Keywords

1 Introduction

In this chapter I analyse and focus on the pathways and obstacles in the search for peace in Colombia, in particular the dynamics and processes by which Colombia is putting an end to political violence as a mechanism for consolidating the nation-state and building peace. I also analyse the main dynamics of the political peace project as a means to complete the consolidation of the Colombian nation-state by taking political violence out of the equation.

The chapter has two sections. In the first section, I briefly analyse the cycles of political violence in Colombia, the frameworks that legitimise it, and the main obstacles and ongoing resistance that make it difficult to put an end to political violence. In the second section, I analyse the main social and institutional dynamics Colombian actors have consolidated to establish peace as a national project since the 1980s. These processes have sought to break and overcome the cycles of violence through which the Colombian nation-state has been configured. This section and the chapter conclude with a brief reflection on and analysis of the role of the international community, and in particular the EU, in supporting Colombia's quest for peace.

The methodology for preparing this text was as follows. I conducted 15 in-depth interviews (8 men and 7 women) in the second semester of 2021. All the people interviewed have a profound knowledge of Colombia from the point of view of an anthropologist, a political scientist, communicators, an economist, an activist in social movements, and other specialities. Most of the interviewees, in turn, have done research on Colombia and have been involved in policy advocacy on peace, human rights, inclusive development, peace processes and other related areas. These interviews revolved around the question: What are the main drivers of and obstacles to peace in Colombia? The interviews were conducted as a contribution to a body of research that has examined obstacles to peace in countries that have engaged in peace processes over the past 30 years (Pogodda et al., 2022). The chapter also draws on a consultation and two focus groups conducted in late November 2021 with 34 participants (20 women and 14 men). Half of these people live in regions of Colombia particularly affected by armed conflict and violence and have been involved in peace processes in the country at the local, national, or international levels. The profiles and backgrounds of participants were diverse (peacebuilders, academics, specialists, entrepreneurs, frontline human rights defenders, members of the security forces, social leaders, activists, mediators, ex-combatants, as well as representatives of popular sectors, peasant or black communities, indigenous peoples, women, youth, etc.).

The consultation and focus groups explored the most relevant peacebuilding practices in Colombia and the main challenges and difficulties with these peace processes. This project was funded by the Berghof Foundation with the support of the Principles for Peace Initiative (Paladini-Adell et al., 2022). The text also draws on analysis, readings and reflections carried out after 20 years of work in Colombia accompanying various peace initiatives and processes.

2 Political Violence and Obstacles to Peace in Colombia

Political violence has characterised the process of building the Colombian nation-state for several centuries, as in many other countries. In this section, I briefly analyse the different cycles of political violence in Colombia, including the current internal armed conflict, the different frameworks for its legitimisation, and how these frameworks are losing strength because of the degradation of violence and its direct and massive impact on the civilian population. The section ends with an analysis of the main contemporary actors and challenges that hinder peace as a political project.

2.1 Cycles of Political Violence and Internal Armed Conflict

From the Spanish conquest to the present day, Colombia has suffered several cycles of political violence. The arrival of the Spanish and the consolidation of the colony (1492–1800) was a savage imposition by blood and fire by the conquistadors and the Spanish authorities against the various local indigenous peoples. Independence against Spanish rule (1810) was won by force in the early nineteenth century, led by Creole elites of Castilian origin who rejected the dominance of the Spanish Crown (Gutiérrez Melo, 2020; Sanín, 2020). The Republican period (1800–1960) was also very convulsive and plagued by political violence between different sectors of society. Two political parties—the Conservative and the Liberal Party—acquired political hegemony in the country. The former represented the forces of order, the established power, and had the majority support of the security forces and the church hierarchy. The second represented the forces of change, with strong support from the peasant communities, the expanding labour movement, and several campesino-based, liberal-affiliated guerrilla groups. The two parties dominated throughout the 19th and much of the twentieth century and alternated in power—often after outbreaks of pre- and post- election violence - at both national and local levels.

The most dramatic example of political violence occurred in the decade known as La Violencia (1948–1958). The struggle between the two political parties and tensions in highly polarised electoral processes led to a civil war that ravaged the country, especially in its rural areas, and left hundreds of thousands of victims. In addition to seeking to monopolise the levers of institutional power, political parties fought for control of land and the peasant population. This civil war ended in the late 1950s when the two political parties signed a national agreement to share and alternate power, creating the National Front (1958–1974). From the president downwards, the two political parties shared all the spaces of power in the State’s three branches of power, as well as in state bureaucracy institutions (Sánchez, 1987).

The National Front ended La Violencia but created the conditions that triggered the internal armed conflict, of which the country is experiencing its last throes (1975 onwards). Exclusionary power-sharing closed the door to addressing social, economic, and political problems in a changing world, as well as the opportunity for alternative political forces to come to power by democratic means. Some peasant leaders continued their armed revolt against authority by rejecting the logics of the two hegemonic political parties. Many of them fell under the influence of the Communist Party and the various left-wing guerrilla groups emerged. These challenged the hegemony of the traditional political parties that controlled the state. The guerrillas aspired to seize power to impose a revolutionary social and political order in the image of other successful emancipatory movements such as those in Cuba and Nicaragua, inspired by socialism and communism. This new cycle of violence was also framed by the bipolar logics of the Cold War between the US and the USSR, and later by the process of globalisation and the assumption of liberal hegemony after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The guerrillas, however, failed in their attempt to subvert power. State repression of rebel expression was severe, setting up a new cycle of violence. Political elites were able to reach agreements among themselves but did not allow any hint of rebellion outside their control. The state firmly opposed the guerrillas through arms, counter-insurgency measures and human rights violations. The lack of possibilities for progress and access to land in the countryside, together with the limited democratic political means of access to power, led these guerrillas to sustain their rebellion and strengthen their armed political-military response, aspiring to seize power to carry out the revolution from the presidential palace.

2.2 Frameworks for the Legitimisation of Political Violence

The use and justification of political violence by different actors and its function in defining or subverting who has and exercises power and authority in a political-territorial entity has been one of the major forces behind the consolidation of nation-states worldwide. The invocation of the right to rebellion has propelled these forms of subversion and revolt. This is also the case in Colombia. Many different actors took up arms and legitimated their violent uprising invoking the right to revolt against unjust authorities and the right to create new political entities based on the free will of citizens. For these actors—drawing on a long history of successful revolutions against despotic political regimes as well as on Enlightenment ideals—there is a right to take up arms against rulers who are or have become illegitimate or who are sustained through regimes of oppression, tyranny and structural violence, as has occurred in many historical revolutions such as the French, American, Russian, and Iranian revolutions (Aquinas, 1952; Locke, 1988; Rousseau, 1952).

Throughout the history of Colombia, various ways have been employed to justify and legitimise political violence. On the one hand, actors in positions of power have justified political violence as a way of controlling, centralising, and maintaining political power—protecting the status quo—and the privileges associated with it. This was the case of the Spanish crown vis-à-vis indigenous communities and Creole elites (De Roux, 1999). This has also been the case with the traditional political parties during the Republican period and the various state elites and institutions that have sought to control the spaces of power in the Colombian state in recent decades. On the other hand, other social and political sectors have justified the use of political violence to subvert political power, seeking a change of elites and demanding social justice to promote other models of social, political, and economic organisation. This was done, for example, by the local Creole elites descended from the Spanish during the independence process, and by the various guerrilla groups when justifying their armed uprisings over the last 60 years (Deas & Daza, 1995; Deas, 1999; Gómez Buendía, 2022; González, 2014; Melo, 2020, 2021).

Unlike in other countries where the hegemony of political authority has shifted towards one or other of the political sectors and elites in parallel with a process of democratisation, in Colombia this process is still incomplete. The state does not have the capacity to control the entire Colombian territory to exercise authority through the exercise of sovereignty, the provision of security and justice as well as other public goods and services such as health and education. Nor have the subversive political actions been able to achieve their political and social objectives. Amid this dispute is horror. As Gramsci (1975) put it: the old world is dying; the new is slow to appear. And in this chiaroscuro monsters emerge.

2.3 Degradation of Political Violence

From the 1980s, the humanitarian impact of violence in Colombia began to grow and grow, especially affecting the civilian population in urban and, above all, rural areas. From the terror of bipartisan violence, Colombia moved on to the terror of the internal armed conflict. Political violence from the state and the guerrillas caused thousands of victims and human rights violations. This violence was further exacerbated by the emergence of counter-revolutionary forces, such as paramilitarism, and actors focused on profiting from illegal economies such as drug trafficking. The first of these, the paramilitaries—which emerged mainly from local landowning elites—increased the number of victims and deepened the armed conflict and violence under a discourse that emphasised the right to legitimate self-defence in the face of guerrilla attacks. Their war strategy consisted of sowing terror in communities they considered friendly to the guerrillas and, in many cases, displacing them to seize land or other economic resources. Paramilitarism, in turn, co-opted the state in various ways, brutalising its actions and increasing the violation of the human rights that the state was supposed to promote, protect, and guarantee.

The scale of the humanitarian tragedy was further aggravated by the second of these forces: the growth of drug cartels and the proliferation of economies based on the extraction of legal and illegal rents. Various cartels and gangs focused on the drug trade began to dispute territorial control over the state, the guerrilla groups, and other armed actors. These actors also targeted the civilian population and all actors became corrupted because of the immense profits generated by these illegal businesses.

With the growth of paramilitarism and drug trafficking, the armed conflict in Colombia became much more complex. Different players used violence to achieve their political and criminal objectives. Unfortunately, all have indiscriminately attacked the civilian population using a wide repertoire of violence: displacement, kidnapping, assassinations, massacres, extrajudicial killings, and sexual violence, among many other expressions. The violence went from being a political strategy and a means to try to achieve or maintain power—a just war for some—to being a part of a degraded war and a way to control legal economic resources (through corruption and state capture) or illegal ones (through drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping, territorial control, or the usurpation of natural resources such as gold, among others) (UNDP, 2013: 81–95). The figures of victims due to the armed conflict in this latest cycle of violence are devastating. Since official records have been kept, more than 9.3 million victims have been counted, of which more than 8 million were victims of forced displacement, 200,000 victims of forced disappearance, and approximately 1 million victims of homicide. The peak of these numbers occurred between 2001 and 2005 (Government of Colombia, 2022). War, which was fought at various moments in history in the name of and for the benefit of society, became a degraded exercise of political and criminal violence by various power actors—elites and counter-elites—against society itself.

2.4 Main Actors Hindering Peace

Following this historical reading, we now briefly analyse the main actors and challenges that hinder peace today. The analysis arises fundamentally from the systematisation of the interviews carried out as a basis for this article. In response to the question of which actors are hindering peace in Colombia, all those interviewed expressed, in one way or another, that the main obstructing actor is an important and powerful, but minority, sector of the political, economic, judicial, media, military, ecclesiastical, guerrilla and drug trafficking elites that defend a series of interests, privileges and/or positions of power that they see as endangered in the context of the process of modernisation and democratisation that Colombia has undergone in recent decades.

These elites are hostile to and block change and tend to criminalise, stigmatise, or subjugate all those actors who seek to promote change. These elites see social change, democratisation, and modernisation in Colombia as a threat. They are opposed to fundamental reforms focusing on the common good and improving democracy, because these affect their interests and the control they have over certain spaces of power in the state, over local power, territorial control, or the control of legal or illegal economic rents. According to most of the interviewees, they do not form a uniform bloc, nor do they have a common agenda, nor do they have a behind-the-scenes leader pulling all the strings. Rather, they are heterogeneous and complex, forming a web of diffuse relationships and networks. These actors form a conglomerate of interests, with various power nodes spread across the country in which the relationships between the nodes are not always direct or even known, and they are often in dispute with other power nodes. For example, state elites and insurgent elites engage in a long-running violent struggle that divides, polarises and simplifies social and political change. Despite the difference between these very different actors, they all present their way of thinking and doing things as the only possible way to achieve the change they desire and put forward maximalist logics in which the success of one actor depends on the elimination of the other.

Some of these privileged actors combine legal and even democratic means with acceptance or acquiescence in the use, justification, or legitimisation of various forms of direct, structural, and cultural violence. They also control strategic positions in state institutions or co-opt the state in various ways to maintain the social order that has historically benefited them with the privileges that derive from it. These elites represent a conservative political project that consolidates the social order that guarantees their privileges and predominance, implementing various mechanisms and instruments to control the sources of power in the state and in society.

Direct violence is often exercised through interposed actors and does not respond to a clear chain of command. Violence arises in the context of the legitimisation of violence as a mechanism of social control and the construction of stigmatised narratives regarding the outside enemy with which the other has been characterised. These elites have been able to adapt to the developments of history, to the new political, economic, and social challenges that have arisen over the years, in parallel with the process of state-building and the consolidation of the Colombian republic. Through their actions, their way of reproducing themselves, of controlling social, political, and economic narratives and counter-narratives at the local and national levels, they have pulled the strings of power, of the state and/or of certain social sectors, for their own benefit. These elites are found in many spheres of power: political, military, economic, legislative, judicial, and even ecclesiastical and intellectual elites. In the territories, these elites control the sources of local political, economic, and social power, through long-established family or guild networks, which merge with more traditional sources of power, such as the accumulation of land ownership and wealth. Trapped in their privileges, they use violence or justify its use. In each region these forms of domination take different forms, given the various possible forms of co-optation of the state and spaces of power and the survival of differentiated interests and privileges.

In recent years, these elites have mainly situated themselves within traditional political parties, including the splintering of these parties into personality-based versions. Some of these elites have even managed to co-opt spaces of power and political representation in alternative spaces that originally arose as an opposition and alternative to traditional political parties and that attempted to regenerate and renew politics (with greater or lesser success). Through their control of spaces of state power, they have an over-representation in the control of the state, despite Colombia's democratic advances.

Regardless of what name is given to these political forces, and regardless of the ideological position they claim for themselves (left, centre or right), something that they have in common is that they reproduce personality-based, caudillista, polarising and unanimous logics in which the leader becomes the guide to follow, capable of solving all the country's problems, since “the country fits in his head”, as one of the interviewees stated.

Another part of these elites has rebelled against the state to subvert it and attain power to create a revolution and achieve, in their words, social justice. This discourse and way of acting may have made sense at the time, but after more than 60 years of armed conflict and its increasing degradation and impact on the population, its political meaning has become perverted and a burden for achieving change, for developing, defending, and protecting the common good and advancing the democratisation of the country. In addition, the violence itself and the dynamics of counter-violence (whether paramilitary, counter-insurgent or rebel) have generated a devastating cycle that renews itself, destroying the lives of the people whom the state is supposed to protect or in whose name the revolution is carried out. As the Chair of the Truth Commission, Francisco de Roux, stated, the war damaged everything it touched; it served no purpose (El País, 2021).

In addition, intertwined with these local, national, and insurgent elites, other elites have emerged around the control of illegal economies, with drug trafficking being the most prominent phenomenon. The defence and protection of privileges, interests, and positions of power, together with the immense incentives generated by illegal economies, has further degraded violence, increased levels of corruption, penetration, and co-optation of the Colombian state. This factor adds complexity and is an additional factor hindering the search for peace.

2.5 Main Challenges Hindering Peace

According to the group of interviewees, there are three main challenges hindering the search for peace: the state configuration and the presence of illegal social orders, the usufruct of power by minority political elites, and obscene inequality.

  1. a.

    State configuration and illegal social orders. According to the participants, to understand the obstacles to peace, it is necessary to understand the configuration of the Colombian state and the role that violence has played in this process. The Colombian state still does not have full control over its territory; or, as is often said, Colombia has more territory than state (Castro, 2017). The state is strong along the three mountain ranges that cross the country. The main cities and most of the population are concentrated at the foot or in the valleys of these mountain ranges. In this territory, the state is consolidated, exercises authority, is recognised and largely regulates social life. In the remaining two-thirds of the country, the state's authority is much weaker. Vast regions are no man's land, disputed territory. Here, different actors try to establish their power in dispute with other actors. The most successful over the last 50 years have been guerrillas, paramilitaries, drug traffickers, illegal miners, and criminal gangs. They all seek to replace the state, imposing their “authority” and the “order” that suits them. In return, they become providers that “protect” the population, “administer justice” or provide similar goods and services. To do so, they “collect taxes”, often through extortion or by capturing significant illicit rents (Castro, 2017). All of this, of course, is done under the power of their coercion and the materialisation of violence against that part of the population that does not submit.

As one of the people interviewed expressed, violence has been an organising and energising axis of the dominant politics and economy in Colombia. The most specific current expression of this reality is the capacity of illegal armed actors and local elites to create social orders that depend on their interests, creating a shadow governance that overlaps with the mechanisms of governance and governability that the state seeks to impose within the framework of its normative mandate (Ferreira & Richmond, 2021; Paladini-Adell & Idler, 2014).

In these disputed territories, armed actors, often in alliance with local elites, can subject the population to their wishes and interests. The state is unable to order the territory democratically through the rule of law, and the rule of law is ordered through the coercive authority exercised by armed actors combined with their agility to attend to and respond to the immediate needs of the population. These groups subjugate the population through coercion, but also seek the population's cooperation in recognising their authority through mechanisms of control and social order and the expeditious provision of goods, services, and favours. In addition, several of these local elites and armed actors maintain relationships of convenience with the various actors in the economic value chain to produce, transport, market and launder the resources obtained from illegal economies. For these actors, blocking peace is strategic because violence, disorder and the weakness of the state are functional to their interests and their enrichment and control of spheres of power.

  1. b.

    Usufruct of power by political elites. The asymmetric development of the state throughout history has generated conditions for local and national political elites to consolidate and usufruct power, substituting or rendering the state irrelevant or co-opting it for their interests. Some of the elements described by interviewees to speak of this co-optation are the following.

The elites have historically led the traditional political parties that shaped democracy in Colombia: the Liberal and Conservative parties. These parties have been hegemonic for many years, preventing the consolidation of other political forces and sensibilities. With the 1991 Constitution and the 2016 Peace Agreement, democratic guarantees for alternative parties were expanded. This has led to a multiplication in the number of political parties. However, these parties have largely reproduced the elitist, personality-based, non-inclusive and clientelist practices of traditional politics. The new political forces that emerged from previous peace processes have either been practically exterminated (as has been the case with the Unión Patriótica) or have reproduced the traditional practices of concentration of power in the hands of a few. Only a few political leaders have been able to break the traditional political inertia, but they have not been able to escape from a deeply individual politics.

These elites have co-opted positions in the state, in the executive, the legislature, the judiciary, the high courts, governmental bodies and the entire technocracy that accompanies these powers. The co-optation of the state has also been reproduced in the state at the local level. The processes of co-optation and reproduction of political elites have been closed and highly exclusive. The main positions of power are occupied by those with the same profile of social class. Since the 1991 Constitution, diversity in state institutions has widened and women have increasingly occupied positions of responsibility, but these are still highly closed and exclusive spaces.

The clientelist way of doing politics and electoral politics in Colombia and of achieving political representation in the spaces of popular representation (including Congress and municipal and departmental councils) is one of the main obstacles to peace. Clientelism, as La Silla Vacía affirms, is how power is attained and maintained; a mechanism that produces and reproduces power. This mechanism feeds on itself and serves as a containment for abrupt changes or fundamental transformations. Through clientelist practices, political parties and their candidates gain access to institutional and representative power at all levels. The constant exchange of favours between voters, politicians, elected representatives, elected authorities and other state authorities generates a low-quality political dynamic, in which ideologies, debate and public political deliberation are not the main drivers of social change and progress. Any political decision is the fruit of multiple transactions, and resources, motivations, and the vigour to achieve the desired transformations are diluted along the way (La Silla Vacía, 2018).

National and local elites are particularly adept at exploiting the irregular functioning of the political-electoral sphere to their own advantage and to defend their interests. For example, following the recent Peace Agreement between the government and the FARC, a far-reaching reform agenda was agreed. Following its signing in 2016, significant progress has been made on several important issues, such as the laying down of arms of the guerrillas and their conversion into a democratic political party; and the social and political reincorporation of ex-combatants, despite the many challenges that remain. However, where there have been more difficulties is in making progress on fundamental issues related to the root causes of the armed conflict. Structural issues such as access to land for small farmers and rural planning have been systematically blocked by various political sectors. Obstacles to peace have also emerged on a broad set of measures included in the Agreement to improve the quality, guarantees and inclusiveness of exercising the democratic process. During President Duque’s time in office (2018–2022) some elites have also politically and legislatively obstructed the design, implementation and functioning of transitional justice mechanisms that seek to hold accountable those who committed serious crimes (whether military, guerrilla groups, or third-party actors), promote truth, and contribute to reparations for victims. Nor have they allowed the participation of third parties in transitional justice mechanisms: actors who did not directly commit the violence, but who were the promoters and intellectual authors of it. In parliamentary action, there has been a legislative blockage against moving the Peace Agreement forward, especially on those issues that most affect the interests and privileges of the political elites that have controlled the country and do not want to lose their power and privileged positions.

Another example can be seen at the local level. Territorial elites have obstructed the process of restitution of land taken during the armed conflict. During the armed conflict, several rural and national elites benefited from the processes of land concentration, forced displacement of peasants, and dispossession. These obstacles in the process have had the complicity of some state representatives such as judges, notaries, and other actors who, instead of protecting, guaranteeing, and restoring rights, have re-victimised the victims of violence. The most paradigmatic example is that Colombia still does not have a rural cadastre, and land ownership and use rights are not resolved through a transparent mechanism within the framework of the rule of law. There is no democratic land management and there is strong pressure from privileged sectors to hinder any progress in this area.

  1. c.

    Obscene inequality and inequity. Another challenge hindering peace is inequality and the obscene misallocation of available resources. This tension is seen mainly in the gap between urban and peripheral rural areas. Colombia is an extremely unequal country, with one of the most inequitable Gini indicators in the world. Despite advances in poverty reduction measures, inequality remains high, particularly affecting rural populations in the peripheral areas most affected by violence. Being poor in Colombia is a life sentence, as the mechanisms for social promotion and human capital development are very weak. This inequality is also expressed in urban areas, which are highly segregated between rich and poor neighbourhoods. The COVID 19 pandemic has exacerbated these tensions and further limited the possibilities for progress for the lower and middle classes. The distribution of wealth is limited, and many populations, as one interviewee put it, do not feel that the pie they are eating is the size it should be.

3 The Search for Peace and an End to Political Violence

The degradation of war and its humanitarian impact on the population shows the limits of political violence to achieve virtuous ends, whether these be the defence of an institutional order, or subverting it and seeking social justice. Faced with this limitation, and as against those who have prioritised the military victory of one over the other, Colombian citizens have promoted a third way since 1980: the search for peace. Peace has become a national goal, although there are still strong tensions over how to achieve and consolidate it. The push for peace has been intersected by a series of additional demands related to human rights, inclusion, women's rights, democratic openness and the socio-economic integration of Colombia's most impoverished populations and territories.

Below, I briefly describe the main expressions and outcomes of this process of mobilisation and institutional development for peace, as well as the main actors driving it. This categorisation emerges from the analysis of all the interviews conducted in preparation for this chapter. There are ten particularly noteworthy expressions: (1) Civilian resistance to violence. (2) The development of a humanitarian imperative in Colombia. (3) Social mobilisation for peace and human rights. (4) The strategic use of law. (5) Formal peace processes. (6) The submission to transitional justice of various armed actors. (7) Institutional, normative, and constitutional changes. (8) The development of alliances and platforms for peace and development. (9) Inclusive peace agendas and proposals. (10) International accompaniment. Each of these expressions is analysed below.

3.1 Civilian Resistance to Violence

One of the main sources of change promoting peace in Colombia has been civil resistance to the growing violence and the realization that violence has not achieved the objectives invoked by those who promote and justify it, and that it has become degraded and indiscriminate. Faced with the imposition of violence by legal and illegal armed actors, many communities in Colombia have sought to protect themselves by their own means. Resistance exercises have deep roots in Colombia. From the indigenous communities that resisted the control of other more powerful indigenous peoples before the Spanish conquest, to the hundreds of locally-based and civilian experiences throughout the country that in the last 50 years have promoted alternatives in order to build peace in rejection of violence. Esperanza Hernández (2004) and Virginia Bouvier (2006) describe these civil resistance actions as local peacebuilding initiatives, autonomy from armed actors and self-determination. They arise from the autonomy of the communities, which underline their desire to maintain their status as a civilian population outside the armed conflict and not to be part of the violence. Communities activate their agency to resist, protect their lives, influence armed actors to reduce violence and create spaces of autonomy from the logics imposed by coercion (Kaplan, 2017; Lederach, 2005; Masullo et al., 2017). In Colombia there are hundreds of experiences of this type led by indigenous peoples, Afro-Colombians, peasants and others, and these experiences constitute one of the main seeds of the search for peace in Colombia (Bouvier, 2009).

3.2 Developing a Humanitarian Imperative in Colombia

Protection and humanitarian assistance frameworks have also been developed in Colombia because of the increasing degradation of the armed conflict and its impact on the non-combatant population. This effort arose from solidarity organisations such as the Pastoral Social and national and international humanitarian civil society organisations that accompanied communities at risk or victimised by armed actors. This civilian impulse has evolved and influenced the state in the direction of assuming its responsibility as the main guarantor of rights. Hence, in the last 30 years, the Colombian state has consolidated institutional and regulatory frameworks for humanitarian action, protection, and attention to victims, with strong support from international humanitarian organisations and the United Nations. These protection frameworks have accompanied communities that are victims or at risk in their strategies of resistance to violence, and have supported prevention of displacement, emergency humanitarian assistance (once violence has affected communities) and early recovery and durable development-oriented solutions after the humanitarian impact. Civilian resilience efforts and the development of humanitarian frameworks demonstrate that communities have the capacity and mechanisms to resist war and violence and recover from its most dramatic consequences. During the darkest of the violence, communities generated threads and seeds of hope amid tragedy.

3.3 Sustained Social Mobilisation for Peace and Human Rights

The growing and sustained social mobilisation for peace and human rights has been one of the most important reasons that have pushed the armed actors and the state to explore ways of political negotiation to overcome political violence and the armed conflict. The impact of these two sources of social mobilisation has been very important in consolidating the possibility of peace as a national project in Colombia.

From the late 1980s to date, Colombia has had one of the strongest social mobilisations for peace in the world (García-Durán, 2006). The mobilisation has been driven by a wide range of civil society actors, at national and local levels, through a great diversity of initiatives, with the participation of multiple sectors and social organisations. This infrastructure has had the capacity to convene and articulate social, political, and cultural networks and platforms including diverse social sectors, public bodies, churches, political parties, businessmen, ex-combatants, and international cooperation at different territorial levels (Paladini-Adell, 2012; Pfeiffer, 2014). From 1978 to date, social mobilisation for peace has grown steadily and has accumulated a wide and varied repertoire of action, which represents an important experience in peacebuilding work (Sarmiento, 2016). This accumulated experience, which is summarised in strategies of education, political participation, organisation and articulation, social protest, and non-violent civil resistance, has been key to demanding peace as the main national goal, pressuring the national government and armed actors to opt for political and dialogue-based solutions to the armed conflict and to consider the rights of victims (CINEP, 2016).

Colombia has also developed a strong social mobilisation for human rights. Various social sectors, including victims' organisations, have demanded that the state fulfil its functions of protecting, promoting, and guaranteeing human rights, as well as providing effective justice mechanisms to investigate, prosecute and punish human rights violations.

Peace and human rights mobilisation did not always coordinate their actions and there were tensions between their demands. However, in the last ten years their agendas have converged in an understanding of peace and human rights as two sides of the same coin. This convergence reached its peak in the peace process between the government and the FARC guerrillas between 2012 and 2016. The Agreement establishes a complementary relationship between peace and human rights. Therefore, the signing of the Agreement contributes to peace by putting an end to the armed conflict and its implementation contributes to strengthening the synergy between the protection, guarantee and promotion of human rights and peacebuilding and its sustainability (Paladini-Adell & Naranjo, 2017). Furthermore, the Agreement also defines a victim-centred approach for all its provisions. Human rights defenders' organisations, social leaders, victims and survivors, ethnic communities and peasants are at the centre of the Agreement's narrative. The agreement states that victims´ participation in the peacebuilding process is essential to advance accountability for violations, abuses and crimes against humanity and war crimes. In addition to reducing impunity and generating guarantees of peace, non-repetition, coexistence, and reconciliation, addressing the root causes of the conflict and protecting, promoting, and guaranteeing the rights of victims and social leaders is essential to sustaining peace. These advances would not have been possible without the constant, repeated, growing and sustained mobilisation of social movements for peace and human rights in Colombia.

3.4 The Strategic Use of Law and Strategic Litigation

One of the preferred instruments of the actors leading social mobilisation for peace and particularly for human rights has been litigation, or the strategic use of law. Civil society has used the normative and legal framework, as well as instruments of legal advocacy (for example, tutela actions in order to protect and safeguard established rights, or constitutional challenges to laws and norms) to demand that the state guarantee, protect and promote human rights. The use of these legal tools has allowed civil society to dialogue with state institutions in a more horizontal relationship, balancing the power of the various parties, and pushing the state to fulfil its responsibilities as a guarantor of the rule of law and an actor responsible for promoting and guaranteeing peace as a constitutional principle.

3.5 Consolidated Experience and Practice in Peace Processes

Colombia has also achieved multiple peace negotiation processes between the state and various armed actors. This is also part of Colombia´s history (Velandia, 2021). The recent peace processes between the government and the FARC and ELN guerrillas are not isolated initiatives. All Colombian presidents, apart from Iván Duque Márquez (2018–2022), have entered into, with greater or lesser intensity and political conviction, a dialogue with the armed actors (Pizarro, 2017; Villarraga Sarmiento, 2015). Since the 1990s, the parties have signed more than 10 peace agreements in Colombia that have put an end to the armed confrontation between the state and various illegal groups.

We can identify at least three generations of peace processes. In the 1990s, firstly, the state signed partial peace agreements with various guerrilla groups (M-19, Quintín Lame, EPR, EPL, among others). These processes paved the way for these guerrillas to participate in the process of democratic expansion generated by political forces and society in the constituent process that culminated in the 1991 Constitution. Secondly, at the beginning of the current century, the government explored more comprehensive peace processes, first with the FARC (the Caguán process between 1998 and 2002, which failed) and later with paramilitarism, which led to the incomplete demobilisation of this counter-insurgent phenomenon (2004–2008). In these peace processes, the state accepted slightly broader negotiation agendas, including exploring substantive issues with the guerrillas and mechanisms of accountability and victims' rights with paramilitarism (Justice and Peace Law). Third, between 2012 and the present, the state and the last two guerrilla groups, FARC and ELN, have advanced in peace processes that seek to put an end to political violence and armed conflict, address the root causes and drivers of these conflicts, guarantee victims' rights, and open spaces for broad civil society participation in the negotiation and subsequent implementation of the agreements. With the FARC, the government signed the Final Agreement after five years of negotiation (2012–2016) (Government of Colombia, 2016; Herzbolheimer, 2016). With the ELN, the government is currently resuming, under the leadership of President Petro (2022–2026), a peace process that began during the government of President Santos (2010–2018). This long history of peace-making is undoubtedly one of the main drivers of Colombia's quest for peace.

3.6 The Submission of Various Armed Actors to Transitional Justice

Over the last 20 years, Colombia has been building one of the most elaborate transitional justice systems in the world, which sets a benchmark for other countries. The system has been accepted by the Colombian Constitutional Court and has received strong support from the International Criminal Court (2021) and the United Nations Security Council (2021). In the 1990s, peace processes were mere political agreements between the state and the guerrillas supported by broad amnesties. Peace based on impunity demonstrated, however, its many limitations, including the forgetting of victims, since victims' rights were not considered. Consequently, victims began to organise and claim their rights from the 1990s onwards. Gradually, they began to take centre stage through their social and political mobilisation. This sustained mobilisation has generated relevant political realities. The most specific is the progressive configuration and improvement in Colombia of a transitional justice model and system that has been perfected in the various peace processes of the twenty-first century.

Transitional justice is understood as those mechanisms aimed at addressing massive and systematic human rights violations committed by actors in armed conflict, without removing the incentives that need to be generated for political agreements to be reached to overcome the violent expression of conflict (Hayner, 2018). Managing the consequences of the past is necessary to sign peace in the present and lay the foundations for a transition from war to peace based on respect for the rights of victims, the transformation of the root causes and drivers of the armed conflict, and the creation of conditions of coexistence and non-repetition that make peace self-regenerating and sustainable.

Transitional justice mechanisms in Colombia have been developed at different times over the last 30 years. From peace processes based on impunity in the 1990s, Colombia has developed the world’s most sophisticated transitional justice system with the 2016 Final Agreement. This Agreement consolidates a Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-Repetition that is built on the principle of the centrality of victims in peace: peace must guarantee the rights of victims.

3.7 Institutional, Regulatory, and Constitutional Changes

In parallel to the processes described up to this point, the state and its institutions have made some interesting institutional and normative advances as part of Colombia's growing peace infrastructure. The most significant development came with the adoption of Colombia's Political Constitution in 1991. The Constitution was born out of the need to restructure the Colombian state and legal system after more than 100 years of the Constitution of 1886. The new Constitution became an instrument for the vindication of the freedoms, guarantees and rights that had been limited until then. It also became an institutional response to the various forms of violence that plagued the country. One of the main motives for the National Constituent Assembly was the need to seek peace and re-establish public order, seriously disturbed by the action of drug trafficking, subversive organisations and paramilitarism, and by the inability of traditional political parties to consolidate a more inclusive and modern democratic state (Hernández, 2016).

The Presidential Decree that established the framework for the National Constituent Assembly prompted some guerrillas to lay down their arms, sign a peace agreement with the state and join the democratic political process through the National Constituent Assembly. The 1991 Constitution is a rich document, modernising the Colombian political system and bringing it up to international standards of democratic rule of law. It creates on paper a pluralist, more participatory political system, aimed at guaranteeing, protecting, and promoting human rights, including international humanitarian law, with various measures to guarantee the rights of minorities. It was an innovative effort that some analysts have described as a kind of “peace agreement-constitution” (Bell et al., 2015). The constitution also allowed for the development of new institutional, normative, and political frameworks and instruments to pursue peace. Some of the elements highlighted in the interviews were:

  • Colombia has been perfecting a set of government institutions focused on the design and implementation of each government's peace policy. The most specific example is the High Presidential Council for Peace, which has led the negotiation processes with armed actors and the reincorporation of demobilised combatants into civilian life. It has also created Peace Commissions to advise and guide approaches to armed actors or to support the verification of peace agreements, and the country has promoted amnesty laws as an incentive to facilitate peace negotiations.

  • All governments have maintained channels of communication with the guerrillas to explore peace dialogues beyond the warmongering rhetoric of some. Moreover, all governments have facilitated, or at least tolerated, civil society facilitation efforts to advance peace processes through mechanisms and commissions organised for this purpose. Colombia has a rich network of facilitators, internal mediators, and peace managers, with the capacity to fulfil the different mediation roles necessary to make any peace process viable (Fisas 2004; Mitchel 2008).

  • Colombia has a solid normative framework for the protection of human rights. The Colombian Constitution creates this framework, which has been developed through internal normative adjustments and the acceptance of international normative frameworks for the protection of human rights.

  • Colombia has developed one of the world’s strongest policies for the protection of victims and restoring or redressing their rights.

  • Colombia has one of the most ambitious policies for the reincorporation of armed actors and has accompanied more than 76,000 ex-combatants in their process of laying down their weapons and re-entering civilian life over the last 20 years.

This political, institutional and policy infrastructure for peace has been considerably strengthened by the Peace Agreement between the government and the FARC. First, the accord develops a series of policies and instruments to address one of the main causes of inequality and armed conflict in Colombia: access to and unequal distribution of land. Point one of the Agreement develops a series of key instruments to promote rural development and transform this reality: a land fund, a new agrarian jurisdiction to facilitate the peaceful management of land-related conflicts, the creation of a rural cadastre, among other instruments. Second, the accord expands political and security guarantees for declared opposition parties, developing a series of mechanisms to facilitate participation and public scrutiny of public affairs. It also expands democratic options and guarantees for society to organise itself politically and access power by democratic means. Third, and finally, the Agreement develops one of the most sophisticated and comprehensive transitional justice systems and models in the world, as discussed in the previous section.

3.8 Partnerships, Peace and Development Platforms and Public Policies

Colombia has developed innovative models of partnership for peacebuilding and development through socially driven policies and programmes by means of an alliance of its state institutions, society and the international community. These complement elite efforts to negotiate peace with local peacebuilding initiatives. The most significant programmes have been the National Rehabilitation Plan during the Betancourt presidency, the Regional Peace and Development Programmes and the Peace Laboratories during the Uribe presidency, and the Development Programmes with a Territorial Approach (PDET) included in the Peace Agreement between the government and the FARC. These models have enriched the concept of peace as something that goes beyond the end of violence and armed conflict, requiring the participation of citizens, victims, and local communities, as well as the incorporation of an agenda of socio-economic development, human development, and inclusion. These partnerships connect grassroots social mobilisation and articulation processes with high-level negotiation processes, and vice versa. This diversity of programmes has its limitations, and they have not always been able to impose their logic on the devastating dynamics of armed conflict, illegal economies, and co-optation of the state by corrupt elites and private interests. However, they have shown that there are viable alternatives to the logic of war, that peace does not depend only on armed actors signing agreements, and that the state can finish consolidating its legitimacy and strengthen the social contract through routes other than those of militarism and war (Paladini-Adell, 2020).

3.9 Inclusion in the Centre

Other distinctive elements of the quest for peace in Colombia have been the organisational processes of ethnic communities (indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples) and the process of organising and building peace, rights and gender equality/parity agendas by women's organisations and the feminist movement. The 1991 Constitution opened the doors to these historically excluded populations and guaranteed their rights. Ethnic peoples and women have taken advantage of this normative opening to gain political space, build their agendas for advocacy and transformation, and occupy spaces of power and real influence in decision-making. Today, both ethnic communities—especially indigenous communities—and women are power actors with the capacity to mobilise and influence decision-making spaces. Another population that has organised itself and plays a strong advocacy role in Colombia are the victims, through hundreds of national and local organisations. These organisations are very diverse and do not always act in a coordinated manner, but they have developed a strong advocacy capacity, not least thanks to the passage of the 2011 Victims and Land Restitution Law, which aims to guarantee their rights to reparation.

3.10 International Accompaniment

Finally, another important dynamic in the search for peace in Colombia has been the role of the international community, including the EU. The search for peace described in the previous nine points has been strongly supported by the international community, and by the European Union and several of its member states. According to those interviewed, the international community has been important in demanding a political solution to the armed conflict. However, its role has been even more important in supporting civil society and state institutions in advancing along each of the paths described in the previous points.

The EU, for example, has had a stable presence in Colombia since the early 1990s and has been able to accompany a large part of the Colombian peace process with various political, financial and cooperation instruments. Its support, for a negotiated political solution to the armed conflict in Colombia to put an end to political violence in the country, has been constant. In addition, the EU has emphasised some additional elements. First, it has emphasised in its policy in Colombia the need for peace to be achieved by addressing the root causes of the armed conflict (peace and development approach) and political violence, as well as by comprehensively attending to the victims of violence (humanitarian approach). Second, it has diversified its political, technical, and financial support by supporting the state and its institutions, but also the leadership and counterweight of civil society. Third, the EU has been a pioneer in promoting territorial approaches to peace since the late 1990s, accompanying civil society innovations mainly through the Development and Peace Programmes and Peace Laboratories. Fourth, the EU was also a key influence in understanding peace and human rights as two sides of the same coin, as we have described in this chapter and as was finally reflected in one of the milestones of the search for peace in Colombia: the 2016 Final Agreement. Fifth, the EU has been one of the actors that has most strongly and decisively supported the significant advances in Colombia in its transitional justice model, which today is an example for the world. Finally, the EU and its member countries have also strongly accompanied the dynamics of inclusion for peace, supporting social mobilisation for peace and human rights, as well as inclusive proposals and agendas led by women, ethnic peoples, victims' organisations and others.

Thanks to the accompaniment of the international community, peace has not only been the result of a power game between the actors that generate political violence, but also a more inclusive, transformative, and democratic process. An interesting indicator of this reality is that the contents and commitments of the Final Agreement between the government and the FARC are more like the diverse peace proposals and practices that emerge from civil society—often promoted with the support of international cooperation—than the maximalist agendas and proposals of the armed actors and the negotiating parties. In this regard, I can affirm that the peace signed by the armed actors was previously promoted and exemplified by Colombian society and its institutions in their search for peace with the accompaniment of the international community.

4 Conclusion

Political violence has characterised the process of building the Colombian nation-state for several centuries, as in many other countries. Despite this reality, peace has become the main political motor for the consolidation of the nation-state over the last 40 years, with the elimination once and for all of political violence as the driving force behind this process. Important sectors of the Colombian population have sought to consolidate a democratic state that guarantees rights by eliminating political violence as a leading mechanism in the processes of change—both that violence exercised by the state and political elites, and that exercised by those who want to subvert power. The peace processes with the FARC (2012–2016), with the ELN (2022, in its new iteration) and the recently launched Total Peace policy of President Gustavo Petro are the latest playing fields in this quest for peace (Cepeda, 2023).

The search for peace has gone hand in hand with the country's democratisation process and the development of human rights protection frameworks. Colombia is completing this process of national state-building—a historically violent process—by seeking to leave political violence behind and committing to non-violent social and political dynamics. Peace as a political ideal and social aspiration has become one of the driving forces of political change in Colombia. In this quest, Colombia has advanced in recent years in the consolidation of a solid peace infrastructure, i.e. there is a set of interrelated actors (organisations), processes and outcomes (alliances, platforms, spaces and policies) that have given peace a real basis and are allowing non-violent actors (local institutions, grassroots organisations and civil society actors) to lead their own peacebuilding, without depending on or subjugating themselves to armed actors (Paladini-Adell, 2012). The process has been led by Colombians, but as I have briefly analysed in the chapter, and as is set out in detail throughout this book, the international community, and in particular the European Union, have played an important role in accompanying this quest.