The peace agreement agreed upon by the Government of Colombia and the former FARC guerrilla on November 24, 2016 has crossed the middle of a 15-year horizon drawn up for its implementation; a road of bumps and climbs. The respite that came with the signing at the Teatro Colón in Bogotá, sealed with a handshake between the then President of the Republic, Juan Manuel Santos, and the last commander of the subversive group, Rodrigo Londoño —known by the alias Timochenko before making the leap to a life without weapons—has contracted.
The country faces a new climate of violence, especially in the territories where dissident groups, such as the Central General Staff, and other illegal organizations, such as the ELN – the last armed guerrilla – and the Clan del Golfo – a group of former paramilitaries associated to drug trafficking, which dominates the illegal passage of migrants through the Darién Gap – strengthened and dispersed like ants in the years after the demobilization of a majority of FARC members.
The kidnapping figures are similar to those of a decade ago, when what was considered the largest irregular army in Colombia still existed. In areas far from the gaze of central power, communities face forced displacement, confinement and extortion. Only between Monday and Wednesday of this week, five massacres and two murders of social leaders once again showed that reality, which for a time seemed to be the misfortune of the past. Before the wounds of more than half a century of conflict heal, more have been opened.
In municipalities such as Cartagena del Chairá (Caquetá) or Tibú (Norte de Santander), in the Catatumbo region, the main enclave of coca crops in the border area with Venezuela, mayors have had to govern from exile due to threats. The indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations have also continued to bear the burden of the war. The vice president France Marquez recognized that it is necessary to achieve more concrete achievements in the ethnic chapter of the peace agreement.
The current x-ray of the conflict has as a background an implementation with timid and questionable progress in the Government of former President Iván Duque, Santos’ successor. Seven years after the signing with the FARC, President Gustavo Petro, the first left-wing president in contemporary Colombia, faces serious challenges in accelerating comprehensive rural reform and materializing the shift in drug policy that he defends, two of the central points of the text.
Both challenges intersect with the obstinacy for total peace, the simultaneous negotiation with multiple illegal armed groups and criminal gangs that has had little progress and many setbacks, as reflected by the recent dismissal of the peace commissioner, Danilo Rueda.
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The lack of equitable access to land is the cause of the armed conflict that has taken deeper root in Colombia and embodies one of the biggest gaps in the implementation of the agreement. The document contemplates a “structural transformation of the countryside” with a gender focus and the appropriate use of land. That not only the possession of titles is ensured, but that it is more productive in a country with the paradox of being an agricultural power where 28 out of every 100 households run the risk of going hungry.
To achieve this, it orders a land fund for comprehensive rural reform of 3 million hectares and the massive formalization of small and medium-sized rural property with an additional 7 million hectares. Of these, President Petro claimed last July to have titled one million, an imprecise figure that sparked controversy within the cabinet itself and which was adjusted to 240,000 hectares. It now stands at 450,640, according to a official accountant which created the Ministry of Agriculture seeking to improve transparency after the confusion. Of the 3 million in the fund, there are 61,255 hectares, 12% of the goal of 500,000 hectares that the Government set for this year.
The special representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations and head of the UN Verification Mission in Colombia, Carlos Ruiz Massieu, points out that the agrarian reform lagged behind in the first years. “Fortunately, the current Government is prioritizing it. In fact, there is more progress in rural reform at this time than had been achieved previously,” he states in dialogue with EL PAÍS.
For her part, the former Minister of Agriculture of the Petro Government, Cecilia López, warns that there is still a lack of coordination between the entities responsible for the reform in the inter-institutional coordination system, a mandatory mechanism that enabled the National Development Plan. She is also concerned about the gaps in total peace that add to the already steep path to compliance with the agreement with the FARC.
“Violence is doing the most damage to the rural sector. Today we returned to the story told by the landowners themselves about people who do not return to their farms, especially large growers such as rice or palm. It is very serious, it is the story that is repeated again from before the peace process and of small farmers experiencing massacres and kidnappings. Are we at war again? “It is the question that deserves a response from the Government,” he questions.
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The intensification of the conflict in the territories not only poses a threat to the countryside, but also makes it difficult to break the illegal chains of drug trafficking, the main financial muscle of the armed groups. The peace agreement raised the need to find a definitive and comprehensive solution to the problem of illicit drugs, from production to consumption, as a matter of public health.
Efforts have focused more on the Comprehensive National Program for the Substitution of Crops for Illicit Use than on prevention strategies, comprehensive intervention against consumption and the national system of care for consumers, other actions included in the agreement. The figures show sterile results.
At the end of 2022, the country set a new record for coca crops with 230,000 hectares planted compared to 204,000 the previous year, according to the report from the United Nations Integrated Illicit Crops Monitoring System (Simci). Between 2012 and 2022, 843,905 hectares of coca were forcibly eradicated, but the planted area increased by 327% in the same period, according to the Colombian Drug Observatory. One step was advanced and three steps were taken back.
Ana María Rueda, drug policy analyst, regrets that the substitution program has not achieved its objectives. “Although it has made progress in operational terms and investment, the results are null. The plan failed to reduce families’ dependence on crops for illicit use. It is very unfortunate,” she explains.
When the program was born, there was access to territories that were previously not possible due to the control exercised by the FARC. But that space has been reduced by the presence of other armed groups in producing municipalities, with poverty levels higher than the national average.
“The State, through the public force and other institutions, did not arrive, or not with the strength that was expected. Unfortunately, armed groups present in the territories strengthen their positions or expand their impact in the communities, so the security and initial benefits that were perceived with the signing of the agreements began to be lost over time,” adds the head of the UN Verification Mission.
Rueda, also a researcher at the Ideas for Peace Foundation (FIP), believes that the drug issue in the agreement has little air left. “The challenge is how to renegotiate with peasant families and build relationships of trust that did not exist in the previous Government. There is a great window of opportunity in this, but it has not been taken advantage of,” she says.
President Petro defends the need for a change in the anti-drug strategy. “The war on drugs has failed,” he declared in his first speech to world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2022. A year later he launched a new national policy based on “oxygen” for farmers with support in the transition to licit economies and “suffocation” for criminal organizations. The goal is to reduce 90,000 hectares of coca for illicit use by 2026. “The proposal points to the right place, but it does not propose how the country is going to create the State’s capabilities to be able to carry out these objectives,” the expert points out.
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Where there is clearer progress is in the area of political participation. The Comunes Party, made up of former members of the FARC, completes its second term in the Congress of the Republic, where it has five seats in the Senate and five in the House of Representatives until 2026. That year they will have to convince voters to maintain their seats. In the last legislative elections, after four years of delay, the 16 peace seats occupied by representatives of the victims were created.
Meanwhile, other signatories of the agreement have managed to start a new life, without the weight of rifles. “International cooperation has been essential. They supported us for productive initiatives associated with housing, such as a block factory, a carpentry shop and a transporter that has a truck and a dump truck,” celebrates Abelardo Caicedo, one of the 162 signatories from the Tierra Grata area, in the department of Cease.
But reincorporation, Caicedo clarifies, has not had the same face everywhere. Some territorial spaces have been subject to forced displacement, such as Vistahermosa (Meta), from where dozens of families had to flee last July. Since the signing of the peace agreement, 402 signatories and 1,561 social leaders have been murdered, according to figures from the Institute of Development and Peace Studies, Indepaz.
The UN Verification Mission in Colombia highlights achievements such as having consolidated the final report of the Truth Commission and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the transitional justice mechanism for crimes committed before December 1, 2016 , as part of the Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-Repetition.
“The fact that a former guerrilla accepts having committed war crimes, just a few years after reaching a peace agreement, is something historic that does not happen in many parts of the world either. There are very important advances,” emphasizes Ruíz Massieu.
Ángela María Ballesteros, mother of Ángela Yesenia Briñez, a person from Roncesvalles (Tolima) murdered on July 11, 2002, agrees on the importance of taking steps towards reconciliation. “For me, that process was very valuable because they helped me heal many wounds in the victims’ encounters with those responsible. One learns to forgive. “I kind of rested, a weight was lifted off my shoulders, but I hope that before I go to the grave they will reveal to me the truth that I have been waiting for about my daughter’s death,” she says.
Having agreed on the peace agreement, probably the most recent in the world, according to the UN, represents a historic achievement. “The invitation is to renew the commitment to redouble efforts, particularly in areas that have been left behind, and protect what has been achieved. I think it is what we all aspire to,” concludes Carlos Ruíz Massieu, the representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations.
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