1

Building Peace in a Time of War

Virginia M. Bouvier
Senior Program Officer
United States Institute of Peace
Draft of a book being prepared for United States Institute of Press, Colombia:
Building Peace in a Time of War

In a recent talk at the U.S. Institute of Peace, I asked some fifty high school
teachers to list all the words and images they associate with Colombia. i Their
responses included a range of general and specific terms related to the theme of
violent conflict--war, violence, drugs, kidnapping, FARC (Colombias largest
guerrilla group), arms, paramilitaries, child soldiers, corruption, sexual
exploitation, and trafficking in women. Other terms mentionedcoffee, music-were less obviously related to the conflict. The teachers did not propose a single
image linked to peace or the many efforts to pursue peace in Colombia.
Addressing this gap in public opinion and in the scholarly literature on this topic,
this book seeks to rectify some of the distortions created by the neglect of these
conflict actors, to consider how peace initiatives and their proponents might
contribute further to a resolution of the Colombian conflict, and to assess the
implications of this adjusted vision for the international community and policy
makers.

The lack of attention to Colombias peace efforts and actors, particularly in

the English-speaking world, is not all that surprising. Colombia claims relatively
little attention from the American media, the public, or the broader global
community; when it does appear in the news, drugs and violence frequently
dominate the headlines. Agendas of violence, power, drugs, and greed have by and
large eclipsed attention to the political partisanship and ideologies that provided
the backdrop for a guerrilla war kindled by socioeconomic inequities and political
exclusion some forty years ago. In recent decades, drugs have provided a steady
source of income that has fueled the conflict and contributed to its intractability.ii
Today more than ninety percent of the cocaine and about half of the heroin
consumed in the United States is produced in or transits through Colombia. iii
Increasingly, Colombias cocaine is finding markets in Brazil, Africa, and Europe
as well.iv Scholars, journalists, and others have produced a steady stream of books
with a wide readership in both Spanish and English on Colombian cartels and
drugtrafficking.v
In addition to its infamy as a leader in the drug trade, Colombia is also a
leader in statistics on violence. The longstanding internal armed conflict in
Colombia involves multiple armed actors (including guerrillas, paramilitary forces,
state armed forces, common criminals, and drug traffickers), has evolved over
time, and seems to defy resolution. Each day conflict-related violence claims the
lives of more than a dozen Colombians (usually civilians) and internally displaces
850 Colombians.vi After Sudan, Colombia has the second largest population of
internally displaced persons (IDPs) estimated at between 2-3 million -- in the

world.vii Labor leaders, journalists, human rights workers, church leaders, elected
officials, and judicial authorities in Colombia are among the most threatened on the
face of the earth. In 2005, with more than 1,100 mine victims, Colombia took over
the record for the country with the most land mine accidents, surpassing Cambodia
and Afghanistan.viii Colombia has long been known as the kidnap capital of the
world, with more than 16,000 people-- including prominent legislators,
government ministers, presidential candidates, business people, and U.S.
contractors-- kidnapped in the past five years, and some 4,000 kidnap victims
currently being held.ix
A number of related factors contribute to the drug and violence prism
through which the world tends to view Colombia. News stories are usually shaped
by policy hooks, story angles that link events of the day to government policies
or to an explicit relationship with the news consumer. In the United States,
policymakers have promoted three sometimes-overlapping paradigms that have
shaped U.S. relations with Colombia: Beginning in the 1950s (and increasing
especially after Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba), counterinsurgency concerns
governed U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America; in the 1980s, the U.S. war on
drugs dominated U.S. policy directives in the Andean producer countries; and in
the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the
Pentagon building in Washington, D.C., the war on terror has driven U.S foreign
policy concerns around the globe.
These policy approaches have sometimes warranted coverage because they
carried a steep price tag or because they showcased U.S. interests abroad. With the

launching in 2000 of Plan Colombia, a multi-billion dollar plan to strengthen the

Colombian state, Colombia became one of the top U.S. aid recipients in the world,
surpassed at that the time only by Egypt and Israel. From 2000-2006, Colombia
received unprecedented levels of U.S. aid totaling some $4.7 billion, more than
three-quarters of which went to the Colombian military and police for counterinsurgency, counter-narcotics, and oil pipeline protection.x Since most U.S. foreign
aid thus far has been earmarked for the prosecution of the war, other agendas -regional stability; democracy, human rights, and the rule of law; socio-economic
development and humanitarian needs;, and peace initiatives -- only occasionally
make headlines.xi More often than not, however--especially following 9/11 and the
national preoccupation with war in Iraq--neither peace efforts in Colombia or the
conflict itself have gotten much print.
Nonetheless, U.S. involvement is far from negligible. The relative lack of
attention to the conflict in Colombia is all the more surprising given that the U.S.
Embassy in Bogota, with some 2,000 employees representing 32 agencies, is
second in size only to that in Iraq. xii Furthermore, the U.S. presence in Colombia
on the ground has grown rapidly since 2000. U.S. troops and advisors are now
legally capped at 800, and U.S. civilian government contractors are capped at 600
(plus foreign contractors).xiii About a dozen U.S. citizens have lost their lives in this
conflict.
If the war in Colombia has received little attention, journalists, academics,
human rights practitioners, and conflict resolution specialists alike have paid even
less attention to Colombias drive for peace and to those actors working for peace

and nonviolent change.

On the scholarly front, only recently have political

scientists, sociologists, and other scholars even begun to analyze the role of civil
society and NGOs in policymaking.xiv Colombian scholars and their protgs are
known for their development of violentology, a sophisticated and influential
scholarly discipline that is dedicated to the study of violence in Colombia.xv With a
few exceptions, such literature as exists on peace initiatives has largely been in
Spanish and has tended to focus on the governments repeated and largely
unsuccessful efforts to negotiate peace, or have tended toward autobiographical
accounts of these efforts.xvi

Scholars have largely ignored local and regional

initiatives as a focus of study.

Human rights practitioners within Colombia and abroad, while aware of and
sometimes even participants in the construction of peace initiatives, have generally
focused their work on discerning the patterns of violence and abuse in the daily
manifestations of Colombias conflict. Their most pressing task is to document
and denounce human rights violations as well as violations of international
humanitarian laws and norms governing the conduct of the armed conflict. xvii Most
human rights practitioners lack the mandate or the time required to document or
analyze peace initiatives, although some groups are beginning to do just that.xviii
Ironically, within the conflict resolution field as well there is an inherent bias
against actors who have eschewed violence in the pursuit of peace. Conflict
analysis generally is performed with conflict actors in mind, and these conflict
actors are usually limited to those engaged in the armed struggle itself. The
resolution of international conflicts has traditionally been seen as a process

involving negotiations between the parties that hold the weapons. xix

Thus,

mediation and peacemaking most frequently involve promoting negotiations and

accords between the government and the armed actors. They involve anticipating,
dissuading, persuading, and getting buy-in from would-be spoilers of a peace
processusually, again, those with arms. Victims and proponents of non-violent
conflict resolution are frequently left outside of, or in some cases given only token
representation in, peace talks.

Amnesties or other bargains that let known

murderers and bad guys off the hook, or DDR (demobilization, disarmament,
and reintegration) programs that provide incentives to the perpetrators of violence
to lay down their arms are frequently held up as the necessary cost for pursuing
peace. Subsequent truth commissions, sometimes established to air the claims of
victims, often fall prey to political considerations that favor reconciliation over
truth or justice as they seek to appease the illegal armed actors. And while these
initiatives may be important, more thought could be given to the potential role of
civil society in crafting alternative solutions.
In the development field, one finds that it is often the communities that are
experiencing the most violence that are the targets of intervention and assistance
to the neglect of communities that may have been successful in preventing or
curtailing violence. While the most violent-prone communities are often judged to
be the most in need of external resources, the irony is that attention and increased
resources to these communities appears to reward or create incentives for violent
behaviors.

This is also true with DDR programs that provide benefits to

combatants who agree to demobilize, but are not mandated to assist the

communities where reintegration will occur or the victims of the violence. These
programs create new tensions because the benefits privilege the perpetrators of
abuses while ignoring the urgent needs of the victims, including the displaced.
This book challenges some of these practices. It calls for greater attention to be
paid to the relationship between conflict and development, and suggests that
support for development needs is a critical step forward on the path to peace.
A final aspect of the relative invisibility of Colombian peace initiatives
stems from the general invisibility of those sectors of the population that are often
the protagonists behind peace initiatives. Women, the rural sectors in general and
the rural poor in particular, youth, Afro-Colombians, and the indigenous have a
history of political, social, and economic exclusion in Colombia, and much of the
nascent literature emerging about women, the rural and urban poor, youth, AfroColombians, and indigenous focuses on their victimization by the war, by
economic policies, and by discriminatory practices. Of the approximately three
million internally displaced Colombians, one third are of African descent, more
than half are women, and half are under age fifteen. xx At least 13 percent of
Colombias rural population is now displaced, and rural poverty in Colombia
reached 69 percent in 2004, up from 64 percent the previous year. xxi AfroColombians (the largest minority group in Colombia, constituting about 25%-30%
of the population) and indigenous communities (about 2% of the population) suffer
disproportionate poverty, displacement, environmental degradation, ill health, food
insecurity, and the absence of state infrastructures to promote and protect their
most basic human rights.

There is little scholarly research yet that focuses on the role of these groups
or of the displaced-- in organizing to end the violence, to marginalize actors
advocating violence as a vehicle for change (sometimes by forming peace
communities), or to negotiate with armed actors to prevent or resolve violent
conflicts on the ground.

These marginalized groups have high stakes in the

conflicts resolution and, as will be seen throughout this book, are active in many
of the peace initiatives that are being carried out in the hottest conflict zones in
Colombia.xxii
Efforts to bring peace to Colombia have persisted nearly as long as the
conflict itselfwith intermittent if impartial levels of success. National efforts,
including the Rojas Pinilla amnesty in 1953 and the pact that established the
National Front in 1957, led to a pause in the violence between Liberal and
Conservative partisans that took the lives of some 180,000 Colombians during La
Violencia (roughly from 1946-1965 and considered by some to mark the initiation
of the current conflict).xxiii Since the early 1980s, Colombian governments have
alternated between strategies of war and strategies of peace in their efforts to deal
with the many illegal armed actors that defy the States monopoly of force.
Several governments have engaged in negotiations with guerrilla groups, some of
which have led to the disarmament of at least five guerrilla groups or fractions
thereof.

And successive governments have, albeit unsuccessfully, repeatedly

attempted to reach peace agreements with each of the two major guerrilla groups
the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) and the National Liberation
Army (ELN).xxiv

Following the breakdown in 2002 of peace talks initiated in 1998 by the

government of President Andres Pastrana with the FARC, the oldest and largest of
the guerrilla groups, Alvaro Uribe was elected president based on his commitment
to all-out military victory over the guerrillas. And while security conditions during
Uribes first administration improved in many of the larger cities and towns and
secured Uribe re-election by a wide margin in 2006, the violence has continued,
particularly in the countryside, where the FARC continues to control vast stretches
of Colombian national territory.xxv
During his first term in office (2002-2006), President Alvaro Uribe invested
tremendous political capital in a controversial proposal to demobilize the rightwing paramilitary forces known as the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia/SelfDefense Forces of Colombia (AUC). Following the demobilization of more than
30,000 combatants, High Commissioner for Peace Luis Carlos Restrepo announced
in April 2006 (somewhat prematurely perhaps given subsequent events), that the
largest demobilization in the history of Colombia had been successful and the AUC
was officially disbanded.
The paramilitary piece of the puzzle is far from resolved, however.
Dramatic revelations about pervasive links between paramilitary drugtraffickers
with Colombias elected authorities in the Congress, as well as paramilitary
infiltration at the highest levels of Colombias primary intelligence agency, the
Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS), have shaken the country, and
the demobilized AUC, like the famed Greek hydra serpent, has generated

10

unanticipated new configurations of criminal and drugtrafficking organizations and

networks.xxvi
Early on in Uribes second term, there was nonetheless hope that with the
AUC officially demobilized, Uribe might turn his attention to negotiating peace
with the FARC and ELN guerrillas.

The Colombian government accepted a

proposal by the governments of France, Spain, and Switzerland to create a small

demilitarized zone in the Valle del Cauca for a prisoner-for-hostages swap, and
initiated overtures to the FARC in 2006 through Senator Alvaro Leyva, a
negotiator during previous peace talks, for a humanitarian accord and prisoner
exchange.xxvii

These hopes were dashed in October 2006, when a car bomb

exploded at the war college in Bogota, injuring 23 people. Uribe immediately

blamed the FARC and the talks ground to a halt.xxviii Since then, despite mounting
pressures for movement on a humanitarian accord, the Uribe government has
refused to dialogue with the FARC. As 2006 came to a close, military clashes
continued between the FARC and the Colombian army, and Defense Minister Juan
Manuel Santos announced a new government military offensive called Plan
Victory to capture or kill guerrilla leaders.xxix
With regard to the ELN, progress has appeared more feasible, in part
because the ELN is considered to be militarily weaker and less beholden to
narcotrafficking interests. The ELN emerged in the 1960s in northeast Colombia
with the support of urban middle-class students, oil workers, and priests inspired
by Catholic liberation theology and the Cuban revolution, and its vision and
revolutionary project reflect these origins. There have been repeated attempts

11

spearheaded by civil societymost notably in Mainz, Germany in 1998 and in San

Jose, Costa Rica in 2000 to bring the ELN to the negotiating table. After
subsequent facilitation efforts lead by Mexican government officials stalled, a civil
society commission created the House of Peace (Casa de Paz) in late 2005 to
facilitate a consultation process between Colombian civil society and the ELN. xxx
This has led to a series of formal meetings of an exploratory nature between the
ELN and the Colombian government in Cuba mediated by international facilitators
(namely, Norway, Switzerland, and Spain).xxxi

While these talks have yet to

address substantive issues such as forced displacement, a cease-fire, or amnesty for

imprisoned ELN combatants, in October 2006, ELN commanders offered to
cooperate on a de-mining initiative in Samaniego, Narino, and talks in Havana
continued in 2007.
As the reader of this book will discover, throughout Colombia, churches,
non-governmental groups, and local and regional authorities are actively seeking
peace, and they are registering success in a multitude of ways. They are designing
and implementing programs that offer alternatives to violence and promote
attitudes and structures that may help create a more inclusive political system
capable of managing conflict nonviolently. At a local level, they have carried out
delicate negotiations with armed actorssometimes under the auspices of church
authoritiesfor the release of kidnap victims, to prevent the displacement of
communities, and to allow safe passage of foods and medicines past armed
blockades.

Citizen initiatives have promoted electoral debates, addressed

corruption, and created institutional vehicles for local populations to contribute to

12

the formation of municipal and national economic development plans.

Peace

communities, peace laboratories, zones of peace, no-conflict zones, humanitarian

zones, sanctuary churches, territories of non-violence (or peace or peaceful coexistence) are flourishing in some of the most vulnerable conflict zones in
Colombia. Governors of the southern states of Tolima, Cauca, Nario, Huila,
Caquet, and Putumayo have developed proposals for a negotiated settlement to
the conflict, as well as an alternative development plan that proposes regional
alternatives to the current fumigation policies of the central government, including
crop substitution and the development of small micro-enterprises based on
traditional indigenous and Afro-Colombian agricultural practices. Mayors in
eastern Antioquia and in Montes de Maria are seeking paths to more participatory
governance and greater community input into development decisions. With the
assistance of UNICEF, the national civil registry office, and the civil society group
REDEPAZ (Red Nacional de Iniciativas por la Paz y Contra la Guerra), millions of
young people organized a Childrens Mandate for Peace, in which 2.7 million
youth cast votes for peace. Inspired by REDEPAZ, 100 Municipalities of Peace
have been established that are increasing citizen engagement, deepening the nature
of democratic governance, and enhancing accountability in Colombia. These have
led in turn to a proliferation of constituent assemblies at the municipal and regional
levels.
An incipient, but growing, body of recent scholarship, of which this book
forms a part, is focusing attention on these and other peace initiatives. xxxii This
book, and the various conferences and panels which nourished it, brings together

13

the experiences and insights of twenty-five seasoned and emerging authors and
peace practitioners.

Documenting and drawing lessons from Colombias long

history of peace initiatives, they yield new insights into how Colombias conflict
might be resolved, and provide a veritable encyclopedia of lessons in peacemaking
and peacebuilding for those seeking to transform violent conflicts in other parts of
the world.

The authors of this volume hail from Latin America (especially

Colombia), the United States, and Europe. Contributors have been engaged in or
studied peace initiatives from a variety of historical, regional, and disciplinary
perspectives--including political science, anthropology, history, psychology,
education, and peace and conflict studies, and they include journalists, policy
analysts, church leaders, and human rights and development practitioners.
In analyzing the kinds of initiatives that have developed in the Colombian
context, I have chosen to separate the chapters into four major sections that focus
respectively on national, sectorial, local/regional, and international initiatives for
peace in Colombia. While these levels sometimes overlap and the divisions
between them may be rather porous, this arrangement of the material lends itself to
a variety of new analytical frameworks for thinking about peace initiatives, which I
explore in my concluding chapter.
Following this first introductory chapter, Part Two of this book begins with
several chapters that analyze the successes and failures of past national peace
efforts and processes.

The first chapter begins with an assessment by Adam

Isacson and Jorge Rojas, civil society leaders in the United States and Colombia
respectively, of the evolution of a civil society movement for peace within

14

Colombia. They analyze the origins and evolution of groups and mechanisms to
promote a peaceful resolution to the conflict, the challenges the peace movement
has faced in establishing a national presence, future directions that might lead
toward peace, and the obstacles that remain.
We then turn to official government peace initiatives.

In his chapter,

political science professor Carlo Nasi outlines some of the lessons to be learned
from past negotiations and successful demobilizations as well as the relatively
unsuccessful attempts to negotiate peace with the FARC and the ELN. Marc
Chernick, also a political scientist and a USIP grantee, then considers the particular
challenges that Colombian governments have confronted in their dealings with the
FARC, the largest and most resistant of the guerrilla groups. Chernick analyzes the
demands of the FARC over time, with an eye toward understanding what might
bring the FARC back to the negotiating table and what might lead them to lay
down their arms. Then Leon Valencia, a political analyst, journalist, and exguerrilla leader from one of the splinter groups of the ELN that demobilized in the
early 1990s, reviews the efforts to bring the ELN to the peace table over the last
decades and the prospects for the future.
In the next chapter, anthropologist Winifred Tate takes us through the maze
of issues surrounding the Colombian governments initiativeat the behest of the
Catholic church-- to demobilize the right-wing paramilitary coalition known as the
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). xxxiii Tate, a USIP Peace Scholar
whose work was supported by a dissertation fellowship from USIP, discusses the
evolution of paramilitary organizations into a political force in Colombian society,

15

and analyzes the ways in which the discourse of human rights and conflict
resolution has permeated their representation of themselves to the broader public.
Law professor and AID consultant Arturo Carrillo rounds out this section on
national initiatives with an examination of the legal mechanisms that have been
established to deal with illegal armed actors in Colombia.

He analyzes how

Colombian norms and laws relating to truth, justice, and reparations have evolved
in relation to changing international norms around issues of transitional justice and
human rights. His chapter sheds light on some of the complexities surrounding the
controversial Justice and Peace law approved to regulate the demobilization of the
paramilitaries, and discusses the implications of these shifts for future negotiations
with illegal armed actors.
The third section of the book focuses on regional and local initiatives for
peace that, like fragile orchids in a dark cellar, have persisted and blossomed in the
midst of conflict. Tremendous variations in natural and human resources have
shaped the evolution and nature of conflict in each region of Colombia. Peace
initiatives are likewise widely varied and highly context specific, and the regional
contours of the conflict shape peace-building efforts as communities seek to
address particular local manifestations of conflict. Leading off this section is an
overview by Christopher Mitchell and Sara Ramirez, conflict resolution specialists
at the International Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR) program at George
Mason University, who describe the emergence and nature of peace communities
throughout Colombia, and place Colombias local zones of peace within a broader
context of current definitions and assumptions of the conflict resolution field.

16

Their chapter and the USIP-supported research on which it is based, provides a

comparative study of three local peace initiativesone in the department of
Narino, one in southwestern Antioquia, and one in eastern Antioquia. They discuss
the evolution of constituent assemblies in places like Tarso, Sonson, Mogotes, and
Samaniego, where civil society has created new governance arrangements that are
allowing greater participation, accountability, and peaceful coexistence in areas
traditionally plagued by corruption, mismanagement, clientelism, and violent
conflict.
In the remaining chapters of this section, the authors continue to analyze the
particular inflections of peace initiatives in some of the most contested and violent
areas of the Colombian countryside--the Middle Magdalena Valley, the Montes de
Maria region of the northern coast, Eastern Antioquia, Norte de Santander, Macizo
Colombiano, Meta, and others (Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Darien Caribe, Eje
Cafetero, Arauca, Casanare, Valle del Cauca, and Narino). The first six of these
locations have been designated as home to official peace laboratories, funded by
the European Union and the World Bank and supported by the Colombian national
government among others. The first peace laboratory was established in 2002 in
the Magdalena River Valley, where civil society had developed a Program for
Development and Peace (PDPMM) in response to the high levels of violence in
that region. A second peace laboratory was established in Norte de Santander,
Oriente Antioqueno, and Macizo Colombiano/Alto Patia; and a third has recently
been created in Montes de Maria and Meta.xxxiv Although each of these initiatives
is different, they share a number of commonalities, namely that they all build on

17

already existing programs through the national Network of Regional Development

and Peace Programs (REDPRODEPAZ), they aim to create regional proposals for
peace and to support the implementation of specific accords between the conflict
actors, strengthen the local institutions, support civil society actors working for
peace, and encourage social and economic development in the region as a means of
providing alternative livelihoods to the violence. xxxv This section examines the
variation of each of these models as they develop and are implemented on the
ground, and it also includes a chapter on Putumayo, a coca-growing region that has
been one of the primary targets of the U.S. coca eradication campaigns.
In his chapter, Javier Moncayo, leader of REDPRODEPAZ and a medical
doctor by profession, shares a series of vignettes based on the experiences of the
local Program for Development and Peace in Magdalena Medio (PDPMM), a civil
society initiative that paved the way for the designation of the zone as the first
Peace Laboratory.

Moncayo underscores the contradictions, challenges, and

contributions of civil society groups working for peace in the Magdalena Medio
river valley region. This oil-producing zone has been contested by numerous
armed actors. It was the birthplace of the ELN guerrillas, and subsequently also
became a stronghold of the FARC (particularly in the south, in Barrancabermeja,
and in the valley on the western shores of the Cimitarra river where the FARC still
maintain a strong presence). It was also the birthplace of the first campesino
movement of paramilitary self-defense groups (in Carmen de Chucuri), which later
joined the AUC. In 2000-01, paramilitary groups violently took over the region.
As Moncayo discusses the impact of the PDPMM, he observes how individuals are

18

changing the collective culture from a culture of fear to one of greater engagement
and more pro-active citizenship, and underscores the importante of local ownership
of the process.
We then turn to a case study by historian Mary Jean Roldan of the NoViolence Movement established by 23 mayors in Eastern Antioquia and the second
so-called peace laboratory. Roldan discusses the challenges of the No-Violence
Movement, as it has negotiated humanitarian solutions to the repeated killings and
blockades of the regions towns by the FARC, ELN, and AUC, and as it seeks
greater participation in policymaking on hydroelectric development, land tenure,
and resource use in the region. She teases out the inherent tensions and conflicts of
interest between local communities and their elected officials on the one hand, and
the central government authorities in Bogota and corporate interests on the other,
and ponders the benefits and liabilities of the peace laboratory model as it has
evolved in Eastern Antioquia.
Next Ricardo Esquivia, a Mennonite pastor actively involved in the peace
movement and a leader and representative of Colombias non-Catholic religious
minorities, reflects with U.S. United Church of Christ leader Barbara Gerlach on
the experiences of church people, particularly Protestant Evangelicals (as nonCatholic Christians in Colombia are called), in the Montes de Maria region. Part
of the third designated peace laboratory, figures for forced displacement and
landmines in this area rank among the highest of any region in the country.
Montes de Maria and the northern coastal region have been a battleground for
many armed actors, including drug-traffickers vying for control of this important

19

transportation corridor with easy access to the Caribbean coastand was one of
the areas where paramilitary-government collaboration aimed at liquidating
political opponents, social leaders, and communities occurred.

In Montes de

Maria, Esquivia and Gerlach tell us about a new movement that is afoot as people
of faith explore their call to be peacemakers amidst the violence.xxxvi They tell us
of how faith-based groups--including Protestants, a minority population of some
five million in a largely Catholic country of 43 million inhabitants--are creating
spaces for the transformation of Colombias conflict-ridden society.xxxvii Protestant
Evangelical churches working in the midst of such conflict zones have established
church sanctuaries of peace that have saved the lives of individuals who were
detained or threatened by armed groups; these churches are developing strong links
to U.S. partner churches.xxxviii They have created new institutions and organizations
to engage communities in productive, income-generating activities; and they are
working to nurture trust and build a culture of citizenship and accountability so that
the reigning culture of favoritism might be transformed into a culture of rights.
Like their Catholic counterparts, Protestant churches, supported by the
international community, are recognizing the need to open and sustain dialogues
with armed actors to diminish and prevent violence. Esquivias discussion of the
Montes de Maria Development and Peace Network Foundation suggests that
discussions within the faith communities and between faiths can open new
opportunities for collaboration in the quest for peace.
Finally, Maria Clemencia Ramirez, a Colombian anthropologist, brings us to
the southwestern state of Putumayo, where the conflict and civil societys response

20

to it have been marked by the vagaries of coca cultivation and the war against
drugs. Even in this largely FARC-dominated region, where Plan Colombia had its
primary focus and the conflict was highly militarized, unarmed peasants, largely
marginalized and considered as criminals by the centers of power, have succeeded
in persuading the FARC to lift armed blockades (paros armados), and have
overcome FARC opposition to alternative development projects. Civil societys
ability to hold the FARC accountable to its claim to represent the will of the people
has created a modicum of space for negotiating at the local level. In the Putumayo
region, local government authorities have joined forces with sectors of civil
society, forging a precarious coalition in opposition to all of the armed actors.
The fourth part of this book includes case studies of a sampling of particular
sectors of Colombian society -- namely, the Catholic church, the business sector,
the military, the education sector, womens organizations, and indigenous
communities -- that have developed their own unique sets of peace initiatives. Msr.
Hector Fabio Henao, the General Secretary of the National Social Pastoral Office
and former head of the Colombian Conference of Bishops, opens this section with
an analysis of the complex and longstanding role of the Colombian church in
preparing the ground for peace and promoting reconciliation. With some 90% of
the Colombian population nominally Catholic, the churchs impact at every level
of society is pervasive. The Catholic Church, with its tremendous convening
power and moral authority, is a dominant force in the country and surveys have
shown it to be the most trusted national institution in Colombia. xxxix Msr. Henao
analyzes the institutional goals and structures that have emerged from within the

21

church in response to the need to transform the ongoing violence of the Colombian
conflict.

Behind the scenes, the Catholic bishops have facilitated peace

negotiations, engaged in pastoral dialogues with representatives of each of the

armed groups, and have sought negotiated solutions to the conflict.xl
In her chapter, Jennifer Schirmer, a USIP senior fellow and former grantee,
and a human rights and conflict resolution specialist, turns her attention to the
Colombian military.

She analyzes the historical evolution of the militarys

attitudes toward peacemaking efforts by distinct governments and toward the

guerrillas and how they shape the likelihood that the military will be a spoiler in
any future peace process. Schirmer discusses an ongoing project of the Norwegian
government to skill Colombias security forces in international humanitarian law,
conflict resolution, and peace-building. Schirmer tells of carefully crafted, highly
structured, confidential meetings that she facilitated between demobilized
guerrillas, military leaders, and civil society. These spaces of dialogue were aimed
at breaking down barriers and preparing the ground for a sustainable peace by
anticipating and preventing the military from assuming its past role of spoiler in
future peace talks.
In the next chapter, Angelika Rettberg, a political science professor at the
Universidad de los Andes, analyzes the heterogeneous nature of the business sector
in Colombia, and analyzes the current and potential role of the domestic private
sector in peace-building there. While the business sector has often been seen as
contributing to conflict, particularly in relation to the exploitation of oil and other
natural resources, in her analysis of business-sponsored local peace initiatives in

22

four sitesthe cities of Bogota and Medellin, and the regions around Cali and the
central Magdalena River ValleyRettberg highlights cases where business leaders
are engaging in conflict prevention and mitigation efforts in order to foster a more
stable business environment.
In the subsequent chapter, psychologist Ana Maria Velasquez Nino and
education specialist Enrique Chaux analyze the promotion of peace through
education in Colombia. The potential role of education in zones of conflict has
been a critical theme to peace-making and peacebuilding efforts around the globe.
As scholars have shown, education is not a neutral terrain and does not exist
independently of a broader social, economic, political context.xli Educational
institutions and classrooms are rather microcosms of society as a whole that can
promote elitism and exclusion. In the case of societies divided by class, religion or
ethnicity, schools can institutionalize and encourage prejudices that perpetuate
conflict, and exacerbate divisions.xlii On the other hand, education can also generate
changes that promote empathy and make possible attitudinal changes at a personal
level. Personal change in turn can lead to normative changes at a societal level,
and that can lead to structural change, transform violent conflict, and create
mechanisms and skills for conflict prevention and reconciliation. As Velasquez
and Chaux suggest, educators are in a key position to intervene with youth to
interrupt the culture of impunity and violence that perpetuates conflict across
generations. The authors discuss current governmental initiatives to promote
citizenship competencies as well as innovative active learning programs to train
students in non-violent conflict resolution and civic involvement.

23

Catalina Rojas, a Colombian conflict resolution specialist trained at ICAR,

then analyzes the development of a womens movement for peace in Colombia,
and examines the leadership roles women and womens groups have taken in
negotiating accords with armed actors, and preparing the ground for peace at the
local level.
We next have a chapter on indigenous peace initiatives by Leslie Wirpsa, a
USIP Peace Scholar, former journalist of some 20 years in Colombia, and
international studies expert in natural resource studies. Working in collaboration
with David Rothschild, the former director of the NGO Amazon Alliance, and
Catalina Garzon, a Ph.D. student of environmental science, policy and
management, Wirpsa explores how ethnicity has shaped responses to conflict by
looking at indigenous traditions of resistance and mediation. The authors focus on
indigenous resistance and peace initiatives in the oil-rich and highly conflictive
Cauca department, a predominantly indigenous zone where communities have
mobilized around ethnic identities drawing on a long history of indigenous
resistance to Spanish domination and Nasa indigenous guards, wielding only their
ceremonial batons, have faced down paramilitary death squads and guerrillas, and
have forced drug traffickers to shut down their cocaine laboratories, and on the
Planes de Vida drawn up by the Cofan peoples in the Putumayo region.
In the fifth part of the book, policy analysts from both sides of the Atlantic
analyze international efforts to move Colombia toward a peaceful resolution of the
conflict.

Until the government of Andres Pastrana (1998-2002), third party

involvement in peace initiatives in Colombia was rather limited. Both the Clinton

24

and Bush administrations have been more interested in strengthening the ability of
their Colombian counterparts to defeat the guerrillas and execute the war on drugs
than in supporting initiatives that would lead to a political solution to the conflict.
Jim Jones, an independent consultant formerly with the United Nations task force
on drugs, untangles the knotty relationship of drugs, war, and peace in Colombia as
a first step to understanding the kinds of Colombian and U.S. policies that have
supported and might support the path to peaceas well as those that have made
peace more elusive. Neil Jeffery, formerly head of the U.S. Office on Colombia
and one of the founders of Peace Brigades International in Colombia, then zeroes
in on some of the dilemmas facing U.S. policymakers and NGOs as they seek ways
to support peace in Colombia. German political scientist Sabine Kurtenbach then
analyzes the involvement of European actors in Colombian peace initiatives, the
instruments at their disposal, and perspectives for their future engagement in
Colombia.
Finally, development specialists Raul Rosende, Borja Paladini Adell, Juan
Chaves, and Gabriel Turriago pool their collective wisdom and on-the-ground
experiences working as consultants with the UNDPs REDES program in Montes
de Maria to consider the international and local dimensions and dynamics of the
peacebuilding process in the Montes de Maria region. Their chapter analyzes how
the activities of international actors to support local and regional development
activities such as those described earlier in the chapter by Ricardo Esquivia can
promoteor underminethe possibilities of sustainable peace.

25

The final concluding section by the editor analyzes the scope and texture of
peace initiatives presented in the volume and the variation in their goals.

It

suggests how these initiatives might be evaluated, and discusses some of the
factors that appear to contribute to their success or failure, teases out lessons to be
learned from successes and challenges, and discusses the model of peacemaking
and peacebuilding represented by a greater integration of local, regional, sectoral,
national and international peace initiatives.
Overall, this volume offers an assessment of Colombias historic and current
experiences in peacemaking and peacebuilding. It explores some of the distinct
levels where civil society is engaged-- conflict prevention, management,
transformation, and reconstruction; human rights protection and promotion;
peacemaking (pre-negotiating); negotiating; and other peacebuilding activitiesas
well as the nature of the armed conflict actors and what might bring them to opt for
a peaceful resolution to the conflict. The authors assess broadly the obstacles to
peace, how the factors facilitating a peaceful resolution to the conflict might be
supported, and what the broader applicability of the Colombian experience might
be for future paths to peace. The peace initiatives laid out in this book suggest that
efforts to transform the Colombian conflict are every bit as complex as the conflict
itself. To continue to ignore them, however, is foolhardy, as they are an untapped
resource and may contain the seeds for the conflicts transformation.

United States Institute of Peace, Summer Institute for Secondary School Teachers on International

Peace, Security, and Conflict Management, August 1, 2006.

ii

Cynthia J. Arnson and Teresa Whitfield, Third Parties and Intractable Conflicts: The Case of

Colombia, in Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, eds., Grasping the Nettles:
Analyzing Cases of Intractable Conflict (Washington, D.C.: USIP Press, 2005).
iii

U.S. Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report-2005, March 2005; at

http://www.state.gov/g/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2005/vol1/html/42363.htm.
iv

Juan Forero, Colombia's coca survives U.S. plan to uproot it, The New York Times, August 19,

2006, online at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/19/world/americas/19coca.html?_r=1&n=Top

%2fNews%2fWorld%2fCountries%20and%20Territories%2fColombia&oref=slogin.
v

See Grace Livingstone, Inside Colombia: Drugs, Democracy, and War (New Brunswick: Rutgers

University Press, 2004); Russell Crandall, Driven by Drugs: U.S. Policy Toward Colombia (Boulder,
Co.: Lynne Rienner, 2002); Robin Kirk, More Terrible than Death: Massacres, Drugs, and Americas
War in Colombia (N.Y.: Public Affairs, 2003); Mark Bowden, Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's
Greatest Outlaw (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001); Doug Stokes, America's Other War: Terrorizing
Colombia (Zed Books, 2005); Ron Chepasiuk, Drug Lords: The Rise and Fall of the Cali Cartel (Milo
Books, 2005); Ted Galen Carpenter, Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin
America, 1st ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
vi

Jorge Rojas, president of the Consultancy on Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), talk given

at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., November 19, 2005.

vii

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, The State of the Worlds Refugees 2006, at

http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/publ/opendoc.htm?tbl=PUBL&id=4444d3ce20. Last accessed

August 18, 2006.
viii

Vinicius Souza and Maria Eugnia S, In Colombia, Land Mines Claim Three Victims a Day,

Folha de S. Paulo[So Paulo, Brazil], February 22, 2006; Toby Muse, Colombia Tops List of Land
Mine Victims, PDT, Bogota, at www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=n/a/2006/04/04/internation...
ix

Mexico surpassed Colombia for the title in 2005. See Larry Habegger, Mexico: World's Kidnap

Capital, World Travel Watch, August 9, 2005, at

http://www.worldtravelwatch.com/archives/2005/08/mexico-worlds-kidnap-capital.shtml; Amnesty
International, Annual Report 2006, at http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/colombia/document.do?
id=ar&yr=2006; and Letter from Olga Lucia Gomez [Director, Pais Libre Foundation] to Jorge Enrique
Botero, April 3, 2006, Bogota, at http://www.paislibre.org/html/sitio/index.php?
view=vistas/es_ES/pagina_108.php. Last accessed August 17, 2006.
x

Earlier levels of aid were significantly lower, reaching a high of 50 million dollars in FY2000. Levels

of aid to Colombia in 2006 and 2007, at about three-quarters of a billion dollars per year, remain on a
par with 2005 levels. For exact figures since 1997, see table at
www.ciponline.org/colombia/aidtable.htm. Last accessed August 15, 2006.
xi

On U.S. policy interests, see Virginia M. Bouvier, Evaluating U.S. Policy in Colombia, A Policy

Report from the International Relations Center Americas Program, May 11, 2005, at http://americas.irconline.org/reports/2005/0505colombia.html.
xii

Virginia M. Bouvier, Evaluating U.S. Policy in Colombia, Policy Report, IRC Americas Program

(Silver City, NM: International Relations Center, May 11, 2005),

http://www.americaspolicy.org/reports/2005/0505colombia.html; Virginia M. Bouvier, Civil Society
under Siege in Colombia, Special Report no. 114 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, February
2004), online at http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr114.html.
xiii

See Virginia M. Bouvier, Colombia Quagmire: Time for U.S. Policy Overhaul, Foreign Policy in

Focus, Americas Program (Silver City, NM: Interhemispheric Resource Center, Sept. 2003), at
http://www.americaspolicy.org/briefs/2003/0309colombia.html; and Deborah Avant, Privatizing

Military Training, Foreign Policy in Focus 7, no. 6 (May 2002); at

http://www.fpif.org/papers/miltrain/box4.html.
xiv

See for example, Mario Murillo and Jesus Rey Avirama, Colombia and the United States: War,

Unrest, and Destabilization (Seven Stories Press, September 2003); Geoff L. Simons, Colombia: A
Brutal History (London: Saqi, 2004).
xv

See Daniel Pecaut, Cronica de cuatro decadas de politica colombiana (Bogota: Grupo Editorial

Norma, 2006); Ruben Ardila, Violence in Colombia: Social and Psychological Aspects, in Florence
Denmark and Leonore Loeb Adler, eds., International Perspectives on Violence (Westport, Conn.:
Praeger, 2004): 59-67; G. Guzman Campos, O. Fals Borda, and E. Umana Luna, La violencia en
Colombia (Bogota: Tercer Mundo Ediciones, 1964); Charles Bergquist, Ricardo Penaranda, and
Gonzalo Sanchez G., Violence in Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective
(Wilmington: SR Books, 1992); Nazih Richani, Systems of Violence: The Political Economy of War
and Peace in Colombia (Albany: SUNY, 2002); Cristina Rojas and Judy Meltzer, Elusive Peace:
International, National, and Local Dimensions of Conflict in Colombia (N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005); Stephen Dudley, Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia (New York:
Routledge, 2004); and the numerous World Bank published studies on conflict and economics
including Andres Solimano, ed., Colombia: Essays on Conflict, Peace, and Development (2000); and
World Bank Sector Study, Violence in Colombia: Toward Peace, Partnerships and Sustainable
Development (1998).
xvi

See Socorro Ramirez V. and Luis Alberto Restrepo M., Actores en conflicto por la paz: El proceso

de paz durante el gobierno de Belisario Betancur 1982-1986 (Bogota: CINEP, 1989; Miguel Eduardo
Crdenas Rivera, ed., La construccin del posconflicto en Colombia: enfoques desde la pluralidad
(Bogota: CEREC, 2002); Edgar Tellez, Oscar Montes, and Jorge Lesmes, Diario intimo de un fracaso:
Historia no contada del proceso de paz con las FARC (Bogota: Planeta, 2002).

xvii

Some of the major groups documenting human rights and international humanitarian law violations

within Colombia include CODHES, CINEP, etc. International groups include Amnesty International,
the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Crisis Group, Pan American Health
Organization, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Organization of
American States, among others. See for example, Medicos sin fronteras, Vivir con miedo: El ciclo de la
violencia en Colombia, April 30, 2006, at
http://www.msf.org/source/countries/americas/colombia/2006/report/Vivir_Con_Miedo.pdf; Womens
Commission for Refugee Women and Children, Unseen Millions: The Catastrophe of Internal
Displacement in Colombia: Children and Adolescents at Risk, March 2002, at
http://www.rhrc.org/pdf/wc_colombia_04.02.pdf. Last accessed August 16, 2006.
xviii

See the new database of peace initiatives compiled by the Jesuit Center for Research and Popular

Education (CINEP), available online at www.cinep.org.co/datapaz_resumenes.htm; and United Nations

Development Program (PNUD), National Database of Best Practices for Overcoming the Conflict
(Banco Nacional de Buenas Practicas para Superar el Conflicto), at
http://www.saliendodelcallejon.pnud.org.co/banco_bpracticas.shtml, last accessed August 21, 2006.
xix

See I. William Zartman and J. Lewis Rasmussen, eds., Peacemaking in International Conflict:

Method & Techniques (Washington, D.C. : United States Institute of Peace, 1997); Chester A. Crocker,
Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, Taming Intractable Conflicts: Mediation in the Hardest Cases
(Washington, D.C.: USIP Press, 2004); Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall,
Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing International Conflict (Washington, D.C.: USIP Press,
2001); Crocker, Osler Hampson, and Aall, Grasping the Nettles.
xx

One out of four illegal combatants are estimated to be under age 15. See Human Rights Watch,

Youll Learn Not to Cry: Child Combatants in Colombia, Sept. 2003, at www.hrw.org; HRW, Child
Soldiers in Colombia, Sept. 2003, at http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/colombia/childsoldiers/facts.htm;

Child Soldiers Global Report 2004 at http://www.child-soldiers.org/document_get.php?

id=820#search=%22colombia%20child%20soldiers%22;
Yvonne Keairns, The Voices of Girl Child Soldiers (New York: Quaker United Nations Office, Jan.
2003), at http://www.quno.org/newyork/Resources/girlSoldiersColombia.pdf#search=%22child
%20soldiers%20colombia%22.
xxi

NotiSur, Latin American Data Base 16, no. 9, March 3, 2006. http://ladb.unm.edu; see also Edward

E. Telles, Incorporating Race and Ethnicity into the UN Millennium Development Goals, Race
Report (Inter-American Dialogue, January 2007).
xxii

See Esperanza Hernandez Delgado, Resistencia civil artesana de paz: Experiencias indigenas,

afrodescendientes y campesinas (Bogota: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2004).

xxiii

See United Nations Development Program (UNDP/PNUD), Colombias Conflict: Pointers on the

Road to Peace, National Report on Human Development for Colombia 2003 (Bogota: PNUD, 2003),
25.
xxiv

These have included the EPL (Ejrcito Popular de Liberacin/Popular Liberation Army), PRT

(Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores/Workers Revolutionary Party), MAQL (Movimiento

Armado Quintn Lame), M-19 (Movimiento 19 de Abril), and later, the CRS (Corriente de Renovacin
Socialista/Socialist Renewal Group), a splinter fraction of the ELN).
xxv

Some 550 soldiers and police were killed in action in 2006. Chris Kraul, Rebels Kill 14 in

Colombia, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 26, 2006, p. A4.

xxvi

See Se calcula que hay entre 30 y 60 bandas emergentes surgidas de los grupos paras

desmovilizados, El Tiempo, Dec. 10, 2006; Cynthia J. Arnson, Jaime Bermudez, Father Dario
Echeverri, David Henifin, Alredo Rangel Suarez, Leon Valencia, Colombias Peace Processes:
Multiple Negotiations, Multiple Actors, Latin American Program Special Report, December 2006.
xxvii

Arnson et al., Colombias Peace Processes, 4.

xxviii

Proof of FARC involvement was not forthcoming however, and there was some speculation, based

on a previous scandal, that the incident was another deception created by the military itself. See Sam
Logan, Colombias Latest Problems with Corruption, Power and Interest News Report, Nov. 9, 2006,
online at http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_report&report_id=580&language_id=1.
xxix

Kraul, Rebels Kill 14 in Colombia, A4.

xxx

See Andres Valencia Benavides, The Peace Process in Colombia with the ELN: The Role of

Mexico, Cynthia J. Arnson, ed., Latin American Program Special Report, March 2006.
xxxi

See Arnson et al., Colombias Peace Processes, 5.

xxxii

See the new database of peace initiatives compiled by the Jesuit Center for Research and Popular

Education (CINEP), available online at www.cinep.org.co/datapaz_resumenes.htm; and United Nations

Development Program (PNUD), Banco Nacional de Buenas Practicas para Superar el Conflicto, at
http://www.saliendodelcallejon.pnud.org.co/banco_bpracticas.shtml, last accessed August 21, 2006.
Mauricio Garcia-Duran, To What Extent is there a Peace Movement in Colombia? An Assessment of
the Countrys Peace Mobilization, 1978-2003 (Ph.D. diss., Department of Peace Studies, University of
Bradford, 2005), provides an excellent theoretical overview and mapping of the field, as does the
special issue on Colombia of Accord edited by Garcia-Duran. See Alternatives to War: Colombias
Peace Processes, Special Issue, Accord 14 (London: Conciliation Resources, 2004), online at
http://www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/colombia/spanish/movilizacion.php. Likewise, the UNDP National
Report on Human Development for Colombia 2003, available in English as Colombias Conflict:
Pointers on the Road to Peace, http://www.pnud.org.co/indh2003, is a masterful synthesis of the
expertise of hundreds of individuals and institutions from different regions of the country. Sara
Cameron, Out of War: True Stories from the Front Lines of the Childrens Movement for Peace in
Colombia (N.Y.: Scholastic Press, 2001) provides poignant narratives from children working for peace
in the late 1990s in Colombia.

xxxiii

Serious concerns remained about recidivism and the formation of new armed groups in some areas.

See Secretary-General [Jose Miguel Insulza] of the Organization of American States (OAS), Fifth
quarterly report to the Permanent Council on the Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia
(MAPP), March 2006.
xxxiv

See Virginia M. Bouvier, Harbingers of Hope: Peace Initiatives in Colombia, Special Report, no.

169 (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Institute of Peace, August 2006), online at

http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr169.html.
xxxv

See Lucy Amis, Adrian Hodges, Neil Jeffery, Development, Peace and Human Rights in Colombia:

A Business Agenda (London: The Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum in association
with Fundacion Ideas para la Paz and the Office of the UN Global Compact, 2006), 37-45.
xxxvi

See Cynthia Sampson and John Paul Lederach, ed., From the Ground Up: Mennonite

Contributions to International Peacebuilding (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

xxxvii

Justapaz and the Commission for Restoration, Life and Peace, A Prophetic Call: Colombian

Protestant Churches Document Their Suffering and Their Hope (Bogota, August 2006), 3.
xxxviii

For a discussion of the experiences of three Church Sanctuaries of Peace (ISPs) from Colombias

north coast, see El Desafio del Desarrollo en Zonas de Conflicto, Serie Construccion de la Paz, no.3
(Bogota: JustaPaz and Lutheran World Relief, 2006); and Iniciativas Humanitarias Locales en
Contextos de Conflicto Armado, Serie Construccion de la Paz, no. 4 (Bogota: JustaPaz and Lutheran
World Relief, 2006).
xxxix

Jorge Londono de la Cuesta, La opinion publica colombiana frente a la crisis: Una breve

descripcion, in Colombia: Conflicto armado, perspectivas de paz y democracia (Miami: Summit of

the Americas Center, Latin American and Caribbean Center, 2001), 13.
xl

See Comision Vida, Justicia y Paz, Diocesis de Magangue, Dialogos Pastorales y cumunitarios

(Magangue, 2005).

xli

See Marc Sommers, Conflict, Education and Youth: Connections and Challenges, Paper presented

at the annual Latin American Studies Association Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico,
March 17, 2006.
xlii

Kenneth D. Bush and Diana Saltarelli, eds., The Two Faces of Education in Ethnic Conflict:

Towards a Peacebuilding Education for Children (Florence: Innocenti Research Centre, UNICEF,
2000), 33.