Losing land in times of peace: post-war agrarian capitalism in Colombia and Côte d'Ivoire

“Fests of Vests”: The Politics of Participation in Neoliberal Peacebuilding in Colombia

“…By drawing on the testimonies of state officials and local actors, this paper shows how, when bottom‐up peacebuilding is co‐opted to achieve a neoliberal state order, agro‐capitalism flourishes and new cycles of dispossession and violence emerge (Berman‐Arévalo and Ojeda 2020; Campbell 2011; Grajales 2021). Without a radical breakdown of pre‐existing power structures of exploitation and domination, participation in peace making runs four core risks: legitimising state‐led initiatives to ensure the political rule of capital; strengthening peace‐making bureaucracies; creating new violent disputes without resolving existing ones; and blaming local populations for not fully understanding and embracing the “neoliberal opportunity” to participate in the capitalist state.…”

Peacebuilding and post-conflict tourism: addressing structural violence in Colombia

“…The risk is significant considering the prevalence of top-down approaches in peacebuilding interventions that place unfettered markets as a basic pillar of peace (Paris, 1997). A clear example comes from the ubiquitous land issues present in most post-conflict contexts, as internally displaced people more often than not struggle to get access to landwhich is in many cases at the basis of their livelihoodsbecause it goes to the hands of domestic or international investors under the belief that land is a resource best regulated by the market, not the state (Grajales, 2020).…”

Social Cohesion as the Missing Link between Natural Resource Management and Peacebuilding: Lessons from Cocoa Production in Côte d’Ivoire and Colombia

“…The settlement of migrants was facilitated by a customary system marked by land-abundancy, labour-restricted economy (frontier economy) that offered migrants "empty" space and the right to settle for a certain number of years as laborer [82]. With migrant families settling permanently, their descendants claiming long-term rights, during the economic down turn and tumultuous political period and conflict that followed, migrants were stigmatized and at the same time claimed political rights [83]. Thereby, the two civil wars in Côte d'Ivoire since 2002 are to a certain extent attributable to the extremely successful expansion of cocoa production [84].…”

“…Thereby, the two civil wars in Côte d'Ivoire since 2002 are to a certain extent attributable to the extremely successful expansion of cocoa production [84]. Today, reforms to land tenure and formalization processes continue to reflect disparities between social groups and remain a source of tension in the country [83,85]. In addition to being a potential source of conflict, the exclusion of groups from a secured access to land may hamper their investments into trees and other agro-ecological practices, and thereby hinder the expansion of agroforestry systems and its associated societal benefits.…”