Colombian Peace Agreement 2016

Abstract

In 2016, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) guerrilla movement and the Government of Colombia signed the "Final Agreement to End the Conflict and Build a Sustainable and Lasting Peace" aiming to comprehensively address the causes and effects of the armed confrontation that lasted for more than five decades. This entry briefly contextualizes the Final Agreement's negotiations and approval process and describes its unique characteristics, such as the territorial approach, gender and ethnic intersectionality, and structural interdependency. It also provides a summary of the six chapters structuring the agreement text, which include comprehensive rural reform, political participation, end of the armed conflict, illicit drugs, transitional justice for victims, and implementation monitoring and verification. The final section provides an assessment of the first years of implementation.

Emerging trends in peacebuilding: The case of Colombia

“…As a result, getting to the point where a conflict‐affected area can aspire to reap benefits from any type of post‐conflict peacebuilding effort is nothing short of true success. Since 2017, Colombia has been the subject of, and witness to, one of the most comprehensive and exhaustive peacebuilding approaches ever to be implemented (Echavarría Alvarez, 2022; Echavarría Alvarez et al., 2020). Thanks to an ambitious peace agreement, centered around six core themes—that is, comprehensive rural development, political participation of demobilised FARC, fight against illicit drugs, victim‐oriented transitional justice approach, and a meticulous monitoring of the end of violence—peacebuilding process in Colombia has expanded the scope of peacebuilding into areas that traditionally have been largely ignored or overlooked by policymakers.…”

Peace Education and Colombia’s Efforts Against Violence: A Literature Review of Cátedra de la Paz

“…Others, represented mainly by the right-wing political party Centro Democrático, argued that the peace agreements merely marked a political treaty between two actors and not a societal agreement at large. Support for this latter position was further emphasized in 2016 when 50.2% of Co-lombians voted against the peace accords' ratification in a national plebiscite (Basset, 2018;Echavarría-Álvarez et al, 2020). Although the peace accords were eventually renegotiated and ratified, the plebiscite results pointed to the prevalent narratives of violence and economic crises that have polarized Colombian society and prevail into 2020 (Rettberg, 2020).…”

The dialectics of hope and critique: Reflections on Colombia's new government

“… 5. In 2016, the FARC-EP and the Colombian government signed a Peace Accord to end the armed conflict in the country. The Accord has been categorized by many peace scholars as the most comprehensive and transformative in the history of peace treaties between nation-states and rebel organizations (Echavarría Álvarez et al, 2020; Lederachet al, 2016; Meernik et al, 2019). However, the government of former president Duque did as much as it could to dismantle and defund it, through an active boycotting of the institutional framework created to implement it and through the inherent corruption of Duque's own government (Jiménez Sandoval, 2021).…”