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how to cite this chapterBiel Portero, I. & Casanova Mejía, A. C. (2019). The challenges of building a stable and lasting peace in Colombia. In Á. M. Castillo Burbano & C. A. Guerrero Martínez (comps.), Challenges and alternatives towards peacebuilding: a rural development perspective (Philippe White, Transl.) (pp. 29-53). Bogota: Ediciones UCC & Centro Editorial Uniminuto. (Original title published in 2019). https://dx.doi.org/10.16925/9789587602388

Chapter I

The challenges of building a stable and lasting peace in Colombia

Israel Biel Portero, Andrea Carolina Casanova Mejía

Abstract

Following the Final Peace Agreement, signed between the Government and the FARC-EP, Colombia faces countless challenges in order to satisfy and guarantee the rights of historically excluded and underprivileged populations in different political, economic and social contexts. Therefore, the construction of a stable and lasting peace implies rethinking not only the old structures that generate inequality and poverty in the country, but also the way of understanding justice and reconciliation. In this sense, this chapter aims to review transitional justice as a set of instruments and mechanisms aimed at promoting such transformations, identifying in turn the major developments and particular challenges of the department of Nariño.

Keywords: armed conflict, peace agreement, transitional justice, human rights and rural development.

Resumen

Tras el Acuerdo Final de Paz suscrito entre el Gobierno y las FARC-EP, Colombia se enfrenta a un sinnúmero de desafíos para satisfacer y garantizar los derechos de poblaciones históricamente excluidas y vulneradas en los diferentes contextos políticos, económicos y sociales. Por eso, la construcción de una paz estable y duradera implica repensar, no solo las viejas estructuras generadoras de desigualdad y pobreza en el país, sino también el modo de entender la justicia y la reconciliación. En este sentido, el presente capítulo tiene como objetivo realizar un acercamiento a la justicia transicional como un conjunto de instrumentos y mecanismos dirigidos a promover dichas trasformaciones, identificando a su vez los principales avances y retos concretos del departamento de Nariño.

Palabras clave: conflicto armado, acuerdo de paz, justicia transicional, derechos humanos y desarrollo rural.

Introduction

The guarantee of success from the negotiated exit to the armed conflict in Colombia requires a rigorous analysis of the factors that explain its origin, its temporary extension and its complexity. If the problems and circumstances that motivated and intensified the armed confrontation are not addressed and corrected, it will be very difficult to achieve a peace that is stable and lasting. Thus, when analyzing the challenges of peacebuilding in Colombia, one inevitably refers to the processes involved in the transformation of land use and tenure, to the opening of real spaces of political and citizen participation, to the satisfaction and guarantee of the rights of victims, those who have suffered serious violations of their human rights or where infractions of International Humanitarian Law have taken place and, especially, to the set of instruments and mechanisms of transitional justice that will boost the transformation of a society moving from war to peace.

The armed conflict has been experienced in a very heterogeneous way throughout the national territory. Rural areas have been more affected than urban areas and some departments have suffered the dynamics of war more than others. Nariño has been one of the territories most affected by violence. Its geographical conditions have made the department a strategic point of the armed conflict. The concurrence of all armed actors in the conflict and the entrenched presence of drug trafficking, combined with the poverty and structural inequalities within the region, configure Nariño as an enclave of extreme vulnerability.

This chapter aims to present a systematic analysis of the antecedents of the armed conflict from a regional perspective, its political, economic and social repercussions, as well as the post-conflict challenges of peacebuilding through a transitional justice process.

The political and agrarian dispute: background to the armed conflict in Colombia

Colombia has seen more than half a century of continuous armed violence, albeit with varying intensity. The longevity of the conflict has also transformed the actors involved, the strategies used and the ways of conducting the war; factors that when combined, directly affect the different degrees and modalities of victimization.

The Colombian war is not exclusively a war of combatants. In its modalities and dynamics, it has been generating what could be defined as a process of outsourcing its impacts, since it has increasingly affected non-belligerent actors; mainly the civilian population. Nor is it a clean war or, at least, it can been disputed under the mandates of International Humanitarian Law. The prolongation and degradation of the violence used by the armed actors broke the ethical and legal limits of the war, exposing one of the characteristic features of the Colombian conflict; the tendency to indiscriminately choose methods and targets.

If we delve into the roots of this problem, a critical reading of the history of Colombia as a nation shows that, since its inception, the country has lived in a permanent state of conflict due –essentially– to two factors; the political power dispute and the control of the land and its natural resources.

Power and political participation

The constant limitations to democracy have been an incentive for the prolongation of the conflict. These are manifested in actions of state power that materialize in restrictive forms of political and citizen participation, protest and dissent, carried out through legitimate and illegitimate measures, as well as under the configuration of long derogation periods that lasted until the expedition of the current Political Constitution of 1991; circumstances that resulted in the decrease of individual rights and freedoms of citizens.

As a consequence of the political power dispute and the traditional competition between the elites, we witnessed the persecution and murder of presidential candidates, the privatization of public corporations, the extermination of social movements, raids, detentions, torture and disappearances, among other crimes committed under the shadow of constant disagreement between liberals and conservatives. But it was not until the murder of the liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, in April 1948, when the deepest differences between the two traditional political parties emerged, giving rise to the first guerrilla movements. These were initially sponsored by the liberal party as an armed response to the abuses of the conservative government of Laureano Gómez who, supported by military forces and some ecclesiastical sectors, had implemented a policy of extermination of the opposing party during the historical period known as “La Violencia” or “The Violence”.

However, the desire for power of both parties led to the liberal leaders, having fled the country before the conservative harassment in the toughest stage of La Violencia, making an agreement with Laureano Gómez and his party to form the coalition of the “Frente Nacional” or “National Front” and relieve the de facto president, General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, from power. And so, a new political period of equitable distribution of power between liberals and conservatives began, replacing the previous efforts and achievements of pacifists, in large part, by social and guerrilla movements.

The guerrilla leaders that survived this period considered the agreed upon terms as a betrayal by the liberal chiefs, so they reoriented their discourse as liberal guerrillas towards Marxist ideas –encouraged, in turn, by the triumph of the Cuban Revolution– and began to nurture the prospect of taking power by force and defeating the government in power. They were especially motivated by their main objective; of ending the pact between liberals and conservatives, which had excluded them from any possibility of political participation within the State.

The dominant concept –from which power was approached, the conflict originated and the insurgency inspired– was based on the binary ideological schemes associated with the context of the East-West conflict, ignoring the diagnoses of the underlying social problems. This was a position shared by both private unions and the Government.

For example:

The military treatment given to the guerrilla movement was the same as that given to social protest, which was criminalized. The issuance of the “Estatuto de Seguridad” or “Security Statute” by the Turbay government, promulgated by Decree 1923 of September 6th, 1978, is proof of this. Through this statute, the military was granted the power to judge the common crimes of civilians, rendering the application of Habeas Corpus useless. (López, 1999, p. 1405).

Concurrent to the strengthening of the insurgency and the escalation of the armed conflict, drug trafficking appeared as a phenomenon that, although not a root cause of the conflict, has been one of the main causes of its intensification and aggravation. Drug trafficking, especially linked to the cultivation of coca and the production and export of cocaine, permeated all the social and political structures of the State. It brought with it almost unlimited resources, which resulted in an expansion and resurgence of the conflict that almost ended the State itself. (Vacas, 2015, p. 80).

Thus, in light of the attacks by different guerrilla groups on drug traffickers, emerald miners and cattle ranchers, particularly, under the government of Ernesto Samper, the go-ahead was given for the creation of the Convivir, Rural Security Cooperatives of a private nature in charge of informing agents of the State on the presence of guerrillas. These cooperatives eventually became the “Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia” or “United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia”, a paramilitary organization that, with the support of the “lords and landowners” was constituted as the largest criminal structure that ever existed in the country, turning the nineties and part of the new century into one of the most bloodthirsty and violent periods in Colombia’s history.

Both guerrillas and paramilitaries have instrumentalized the institutions and mechanisms of democracy according to their interests; not only the elections, but also the spaces for social participation, protest and social movements, such as community boards or unions. Both have violently punished the gestures of autonomy made by communities and social leaders. Democracy has been seen by all armed actors as both a positioning opportunity and, in turn, a threat to their war plans. Thus, the different forms of struggle have been combined, dangerously mixing war and politics. Therefore, from this perspective, the great victim of this conflict has been democracy itself (Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2013, p. 52).

Armed conflict and land control

Together with political control, the agrarian question constitutes one of the central axes of the Colombian armed conflict. In the opinion of the “Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica” or “National Historical Memory Center”:

It is not only because the land remains an unfulfilled promise for a large part of the rural population, but also because until the Peace Accords are signed, there is a state deficit in the countryside and a strong, firmly rooted presence of armed groups that today have found adequate space for the exercise of illicit activities, such as drug trafficking, in the rural sector. (Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2013, p. 49).

The land problem is not a recent issue, but instead has been brewing from the nineteenth century through to the present day. The land issue has been determined by different political, institutional and legislative actions over the different historical periods, and characterized by a common denominator; the continuance of the concentration of agricultural property in the hands of a minority, which is the main cause of the serious situation of poverty and social inequality that characterizes Colombia, especially in rural areas.

There are three fundamental periods to understanding the worsening of this conflict. The first, from the end of the 19th century until 1958, where the result of the Thousand Days’ War and the promulgation of the Political Constitution of 1886, consolidated a national project in which the elites held power, leaving out the rest of society. This caused a social upheaval, promoted mainly by the “campesino”1 population, who saw how wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few, resulting in conflicts between large landowners and smallholders. This occurred under the influence of three major crises: the demographic, which affected the balance between the population and natural resources, the opening of the land market and the integration of campesino production into trade channels, and the crisis of authority, which weakened the power of traditional elites and dislocated the mechanisms of domination (Bejarano, 1985).

In order to resolve such a conflict, Law 114 of 1922 authorized, for the first time, the creation of agricultural settlements under a policy of colonization of barren lands. With this, the role of the State was directed in two ways: to standardize certain guidelines to –apparently– favor the campesinos in need of land; and at the same time, use force mechanisms to prevent said population from taking over the land they cultivated. Thus, the institutional response to the demands of the campesinos oscillated between a policy of the allocation of plots with compensation to the landowners and a strong repression of the mobilized campesino population.

Subsequently, with the arrival to power of liberalism, the strengthening of the nascent Communist Party and the appearance of important figures such as Gaitán, Law 22 of 1936 was issued, which in practice upheld the economic, political and social power of the landowner, granting a new legitimacy to private ownership whilst not necessarily democratizing land tenure.

The second period is determined by the plans of the Frente Nacional, in which Carlos Lleras Restrepo, president at that time, in order to end the unproductive estates of the landowners, proposed a new agrarian reform, stimulating the organization of the campesino population. This was consolidated through Law 135 of 1961 which allowed the use of strong mechanisms, such as land consolidation, to provide “Unidades Agrícolas Familiares” or “Household Farming Units” to smallholders affecting privately owned land, nearby and close to the smallholding areas, whatever their degree of exploitation (Villamil, 2015, p. 10). Despite the measures taken, in 1972, a coalition of large landowners, threatened by the empowerment of campesino organizations, prompted the “Pact of Chicoral” with the support of the National Government and the dominant political parties. This later became Law 4 of 1973, which prevented the legal structure of land tenure from being modified for the benefit of the Colombian campesinos, thus halting said reform.

Under similar circumstances, during the eighties, due to the expansion of the agrarian frontier:

Thousands of settlers arrived in remote and forgotten jungle areas, driven by the coffee crisis and the rise of agribusiness, mining, oil and coca. In these regions of recent colonization, the state presence had been very weak, resulting in armed groups, guerrillas to begin with and then also paramilitaries, taking their place. This in turn aggravated the economic opening processes promoted at the beginning of the nineties. (Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2013, p. 53).

Finally, the third period is the one characterized by the agrarian reform of 1994, established with Law 160. This law focused on establishing a mechanism to affect the agrarian structure through the redistribution of land by trade, that is, through the direct purchase of land by campesinos, partially subsidized by the State and mediated by the institutional action of the “Instituto Colombiano de la Reforma Agraria” (Incora) or the “Colombian Institute of Agrarian Reform”. However, this did not mean true redistribution, nor was the increasing dispossession and displacement caused by the armed conflict taken into account (Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2013, p. 50).

In this sense, the same laws that should have favored the campesinos, turned out to be those that secured the landowner in the tenure of the land, which, together with the disappointment of the campesinos, ended up worsening conflicts over land. As Alfredo Molano puts it, “Law 200 is the axis around which agrarian conflicts have revolved since the armed struggle took root” (2015, p. 9), because not remedying the high levels of land tenure inequality and not providing legal settings that facilitate access to it, has led campesinos to continue fighting for the dream of agrarian reform, even if that means fighting with weapons (Pineda, 2016, p. 19).

Peace processes in Colombia: the intent and the reality of an effective agreement

The internal armed conflict, since its inception, has had a serious effect on social and institutional structures, prompting several governments to try and establish channels of dialogue with belligerent groups. These processes, although with varied interests and scope, failed to successfully consolidate a path to peacebuilding. They did, however, contribute to the identification of stakeholders, contexts, routes and, above all, generate lessons for the consolidation of the current peace process.

Thus, tradition in the face of negotiations has long been a part of the country’s history, dating back to the fifties where, after the coup d’état of General Rojas Pinilla, two initiatives to cancel the violence arose. The first of these was aimed at granting amnesty for the campesinos and day laborers aligned with the liberal guerrillas; and the second, was derived from the partisan agreement of traditional political groups that gave rise to the National Front. However, the exclusionary nature of these agreements and the lack of State protection for the nascent organizations and mobilizations prevented the initially established objective from being achieved.

Once the armed conflict intensified, with the appearance of new participants in the eighties, the Governments of Belisario Betancur and Virgilio Barco proposed a series of initiatives aimed at negotiation.

The government of Belisario Betancur foresaw, given the crisis of legitimacy of the institutional order, that it was urgent to make progress towards a political solution. In this way, they started by recognizing the political nature of the guerrillas and with that, opted for a proposal that combined direct dialogue with the armed groups and an impetus to reforms that would take the social problem into account. The first one was performed with a policy of political openness and amnesty for the armed groups, and the second, connected with other social programs with the national rehabilitation program. (López, 1999, p.249).

This was reflected in the signing of the first ceasefire agreement with the FARC-EP, the M-19 and the EPL, as well as in the creation of the “Unión Patriótica” or “Patriotic Union” as a political party. However, the breach of the agreements by the Government, the absence of guarantees to exercise a political opposition, the continuous attacks on the civilian population and the actions of the paramilitary groups, resulted in the signed agreements not culminating satisfactorily (García-Durán, 2010). Despite this, the Betancur period laid the foundations for future negotiations, helping to change perceptions about the guerrilla problem and the need to articulate dialogue with reforms (López, 1999, p. 250).

For its part, the government of Virgilio Barco adhered to the “outstretched and firm hand” formula, a strategy oriented both towards negotiations with guerrilla movements and to actions to counteract the objective causes of violence (López, 1999, p. 250). Its mandate was marked by the creation of the Coordinadora Guerrillera Simón Bolívar, made up of the FARC, ELN, M-19, PRT and the Quintín Lame movement, which aimed to unify the guerrilla movement in its political, military and organizational aspects to design a road map for the signing of a peace agreement. However, this initiative failed to consolidate, because years later the M-19 and part of the EPL signed a peace agreement with the Government with the other guerrilla groups being left out of that agreement.

The nineties, with an air of renewal derived from the “Asamblea Nacional Constituyente” or “National Constituent Assembly” and the transition to the “Estado Social de Derecho” or “Social State of Law”, was characterized by two scenarios: one, featuring various negotiations and demobilizations of armed actors and, the other, marked with the intensifying of the armed struggle and increased levels of military persecution by the State. Among the various negotiations and pacts of this stage, some of the more notable include the signing of peace agreements with: the PRT, the Armed Indigenous Movement “Quintín Lame”, a fraction of the ELN and another part of the EPL. There were also peace negotiations, albeit fruitless, with the Simón Bolívar Guerrilla Coordinating Board in Tlaxcala, Mexico, during the presidential term of César Gaviria and with the ELN and EPL during the term of Ernesto Samper. With Andrés Pastrana, new formal negotiations were initiated with the FARC in the Caguán peace process, as will be seen below. In the first decade of the 21st century, the dialogues with the armed groups took a new direction, as approaches and negotiations during the administration of Álvaro Uribe were held with paramilitary groups instead of with the still active guerrilla movements –mainly the FARC-EP and ELN–. As a result of this process, the Ralito Agreement was consolidated, which achieved the demobilization of several paramilitary structures.

Peacebuilding in Colombia

After more than half a century of armed confrontation and failed negotiations with the FARC-EP, a new process has been initiated in Colombia, aimed at building a stable and lasting peace involving structural reforms not addressed in previous processes. It is therefore essential to articulate the transitional justice mechanisms proposed in the Peace Agreement together with the existing state institutions. The successful implementation of the Agreement, which will surely be complicated and extensive, will depend to a large extent on ensuring the realization of the rights afforded to the victims of the armed conflict.

Transitional justice processes

The transition from war to peace is a complex process, especially in countries where, like Colombia, the armed conflict has been ongoing for such an extensive period of time. Transitional justice processes are those:

through which radical transformations of a social and political order are made; either by the passage of a dictatorial regime to a democratic one, or by the end of an internal armed conflict and the achievement of peace. Transitional justice processes encounter important dilemmas, all originating in the complex need to balance the conflicting objectives of justice and peace. (Uprimny, 2006, p. 13).

In his report “The rule of law and transitional justice in societies that suffer or have suffered conflicts”, the Secretary General of the United Nations defined transitional justice as,

the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempts to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses, in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation. These may include both judicial and non-judicial mechanisms, with differing levels of international involvement (or none at all) and individual prosecutions, reparations, truth-seeking, institutional reform, vetting and dismissals, or a combination thereof. (ONU, doc. S/2004/616, 2004, para. 8).

Thus, transitional justice is not a special form of justice, but a strategy –composed of multiple mechanisms– for the realization of the rights to justice, truth, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition in a context of serious violations of human rights and International Humanitarian Law.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur, on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, stated that the areas of action that make up transitional justice all serve the ultimate end of pursuing justice, which in a less abstract functional analysis implies the achievement of two mediate goals: providing recognition to victims and fostering trust; and two final goals: contributing to reconciliation and strengthening the rule of law (ONU, doc. A/HRC/21/46, 2012, para. 21).

For such purposes there is no definitive model of transitional justice, but, according to internationally established norms, each State adopts its own according to its context, particularities and needs. What transitional justice processes do have in common, especially in their most recent developments, is a transformative vocation, since they aspire to be one of the basic mechanisms to guarantee the construction of a stable and lasting peace on the basis of respect and guaranteeing the rights of the victims. Therefore, our Constitutional Court has recognized the importance of weighing the obligations and rights of the State in a transitional justice process,

in order to achieve a balance between constitutional rights to justice and peace, with the understanding that neither is absolute and that, in transnational justice contexts, the right to justice can be modulated to harmonize it with the effectiveness of other rights and the fulfillment of the duties of the State, such as peace, reparation for victims or the attainment of the truth. (Corte Constitucional, 2014).

The Peace Agreement with the FARC-EP

After the demobilization of some of the guerrilla groups, such as the M-19, and except for some redoubts of former insurrection movements, only the two strongest guerrilla groups have remained active in recent years: the FARC and the ELN.

The FARC-EP, which was born in 1964 as an insurgent group of campesino origin with the purpose of accessing power through the revolution, intensified its methods and means of combat over the years, until it became a large military structure with an increasingly offensive focus. There were two firm attempts to achieve a negotiated peace between the FARC and the State before reaching the final agreement. The first, in 1984, with the signing of a ceasefire with President Belisario Betancur. The second, known as the Caguán peace process, began in 1998 with President Andrés Pastrana, and consisted of a failed negotiation without a ceasefire.

In 2012, after a phase of exploratory dialogues, President Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC announced the beginning of a new peace process. During several years of formal negotiations in Havana, the different points of an agenda, established under the principle that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”, were discussed. On September 26th, 2016, the Government of Colombia and the FARC-EP signed the Final Peace Agreement. However, this agreement was rejected on October 2nd in the referendum convened by the Government for its endorsement. The two negotiating parties readjusted several sections of the text in order to obtain a new agreement, which was signed on November 24th of the same year. Next, the “Congreso de la República” or “Congress of the Republic” endorsed the definitive agreement or the “Acuerdo Final para la Terminación del Conflicto y la Construcción de una Paz Estable y Duradera”.

In addition to ending the armed confrontation definitively, the Agreement aims to build a stable and lasting peace by initiating,

a transition phase that contributes to a greater integration of our territories, a greater social inclusion –especially for those who have lived outside the sphere of development and have suffered the conflict– and a strengthening of our democracy so that it may be deployed throughout the national territory and ensure that social conflicts are processed through institutional channels, with full guarantees for those who participate in politics. (Acuerdo Final para la Terminación del Conflicto y la Construcción de una Paz Estable y Duradera, 2016, p. 6).

The Peace Agreement is organized into six points on which the transformations, necessary to build peace in Colombia, are articulated. Point 1 (“Comprehensive Rural Reform”) is oriented towards the structural transformation of the countryside, favoring access and use of the land, improving conditions for the rural population and reducing poverty. The purpose of Point 2 (“Political participation: democratic openness for peacebuilding”) is to expand and strengthen democracy, opening spaces to new political actors and promoting citizen participation in decision making. Point 3 (“Ceasefire and bilateral and definitive abandonment of hostilities and weapons”) establishes the terms for the cease-fire and bilateral and definitive abandonment of hostilities, the abandonment of weapons by the FARC, the creation of the “Zonas Veredales Transitorias de Normalización” or “Transitional Normalization Zones” and the conditions for the reintegration of the demobilized guerrillas into society, all under the supervision of a monitoring and verification mechanism. Point 4 (“Solution to the problem of illicit drugs”) is dedicated to the fight against drug trafficking, as well as the promotion of the voluntary substitution of illicit crops and the transformation of the affected territories with a focus on rural development. In Point 5 (“Victims”), which is one of the central axes of the Agreement, the Integral System of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-Recurrence is established, which is composed of different judicial and extrajudicial mechanisms of transitional justice, including the “Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz” (JEP) or “Special Court for Peace”, the “Comisión de la Verdad” or “Truth Commission”, the “Unidad de Búsqueda de Desaparecidos” or “Missing Persons Search Unit”, as well as a set of comprehensive repair measures and guarantees of non-recurrence. Finally, Point 6 (“Implementation and verification mechanisms”) establishes various mechanisms for monitoring and verifying compliance with the Agreement in order to ensure its effective implementation.

The rights of the victims of the armed conflict

Victims of international crimes, or other serious human rights violations, play an increasingly central role in transitional justice processes, because without their recognition and participation, a peace that is real, stable and lasting can hardly be achieved. In the field of transitional justice, we have advanced from a model focused on crimes against human rights and International Humanitarian Law and their perpetrators, towards another based on the victims of these crimes and their rights. Thus, in the transitional justice processes, especially in recent stages, restorative approaches to justice –focused on the victim and their reparation– prevail over retributive approaches –focused on the offender and their punishment–.

In the international arena, the most widely accepted definition of victim is the one compiled in the basic principles and guidelines on the right to a remedy and reparation for victims of gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law, approved by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005. According to Paragraph 10:

victims are persons who have individually or collectively suffered harm, including physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, economic loss or substantial impairment of their fundamental rights, through acts or omissions that constitute gross violations of international human rights law, or serious violations of international humanitarian law. Where appropriate, and in accordance with domestic law, the term “victim” also includes the immediate family or dependents of the direct victim and persons who have suffered harm in intervening to assist victims in distress or to prevent victimization. (ONU, doc. A/RES/60/147, 2005, para. 10).

This definition served as a reference for Law 1448 of 2011, known as the “Ley de Víctimas y Restitución de Tierras” or “Victims and Land Restitution Law”, establishing the concept of victim at the national level. However, with regards to the internal armed conflict, Article 3 of this law limits the recognition of a victim to events that occurred only after January 1st, 1985.

Different international standards have established the essential guarantees of those people that have suffered damages as a result of serious violations of their human rights or violations of International Humanitarian Law. These guarantees, known as victims’ rights, can essentially be broken down into three categories: truth, justice and reparation. The right to the truth implies the right to know the truth of what happened, which includes: who committed the acts, under what circumstances and for what reasons they were committed. The right to justice is the right for the State to investigate, prosecute and, if appropriate, punish those responsible for the acts in proportion to the damage caused. The right to reparation is the right of the victim to be fully compensated for the damage suffered. Reparation, which can be individual or collective, can be carried out in various ways, mainly through measures of restitution, compensation, rehabilitation or satisfaction. The establishment of guarantees of non-recurrence, which was originally conceived as a means of reparation, has been configured over time as an autonomous right to adopt the necessary measures, including structural or institutional transformations, to prevent the victimizing acts from reoccurring.

These basic rights of the victims have been recognized internally by the different States that make up the international community. In the Colombian case, not only have they been recognized and established both normatively and jurisprudentially, but they occupy a central place in the Peace Agreement. Indeed, it is in the contexts of transitional justice that the rights of the victims acquire their full meaning, since these rights are precisely the pillars on which the peace process is built.

The post-conflict challenges

Far from being the final objective of the Peace Agreement, the disarmament and demobilization of the FARC are merely the starting point in the process that is beginning to develop. To achieve national reconciliation, allowing for a peaceful coexistence in Colombia, great efforts are required on behalf of all the belligerents of the conflict and the rest of society. To ensure that the conflict does not recur, structural reforms will be necessary to address the problems that caused and exacerbated it. However, there will be many difficulties that will have to be faced during this process.

Achievements and difficulties in the implementation of the Peace Agreement

One of the greatest achievements with the implementation of the Agreement has been the abandonment of weapons by the FARC. Disarmament occurred in a particularly short period of time and in a number that exceeded expectations. Next, came the extrication of the former guerrillas and their process of reincorporation into civilian life. This reincorporation was especially successful in the political sphere, since the “Fuerza Revolucionaria Alternativa del Común” (FARC) political party was formed, which will be represented in Congress. Today the FARC has ceased to exist as a guerrilla organization, the number of victims has fallen dramatically and the indicators of violence are, globally, the lowest in recent decades.

Significant progress has also been made in mine clearance tasks, as interventions have already been carried out on more than half of the country’s mined territory. In the legislative field, more than a hundred norms have been approved, including several constitutional reforms, aimed at regulating and executing concrete measures to implement the agreements. Some institutions, such as the Truth Commission, the Missing Persons Search Unit and the Special Court for Peace, are in the process of organization and structuring. It is true that they are not yet fully operational, but it is also true that we are at a very early stage of the post-conflict.

However, many significant challenges still face the peace process. One of the main problems has been the constant breach by the Government of its obligations in the Agreement, as verified by various national and international supervisors (Comisión Internacional de Verificación de Derechos Humanos en Colombia, 2018; Fundación Paz y Reconciliación, 2018a). Regarding the point of “Comprehensive Rural Reform”, there are significant delays due to the lack of coordination and resources, derived fundamentally from the absence of a CONPES document. Thus, there are still no concrete plans for rural development and the Land Fund only has 200,000 hectares of the three million planned. There are also setbacks with regards to the point on illicit crops, as the success of the voluntary substitution programs depends largely on the “Planes de Desarrollo con Enfoque Territorial” (PDET) or “Development Plans with a Territorial Focus”, whose implementation is experiencing serious difficulties.

Since the signing of the Peace Agreement, the “Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz” (JEP) or “Special Court for Peace”, has had to face numerous obstacles and difficulties that have conditioned and limited its proper functioning. Along with the absence of legislative will to regulate its code of procedure, the substantive reforms promised by President Iván Duque have generated great uncertainty regarding its near future.

In addition to the weakness and lack of coordination of the institutional architecture for post-conflict (International Commission for the Verification of Human Rights in Colombia, 2018), there has been a very worrying rise in paramilitary activities and criminal gangs in the regions, as well as the terrible increase in selective killings of community leaders and human rights defenders (Fundación Paz y Reconciliación, 2018a).

The “Zonas Veredales Transitorias de Normalización”

The Peace Agreement foresaw the need for the creation of several “Zonas Veredales Transitorias de Normalización” (ZVTN) or “Transitional Normalization Zones”, and “Puntos Transitorios de Normalización” (PTN) or “Transitional Normalization Spots” in the national territory. These are temporary and transitory areas, defined, delimited and agreed upon by the National Government and the FARC, to carry out the process of leaving arms and beginning the guerrilla group’s transition to legality.

As established in Point 3.1.4.1 of the Agreement, the location of the ZVTN would be agreed upon by both parties and would feature ease of access by road or river. Its limits would correspond to those of the village where they were located and would be of reasonable size so as to allow monitoring and verification by the Monitoring and Verification Mechanism and the fulfillment of the objectives of the ZVTN, with the references of these limits being more specifically anchored to geographical features or characteristics of the local terrain.

In the department of Nariño, two ZVTN were established: one in Policarpa and the other in Tumaco. Although the municipality of Policarpa is located in Andean territory and that of Tumaco on the Pacific coast, both territories had two important factors in common; high rates of violence derived from the armed conflict with a constant presence of armed actors, and a high percentage of their inhabitants economically dependent on the cultivation of illicit crops –basically coca– or other activities linked to drug trafficking. These elements, together with conditions of poverty and the absence of effective state control, made them two particularly complex territories.

After a pre-grouping period, the guerrillas moved towards the two ZVTN in January 2017. In both areas, the basic infrastructure was found to be severely inadequate for the task at hand, which affected the minimum living and safety conditions of the ex-combatants. Under the supervision of the Tripartite Monitoring and Verification Mechanism, they remained there carrying out the essential task of adaptation until the conversion of the ZVTN into “Espacios Territoriales de Capacitación y Reincorporación” (ETCR) or “Territorial Spaces for Training and Reincorporation”.

Currently, very few of those remain, as the serious breach by the State of many of its commitments in these territories has prompted a high percentage of the demobilized guerrillas to abandon them. Some went to other areas, others reintegrated into their communities of origin, while a significant number defected or joined some of the criminal organizations present in the areas. In Tumaco, those who remain are still not assured of conditions that cover their basic needs and in Policarpa, the ETCR no longer exists.

The difficult challenge of Nariño

The internal armed conflict has left innumerable victims and unhealed wounds throughout the territory that impede putting an end to the cycle of violence. According to data from the “Registro Único de Victimas” (2018) or “Single Registry of Victims”, there are more than 8,500,000 people registered as victims of the conflict, of which more than 350,000 correspond to the department of Nariño, representing 23% of the department’s total population. This data shows evidence of a thorny issue: a quarter of the Nariñense population are or have been victims of the internal armed conflict.

The victims in the general regional context, and Nariño in particular, are mostly indigenous, Afro-descendant and campesino populations. While it is true that ethnic communities have formally been allocated a special protection of their rights, they have substantively been victims of their systematic violations. The State has repudiated its responsibility over them and, in most cases, they have suffered double victimization, since their basic needs and the violations of their rights have been ignored.

Hence, it is necessary to reconsider, not only at the national level but also from the regional institutional sphere, what should be the proper treatment of the victims in order to avoid their revictimization, tending to the reparation of their rights in an integral way so that not only their condition as victims, but also the historical, economic and political factors that placed them at a disadvantage, compared to other groups within the population, are taken into account. Therefore, talking about the rights of victims and their reparation necessarily implies an intersectional approach.

In addition to the above, despite the fact that the FARC-EP abandoned their arms and began its process of reintegration into civilian life, there have been other armed groups of paramilitary origin, together with criminal gangs and foreign cartels, who are contesting territorial control, especially in relation to drug trafficking. In the absence of territorial control exercised by the FARC, the conflict has intensified. With this, the number of victims in the regions near the Pacific has increased, in contrast to the situation in other territories of the country where this number has decreased. As the “Fundación Paz y Reconciliación” or “Peace and Reconciliation Foundation” points out, one of the most relevant indicators, when analyzing the security conditions in the post-conflict stage, is the number and rate of homicides. It can be observed that in the four main cities and the rest of the country there was a decrease from year to year, while they have risen slightly in post-conflict areas (2018a).

Finally, in a transversal manner to all the problems addressed, we must mention the stagnation of the productive processes and rural development in the regions. Due to the dynamics of the conflict, many communities have had to continue their productive economy with illicit crops. When they have refused to obey the requirements of armed actors in this regard, they have been arbitrarily deprived of their territories. Institutional abandonment, coupled with the threat of illegal actors, has increased their situation of vulnerability and marginalization in the countryside.

It is necessary for the State to implement policies that allow for the recovery of fallow lands, the imposition of progressive tax burdens and the arrangement of land for its distribution among those with fewer resources within the rural population, for which the formalization of property rights, with mechanisms that prevent their appropriation illegally, is essential. Development must be planned in the territories, strategies built from the bottom up, campesinos must organize the settlements, which requires an institutional redesign that allows for the dream of a countryside at peace where social justice is fulfilled (PNUD, 2012).

Against this backdrop, we can identify some especially urgent challenges. First, it is necessary to implement a comprehensive rural reform that promotes the development of the regions, contributing to reducing inequality and poverty gaps. Second, an execution of measures aimed at the disarticulation of networks that promote illicit activities based on drug trafficking, as well as the structuring of a true and effective policy for the substitution of illicit crops, is urgently needed. Third, urgent attention should be given to the paramilitary phenomenon and to act against the increase in selective killings within the communities that occupy the post-conflict territories. And fourth, none of this can be truly robust without the prompt implementation and complete regulation of the JEP, whose main function will be to ensure the rights of the victims. In order to address these challenges, a real political commitment is needed, mainly aimed at recognizing the importance of these territories and their inhabitants, the need to make a greater investment in different spheres, such as education, health and employment, a drive to promote infrastructure, a greater institutional presence and rethinking the function of the land according to constitutional parameters.

Conclusions

In Colombia, especially in rural territories, conflicts associated with land use and tenure and the difficulties associated with decision-making have been catalyzing factors for the violence derived from the internal armed conflict. These have also contributed to widening the inequality and poverty gap. The department of Nariño has not been exempt from such consequences, since more than half of its population is located in rural areas.

With the signing of the “Final Agreement for the End of Conflict and the Construction of a Stable and Lasting Peace”, a transitional justice process has begun on which the post-conflict must be founded. After the disarmament and demobilization of the FARC, there are three great pillars for the construction of a stable and lasting peace. The first, the question of the Colombian countryside, which requires a comprehensive rural reform and a solution to the problems of illicit drugs. The second, the transformation of armed confrontation into political discussion, as well as the opening of democratic spaces. And, thirdly, the rights of the victims, which are structured around a system of judicial and extrajudicial mechanisms aimed at guaranteeing truth, reparation, justice and non-recurrence.

Progress in the implementation of the Agreement has been accompanied by great difficulties and setbacks. Although the victimizing events decreased significantly in much of the country, in some areas, the social dynamics derived from the conflict have experienced serious complications. This is the case of Nariño, where violence has escalated and the murder rate shows a worrying upward trend. The quantity of crops for illicit use has increased in the Nariñense fields, with the voluntary replacement programs not having flourished to the desired extent. It is important to rethink the strategies for this region and, among other measures, increase public investment, state presence, access to resources and productive projects, as well as promote accompaniment and technical advice. The construction of a stable and lasting territorial peace involves urgently and comprehensively addressing these challenges.

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1 The word “campesino” is used in the Colombian context to describe the rural population who work the land (including their families); land which they rarely own. The closest interpretation for the word is “peasant” but, given its loose and sometimes derogatory application, the word campesino will continue to be used in this book.