Over the last 25 years, there have been numerous efforts to find a negotiated solution to the Colombian conflict that has taken a horrific toll on the civilian population. Can lessons be learned from Colombia’s long history of peacemaking experience in order to formulate a viable model for a future peace? Compiled for Accord, this paper presents an overview of various peace initiatives and concludes that a peaceful resolution is possible if this process is negotiated, integral and participatory.
Half a century of accumulated experience in searching for alternatives to the violence has not yet enabled the country to find the way out of this labyrinth of violence and social fragmentation. The reality of the conflict invites a complex approach, taking into account the multiplicity of factors that underlie Colombia’s political violence and which must always be implicit in the alternatives and strategies for action.
The political crisis in Colombia was exacerbated by the appearance of guerrilla groups in the 1960s and 70s and violence was further escalated by the penetration of drug trafficking revenue for guerrillas and paramilitary groups.
- The dynamics of current violence in Colombia combine structural factors that create significant variations in the magnitude and characteristics of the conflict.
- Just as the violence has temporal and geographic roots, civic peace initiatives have developed in reaction to the dynamics of the violent conflict.
- There have been successes, tensions and dilemmas, both within the peace movement as well as in the relationship between the movement and society.
- In the local sphere, there are various grassroots peace building initiatives: some emphasising the deepening of democracy at the local level, some focusing on civil resistance to the armed conflict and others that resist structural violence.
- At the regional level, projects have been established for regional development and peaceful coexistence that seek to construct an alternative in the midst of the conflict.
- At the national level, it is hoped that the massive peace demonstrations of recent years can stimulate a genuinely political project able to transform the roots of the protracted conflict.
Civil society efforts are not only the melting pot in which the country’s opportunities for peace are being moulded, but are also the means to guarantee a sustainable peace. In searching for peace, it is crucial to learn from the country’s own long history of peacemaking experience:
- It is necessary to broaden participation in the negotiation process that will allow not just the parties but also those accompanying the process to contribute to the experience.
- It is necessary to formulate a more decentralised public peace policy that promotes real spaces for civil society participation in the processes of political dialogue as well as in the wider peace building process.
- The appropriate participation of the international community, particularly the United States, has been a contentious issue in the past which would require consideration and agreement in future negotiations.
- There needs to be greater clarity regarding the fundamental questions of what is and what is not negotiable, namely how far Colombians are prepared to go to make peaceful coexistence possible.
- A balance will need to be struck between mechanisms for forgiveness and forgetting and the need to safeguard the victims’ rights to truth, justice and reparation.
