Читать книгу Empresas en el Conflicto Armado : Aportes a la Construcción de la paz en Colombia - Mary Martin Beth - Страница 39

In 2016 the Colombian government signed a peace agreement with the left-wing Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) rebel movement, thus ending a 50-year conflict which had led to over 220,000 deaths, thousands more casualties, and over five million people uprooted from their homes¹³. A prominent aspect of the process initiated by this accord –Havana agreement– was that private companies were invited to become partners in implementing the peace process and participate in delivering social goods and construction programmes to underpin the post-conflict transition.

This section examines private sector engagement in the Colombian peace process, arguing that it is an example of mobilising private sector action, and in particular how business interacts with government and civil society actors to deliver dimensions of peacebuilding referred to in the previous section. The aim of this part of the chapter is to understand the roles that companies can play as social and crisis-response actors considering the Colombian case, and draw the implications for both public policy and business practice within a changing ethics of corporate responsibility, as proposed by normative frameworks including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the discourse on business and human rights (BHR).

The empirical findings are based on research carried out in 2018-19 with Colombian and international companies operating in Colombia. They suggest that business is capable of merging social impact activities with traditional corporate philanthropy to meet an enhanced need for public goods, including peace itself. In doing so, it formulates hitherto unforeseen roles and types of interaction with the government. The peace agreement represented an opening for private sector implementation of proactive strategies towards local populations. It presented two dynamics at play: firstly, a policy impulse, and how the private sector responded to the opportunities and challenges the 2016 peace process presented. This section examines these dynamics and highlights a push-me-pull-you phenomenon in which initiatives by both business and government were equally important and synchronic. The salience of institutional structures and policy signals on the part of government actors indicates that the potential of the private sector as a peacebuilding actor cannot be seen in isolation, but that it requires appropriate mechanisms and government action to leverage the full range of contributions that companies can offer.