1

COLOMBIA’S JOURNEY TO PEACE: LESSONS FROM ITS FAILURES AND

SUCCESSES

Daniel Raul Lopez Puentes1

1. Approaching to a Peace Agreement

The 2016 Final Peace Agreement2 between the Republic of Colombia and the

FARC guerilla marked a new era in conflict resolution, the impact that the Accord has

is not only limited to the Colombian context, it serves as an example for all the present

and future peace process and peace initiatives, especially those related to the Israeli

– Palestinian conflict, which shares various elements with the aforementioned

Colombian conflict. The 2016 Final Peace Agreement is the result of five years of

negotiation and was achieved after a series of previous and rather unsuccessful

negotiation attempts (as well as critical moments during the process itself), as Melo

(2017) has evidenced negotiations with the different guerilla groups started in 1986,

having partial success in 1990 when minor guerilla groups such as the M-19, the EPL

and the Quintin Lame signed peace.

However, the enthusiasm of the 1990 Agreement was diminished when the

biggest guerrillas —FARC and ELN— retreated from the process and formed the

“Coordinadora Guerrillera Simon Bolivar” (CGSB) in order to negotiate as an unified

actor while still committing violent actions - some of them even qualified as terrorism -

to put pressure on the government, this as Jaimes (2016) described, ended in the

failure of the 1991 Caracas and 1992 Tlaxcala negotiations and made clear the

strength of the military and territorial capacities of these groups were much bigger than

thought. Nonetheless, the mentioned author highlights one document result of these

1
Student of the Master Dynamics of Cooperation, Conflicts and Negotiation in International Relations and
Diplomacy at Universidad Alfonso X El Sabio (Spain).
2
Official Name: Final Agreement to End the Armed Conflict and Build a Stable and Lasting Peace (or, AFTCP).
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process that latter served as a base to start the 2011 negotiations, the “Twelve

proposals to construct a peace strategy” (CGSB, 1992) which arose the concern for

an Agrarian Reform, which was the first point of the 2016 Final Agreement.

The 1992 failure was followed by the 1998 Caguan process, Ríos (2015) offers

a closer look, this negotiations were characterized by the partial clearance or territorial

cession (called ‘demilitarization’ by the government) of an area equivalent to the size

of Switzerland (42.000 km2) to the FARC guerilla, a condition imposed by this group

even before dialoguing. In addition, the agenda proposed was too broad and did not

count with real political willingness by FARC commanders thus leading to another

failed process as Ríos (2015) concludes. This 1998 initiative is highly remembered

because of the infamous ‘silla vacía’ (empty seat) incident, in which the Colombian

president opening the negotiations, Andrés Pastrana, was photographed while waiting

for the FARC representative, Manuel Marulanda, who never showed up at the event3.

The combination of the guerrilla strengthening and their lack of will to negotiate

made that the 1992 – 2002 period is historically seen as a lost decade in peace terms,

not only because of the multiple failures regarding negotiating peace between the

FARC guerrilla and the government but because of the almost exponential increase

of violence, as shown in the Registry of Victims (Registro Único de Víctimas, RUV).

By 1992 there were 81.055 victims of illegal conducts4 related to the conflict while in

2002 the number of victims ascended to 877.346 (RNI & RUV, 2020), being

3
This incident was photographed and latter a chronicle was made by the newspaper El Espectador, available
at: https://www.elespectador.com/colombia2020/pais/cuando-marulanda-dejo-la-silla-vacia-articulo-854548/
4
The National Network of Information (Red Nacional de Información, 2020) describes as illegal conducts
related to conflict the following: Abandon or forced land cession, Terrorist Attacks (combats included),
Threatening, Confinement, Crimes against freedom and sexual integrity, Enforced Disappearance,
Displacement, Homicide, Personal and Physical Injury, Personal and Psychological Injury, Landmines (and those
related), Disposal of movable and unmovable properties or assets, Kidnapping, Torture, Child Recruitment, and
Others.
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displacement and homicide the most common form of violence seen in the Colombian

conflict, this unprecedented escalation of violence created a pessimistic environment

reinforced by the economic crisis that hit the country at the end of the twentieth century

and that was, in Kalmanovitz (2010) words ‘winding and slow’ which made

recuperation much harder. In such a context the already beaten Colombian society

started to support much more an extensive military strategy to end the conflict rather

than to negotiate or dialogue.

As a result of this general feeling of defeat and failure the 2002 presidential

elections represented an opportunity for change in the country, the highly controversial

ex-president Alvaro Uribe Velez won by a broad margin and governed during two

periods until 2010. Uribe offered a different approach to the resolution of the conflict

based on his “democratic security” thesis, these ideas seemed much more appealing

to civil society rather than the negotiated solutions offered by politicians since 1986.

The “Democratic Security” policy was characterized by the strengthening of the military

and police forces by having more than a hundred-thousand new members in these

bodies and the improvement of methods and weapons used in war alongside an

aggressive rhetoric towards the guerilla and a numerous of questionable war-practices

(creation of paramilitary groups or false positives, e.g.) as Pachón (2009) has noted.

Uribe’s ‘Democratic Security’ was partially effective as promised and led him

and his party to popularity levels not seen before, the reduction of violence in urban

areas was highly evident in any source consulted, even the daily-conversations within

citizens showed how the feeling of being secure was broad, certainly operations such

as “Jaque” or “Fénix” remarked the military success and the FARC’s debilitation and

raised Colombians moral, but as proposed by some authors, specially Melo (2017) the

conflict reached a point in which the military capabilities were high and effective but
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limited and the guerilla still had dominance over peripheral territories, in fact, violence

in rural areas persisted and the number of victims remained somewhat steady, as will

be shown further.

As expected, no peace negotiations were made with the FARC guerilla during

Uribe’s period (2002 – 2010), and although there were advances on security nothing

was reached in peace terms with this armed group. It is worth noting that having and

feeling secure is much different that having and feeling peace, especially in a society

that by 2010 had already being involved in a 50-year conflict not only with guerillas,

but with narcotraffickers, paramilitaries, guerilla’s dissidents, and strong organized

criminal groups in urban areas. Yes, Colombia was indeed a much secure place, but

not a peaceful one, and that configured a much different context. If seen from

Galtung’s (1998) ABC triangle perspective, direct violence, cultural violence nor

structural violence were eradicated from the Colombian context, they were only

partially repelled by law enforcement, security was very fragile and peace did not exist.

The suggested affirmation of security without peace is reinforced by the fact

that the number of victims of the Conflict remained somehow steadily during Uribe’s

period (2002-2010), with a high spike in 2002 as has been mentioned before and a

trend of four-hundred fifty thousand (450.000) to five-hundred fifty-thousand victims

(550.000) per year between 2003 and 2008 (RNI-RUV, 2020), only in 2009 the number

of victims diminished, probably as a result of Juan Manuel Santos decision-making as

Defense Minister and the fact that he was leading his own campaign for the 2010

presidential elections.

Despite all the political controversies surrounding the 2010 presidential

elections, Santos was elected president and just as Uribe did, broke all ties with the
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previous administration, and in 2011 decided to start secretly dialoguing with the

FARC as this group was relatively weakened as a result of the pressure generated by

eight-year ‘Democratic Security’ policy and internal organizational issues that put them

in a much different position, as Melo (2017) argues, the debilitation was real and

Santos took the opportunity, always having in mind that FARC members

reincorporation to civil life and the avoidance of impunity must be the priorities of a

future peace process.

From an academic perspective it has been identified that conflicts must reach

ripeness before negotiating, according to Zartman (2008) ripeness is understood as a

Mutually Hurting Stalemate and surges ‘when the parties find themselves locked in a

conflict from which they cannot escalate to victory and this deadlock is painful to both

of them (…) they seek an alternative policy or a way out’. In the Colombian case for

Ríos (2018) ripeness was achieved as the FARC realized that getting to political power

through armed conflict was nearly impossible, in addition, despite the huge investment

on war and security the State wasn’t getting the expected results and the conflict was

only focalizing in very punctual areas such as the borders with Ecuador and

Venezuela, not meaning that it was effectively diminishing.

Ripeness or the Mutually Hurting Stalemate of conflict made possible that both

parties started to negotiate (alongside their political will to do so), according to the UN

Mission in Colombia (2017) the process formally began in the 17th of October of 2012,

following the declarations of president Santos that the dialogues would start in Oslo

(Norway) and then would be transferred to La Habana (Cuba, later known as The

Habana Dialogues), this is a relevant element as the negotiations would be overseen

and guaranteed by third-countries which acted as observers: Chile, Cuba, Norway and
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Venezuela, meaning that any agreement reached would have the recognition and

support of the international community.

Much more interesting is the fact that the dialogues started in the midst of the

conflict and it was not until 2014 that two major events took place, the first is that the

victims would participate into the Habana Dialogues, something remarkable in peace

process terms, as a third-party was involved and represented the victims of the other

two. Secondly, the FARC declared a ceasefire for an undetermined period of time,

negotiations would not take place under direct confrontation between parties anymore.

Later in 2016 The Habana Dialogues would find their own ripeness too, just a

little different, as the dialogue’s ripeness meant that the negotiators agreed upon

seeking the UN support by asking for a UN Security Council resolution (res. 2261 of

2016) that would create a UN verification mission to check the mutual and definitive

ceasefire and the demobilization of FARC’s weapons and soldiers (UN Mission in

Colombia, 2017)

The Barcelona Centre of International Affairs (CIDOB, 2017) has depicted a

well-structured description of how the negotiations were developed, they were

composed of 3 phases, the first one being the exploratory phase where the conditions

for The Habana Dialogues were set alongside the short but meaningful 6-point

Negotiating Agenda5. According to the CIDOB (2017) the second phase was the end

of conflict phase, in which the dialogue unfolded and ended with Final Agreement

signature by the parties representatives on the 24th of August of 2016. But the crucial

and definitive phase is the third, the peacebuilding phase, the more challenging one

5
The six points of the 2016 Final Agreement to End the Armed Conflict and Build a Stable and Lasting Peace
were: (i) Integral Agrarian Development, (ii) Political and Civil Participation, (iii) End of Conflict, (iv) Illicit Drugs,
(v) Agreements upon the Victims of the Conflict, and (vi) Implementation, Verification and Agreements
Endorsement.
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as it can take up to ten years (CIDOB, 2017) to become a reality and will only end

when the Final Agreement is fully implemented.

Currently, the Republic of Colombia is in the middle of the peacebuilding phase

which has been under pressure given the different political changes within government

since 2018, as reported by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies (2020),

the Final Agreement needs still to prioritize the implementation of the points one, two

and four6. Moreover, the Kroc Institute suggest the urgent need to strengthen the

mechanisms created for verification and implementation of the 2016 Final Agreement.

It is worth noting that this Institute has created a matrix to quantify the rate of

implementation of the agreements but unfortunately Colombia has not been included

yet, furthermore it would be interesting, in methodologically terms, to have the

Colombian case analyzed through this matrix too.

2. About the End of Conflict and Transitional Justice

Out of the six points of the 2016 Final Agreement the aforementioned End of

Conflict and Agreements upon the Victims of the Conflict points are fundamental to

the Accords, their content serves as an example to others as some remarkable

aspects are included, which even if they are not implemented effectively as planned,

they are strategies worth to take into account by other peace processes to include and

rely on.

End of Conflict has three strategies to make the 2016 Final Agreement effective

to establish minimum conditions for its implementation, in this regard, the Government

and FARC agreed to a bilateral and definitive ceasefire accompanied by the weapons

withdraw of the now ex-FARC members (AFTCP, 2016). One of these strategies is

6
Ibidem.
 8

the Mechanism of Monitoring and Verification (MM&V) which was created and

conceived as a technical mechanism that would oversee the bilateral ceasefire and

the weapons withdraw, it works in a national, regional and local scale, and it is

integrated by members of both negotiating parties and two neutral actors belonging to

the UN verification mission and the CELAC countries (AFTCP, 2016).

The fifth point of the 2016 Final Agreement was all about Victims7, the

government and the FARC created the Integral System of Truth, Justice, Reparation

and No Repetition (AFTCP, 2016) oriented to guaranteeing, promoting and

reestablishing the Victims Human Rights and the clarification about the Truth of all the

situations that took place in the conflict and that had repercussions in the Victims life’s.

The mentioned System included the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (known as JEP),

which is in charge of managing the transitional justice in order to known the illegal

conducts committed within the conflict with an special focus on the most severe and

representative crimes (JEP, 2018), interestingly it has been attacked by political

detractors in many times as its main function is to judge anyone involved in conflict.

Recently the JEP has showed its effectiveness as their work regarding the

infamous ‘false positives’ cases (assassinated civilians who were presented as

guerrilla soldiers killed in combat) discovered that the actual number of Colombian

citizens victims of the ‘false positives’ conduct were not 2.249 as it was assumed but

6.402 (DW, 2021), a shocking revelation for the country, the victims’ families and the

history of conflict that has caused controversy, as most of those manslaughters

occurred during Uribe’s 2002 – 2010 presidency.

7
The 2016 Final Agreement recognizes as victims all the Colombian citizens and their families that regardless
of their origins, socioeconomic conditions or any other characteristic, were affected by the country,
considering physical and psychological harms product of actions made by the Conflict actors (AFTCP, 2016).
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3. Lessons for Israel and Palestine

As mentioned at the beginning of the present paper, both Colombian and the

Israeli - Palestine conflict have common characteristics that makes feasible that some

of the experiences of Colombia serve for a future dialogue and, hopefully, a peace

process between Israelis and Palestinians. The first shared element is the long-time

existence of the conflicts, then the use of terrorism as a form of violence and lastly that

both cases have a large number of victims which are often not taking into account in

dialogues and processes.

The first lesson is that any future initiative between Israelis and Palestinians

must include a justice compound similar to the JEP, as this will allow actors to create

fair conditions to build peace and to avoid the ‘blame game’ about who was most

harmful, as in the Colombian case much probably an Israel – Palestine JEP would be

surrounded by controversy but parties must have in mind that without the existence of

an element that guarantees justice and Human Rights fulfillment is not possible to

achieve a long-lasting peace.

A second lesson would be that both Israelis and Palestinians must evaluate if

their confrontation has already reached ripeness, by making an evaluation of their

failures and successes is possible that they notice if it is the correct time to dialogue,

this is something only possible if each party makes a conscious self-analysis, in

addition it is relevant that Israelis and Palestinians acknowledge that the armed way

is not effective in order to achieve positive conflict resolution, as seen Uribe’s term

was successful in military terms but it did not reduced violence, instead it ended up

affecting two-million Colombian citizens which became part of the victims of the

Conflict.
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Following ripeness, a third lesson – that is probably already known by Israelis

and Palestinians – is the fact that dialoguing must be backed a short, robust and

mutually agreed agenda that unavoidably should include the end of conflict, the victims

and mechanisms to effectively guarantee that all the agreements would be fulfilled by

both parties, the JEP and the MM&V are examples worth looking not only for the

mentioned middle east conflict but for anyone interested in achieving peace.

In previous dialogues and peace initiatives, the Colombian government did not

consider having a clear set agenda (and its relevant points) as the starting place to

dialogue, this could explain the constant failures that of the 1986, 1991, 1992 and

1998-1999 peace initiatives, also solidary or generous peace gestures are needed too

in order to create a comfortable environment to negotiate, just as the FARC guerilla

did when they declared a unilateral ceasefire, which later ended in the cease of

combats between the Government and the guerilla, a no minor event after 60 years of

confrontation.

Lastly, both sides should appeal to non-traditional State and non-state actors

to oversee the dialogue and the process, negotiating firstly in Oslo and then in the

Habana allowed negotiators to be isolated from local politics and from any threat that

could endanger such a fragile opportunity as dialoguing peace is. Much probably non-

traditional State and non-state actors can provide international approval and serve as

mediators which are not perceived as biased by any of the parties dialoguing. Much

more important is to have the UN Security Council support and their participation in

the first days of the conflict de-escalation. However, all of this can be successful only

if there is real will to achieve a long-lasting peace by Israelis and Palestinians.

“There is only one radical means of sanctifying human lives. Not armored plating, or tanks, or planes,

or concrete fortifications. The one radical solution is peace.” (Yitzhak Rabin in J.M., Santos, 2014)
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Conflicto y la Construcción de una Paz Estable y Duradera - Colombia.

https://www.jep.gov.co/Documents/Acuerdo%20Final/Acuerdo%20Final%20Fi

rmado.pdf

Barcelona Centre for International Affairs [CIDOB]. (2017). Dossier proceso de paz

en Colombia.

https://www.cidob.org/es/publicaciones/documentacion/dossiers/dossier_proc

eso_de_paz_en_colombia/dossier_proceso_de_paz_en_colombia/el_proceso

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Cardona, J., & González, C. (2016). Cuando Marulanda dejó la “silla vacía”. El

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Coordinadora Guerrillera Simon Bolivar. (1992). Doce Propuestas para Construir

una Estrategia de Paz. http://www.cedema.org/ver.php?id=2369

Deutsche Welle [DW]. (2021). 'Falsos positivos' en Colombia: el Tribunal de Paz los

cifra en más de seis mil. https://www.dw.com/es/falsos-positivos-en-colombia-

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Jerónimo, R. (2018). La madurez del conflicto armado en Colombia: una

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