other recent surveys in Colombia, showing how MAPS reveals regional variation obscured in nationally representative surveys. Regression analyses illustrate how the panel data allow us to explore how and why people’s perceptions of the agreement shift over time. The MAPS data will enable scholars to gain insights into the microfoundations of peacebuilding over time and across space.

Attacking the grid: Lessons from a guerrilla conflict and efforts for peace in Colombia: 1990–2018

Colombia has suffered a decades long internal conflict with leftist guerrillas. Its power grid has been attacked, causing significant damage to Colombian industry and disruption to citizens. This article uses data from ISA and XM (operators of the Colombian power grid) and from Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular (CINEP), a non-profit organization tracking the internal conflict in Colombia), to compare patterns of tower attacks to the general conflict with two main leftist guerrilla groups, the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). Using time series analysis, trends of violence, tower attacks, and peace attempts from 1990 to 2018 are examined to see if structural breaks in violence correspond to critical junctures in negotiations. Attacks on the power grid are shown to be a popular guerrilla tactic to pressure the government.

Possibilities and limits of procedural and distributive justice in complex conflicts: a study of the Colombian peace process

PurposeExtensive empirical evidence suggests that procedural justice (PJ) and distributive justice (DJ) are key success factors for achieving durable peace negotiations. This paper aims to investigate how complexity affects these factors and the outcomes in negotiations.Design/methodology/approachThe qualitative study is based on an examination of the peace negotiations that led to the 2016 agreement between the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo and the Colombian Government. Based on document analysis, the authors examined in detail how and where in the process the principles of PJ and DJ were applied. The authors then examined the implementation progress after 2016 and placed the peace process in the overall context of the Colombian conflict.FindingsThe authors found that the principles of PJ and DJ were present in both the negotiation process and the agreement. The negotiations were successful and satisfactory solutions could be found for all issues. The complexity of the conflict is reflected in the limited coverage of the peace negotiations. Not all groups, interests and subconflicts could be included in the negotiations. This limits their contribution to a durable peace in Colombia. Conflicts that remain unresolved also have a negative effect on the implementation of the agreement.Practical implicationsFor conflict management, this implies that the negotiations should not be viewed as “one-and-done” but rather as a progressive, ongoing process. The agreement is only the nucleus for achieving total peace. It must be actively advanced and defended.Originality/valueThis study offers new qualitative insights into how PJ and DJ function in negotiations. It also establishes a systematic connection between PJ and DJ and complexity, introduces the notion of coverage and, thereby, opens a new perspective on the management of conflict complexity.