“It’s no secret that peace never came to Colombia” – Danelly Estupinán (leader of the Black Community’s Process (PCN) in Buenaventura, Colombia.
Five years on from signing the historic Colombian Peace Deal, little has changed. Amidst continued violence and state repression, anger has intensified against the Duque administration and protests have erupted in the streets.
On 30 November 2016, the Colombian government signed a momentous Peace Deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest guerrilla organisation that had been waging war against the Colombian state for the preceding six decades.
Heralded as a remarkable achievement to bring peace to the Andean nation, the 2016 Peace Deal was interpreted as a beacon of hope for change, which would not only end violence in Colombia, but bring greater equality and development for all. The deal consisted of six separate accords regarding comprehensive rural reform, increased political participation, the end of the conflict through bilateral and definitive ceasefire and cessation of hostilities, the solution to the problem of illicit drugs, the creation of a transitional justice scheme to support victims of the armed conflict, and the use of verification mechanisms to monitor the implementation of the agreement. Following the deal, Colombia’s homicide rate fell to its lowest in 40 years, the oldest guerrilla army joined the political process, and 13,000 FARC rebels demobilised and pledged to speak openly at a tribunal to investigate war crimes and reconcile with the past.
Growing Instability
The situation in Colombia today, nevertheless, tells a very different story and brings into question the triumph of the deal. Violence has resurged. In 2020 alone, 375 people died in 89 massacres. January 2021 was the most violent month since the Peace Deal was signed, with 12 mass killings and 45 people murdered. Most of these victims have been social leaders and community activists defending environmental, human and land rights, who support the accord. For example, on July 1, 2021, paramilitaries decapitated indigenous leader Luis Picasio Carampaina in the eastern department of Chocó who fought for indigenous rights in the region. The ‘theatricalization of violence’ through massacres involving dismemberment and mutilation of victims is used as a tactic by armed groups such as the Rastrojos to instil fear amongst communities and send powerful messages to let civilians know about the high cost of supporting the peace agreement.
The ELN has taken particular advantage of the FARC’s demobilisation, with numbers rising from 1,400 in 2017 to more than 4,000 today across Colombia and Venezuela. What’s more, the coronavirus pandemic has further increased the number of armed groups competing for territory and illicit trade, particularly in rural and border regions.
This surge in violence is not incidental– it is the result of a systematic failure to implement the Peace Deal by the Colombian government. In fact, Duque’s right wing Democratic Centre party was a vocal opponent of the peace deal, and fewer than a quarter of the 600 provisions in the agreement have been fully implemented. A recent study estimates that at the current rate of implementation, it will take up to 43 years for the deal to be fully applied, which is making the Colombian people ever more disillusioned with the Duqué government for its failure to implement the deal.
A crucial area of neglect is investing in the coca substitutions program (PNIS), which played a decisive role in the peace agreement by encouraging families to change their livelihoods away from coca cultivation and reduce dependency on armed groups for their incomes. In the first year after the agreement, 100,000 families had enrolled in the plan with a 94% compliance rate. However, by 2019, 90,000 families had not received the full payment for the program, with 40,00 not having received anything whatsoever. Instead of fulfilling the promises of this programme, Duque’s government has instead preferred forced eradication techniques such as aerial fumigation, which has a 35% re-planting rate and destroys many other livelihoods, particularly of small scale farmers whose crops are destroyed by the wind carrying the glysophate chemical used in aerial fumigation, and when crops are wrongly identified. In fact, it is estimated that in 2002 alone, nearly 40,000 people in Colombia were displaced due to aerial fumigation as it ruined their livelihoods and forced them to move elsewhere. In 2020, the Colombian government destroyed 130,000 hectares of Coca fields, a record amount, yet according to the US State department, Colombia produced record amounts of cocaine in the same period. It is therefore clear that while the government fails to implement the promised measures pertaining to the peace deal, low-income rural workers are forced to continue working on illegal crop production, and armed groups capitalise on insecurity and informal labour.
The surge in unrest
The failure of the Duqué administration to implement the Peace Deal and associated surge in violence has resulted in increased opposition to the government. Since 28 April 2021, protests have taken over numerous towns and cities in Colombia, in the latest manifestation of peoples’ frustrations with the government. Initially protests broke out over a proposed tax hike by the Duque administration, known as the ‘Law of Social Sustainability’, which would act like VAT, placing the onus of generating government revenues on poor and middle-income families. This proposal sparked outrage amongst many in Colombia, especially in a time of extreme hardship and perverse inequality which has been made unbearable by the COVID-19 pandemic, with many families already struggling to make ends meet. Notably, the pandemic has pushed an extra 3.5 million people in Colombia into poverty, meaning that 43% of the population is not earning enough to satisfy basic needs. In Bogotá, the number of people living in extreme poverty has tripled in a single year.
Protests erupted in 27 out of the country’s 32 departments, indicating widespread dissent and dissatisfaction with the government. The city of Cali has seen the largest protests so far, with protestors having blockaded streets causing major disruption to the city dynamic and cut off entire neighbourhoods - an unusual form of social organisation used to symbolise the people reclaiming their power and land from government control.
Whilst most protests have been peaceful, violent incidents have flared up, the most drastic of which involved the burning down of a police station and attacks on officers in Bogotá. However, the government has responded with overwhelming force, deploying anti-riot policemen, using tear gas and batons to dispel the demonstrations. Human Rights Watch has reported that there have been incidents of beatings, sexual abuse and arbitrary detention of demonstrators and bystanders by the police, and that excessive police brutality has tragically resulted in the deaths of 70 people.
Concerningly, in Colombia the police force comes under the authority of the Defence ministry, thus blurring the lines between military and police action. The use of military tactics on civilian populations subsequently results in many human rights violations. As a result, multiple international NGOS, academics and politicians in the US have urged the Biden administration to cease US funding of the Colombian armed forces through the Leahy Law, which prohibits the US government from funding foreign armed forces which commit human rights abuses.
The iron-fisted response to the protests ignited further rage and frustration amongst the Colombian people concerning the rampant inequality within the country. This has catapulted the protests into a national issue with widespread support for the opposition as it has awakened frustrations over the unjust actions of the security forces in Colombia against the communities they are supposed to protect.
The Colombian military has a long history of human rights abuses against the civilian population, the most shocking of which is the case of the ‘falsos positivos’ in the late 2000s, when Colombian forces extrajudicially killed 120 people, claiming they were rebel-fighters. The protests are therefore not an isolated incident of violence from the security forces, and demonstrates the inherent injustices that have occurred against civilian populations in the past.
Although the government withdrew the proposed tax reform shortly after initial protests broke out and has made plans to provide free public university education to the lowest income families, protesters see this response as a mere band-aid for their concerns, and a way of quickly dissipating the fervent unrest.
However, the protests have morphed into a continuation of the nation-wide anti-government protests which began in November 2019. People are now protesting against broader systemic issues facing Colombia– the implementation of the 2016 Peace Deal with the FARC (including agrarian reform and the crop substitution program), higher wages, an end to corruption, more equal access to healthcare, and gender equality, as explained below.
Perspectives from the people:
Tata Pedro Velasco, leader of the indigenous Misak people, is fighting for an end to violence in their territories; “Armed conflict continues in our territories while the peace accord with the FARC is not implemented. We want the war in Colombia to end but the government of Iván Duque doesn’t”.
Andrés Oyola, former ecologist at the National Parks Agency, marches in defence of injustice and lack of opportunity; “There are so many reasons to march. I’m out in defence of those that have gone missing, in defence of the environmental activists that have been murdered, and against the lack of opportunities that young people have here.”
Elizabeth Alfonso, running a soup kitchen at a protest site, explains the protesters are “fighting to bring Colombia back from the dead. We need a new constitution that guarantees fair salaries, free education, and a future for young people.”
These voices provide a snippet of the anger and frustration felt by many Colombians from all walks of life, who have united to tackle the engrained social concerns threatening to overwhelm Colombia.
The latest protests, therefore, reflect the increasing fragility of the Peace Deal and indicate how despite an ‘official’ end to the armed conflict in Colombia, violence, corruption, and inequality continue to saturate society, caused by a continuing pattern of state neglect. The protests have drastically underlined deep societal frustrations, uniting many different groups of people, and symbolising the need for real structural change.
The way forward:
What can be done to achieve peace in Colombia? Firstly, to address police brutality, the government of Colombia should take urgent measures to protect human rights and initiate a comprehensive police reform so that the right to peaceful assembly is respected and perpetrators of abuses are brought to justice. Moreover, the Colombia Attorney General’s office should strengthen criminal investigations into the massacres of civilians, social leaders, and ex-combatants, to bring the perpetrators to justice. In the longer term, the Colombian government should initiate a process to reform Colombia’s National Police, with meaningful participation by civil society groups to prevent human rights violations from reoccurring.
Most crucially, the Colombian government must urgently step-up its implementation of the Peace Deal, firstly by stopping forced crop eradication techniques such as aerial fumigation and secondly by directing adequate funds to the coca substitutions programme. The government must also prioritise developing new livelihoods for ex-combatants and tackling extreme poverty in rural areas through the sustained implementation of the Territorially Focused Development Programs (PDETs).This would incentivise rural farmers to move away from coca cultivation, and help bring stability and key services such as education and healthcare to rural areas currently dominated by armed groups.
As a key supporter of the peace deal, the EU should remain focussed on its implementation, and should urge Bogotá to prioritise funding and implementation of PDETs. This should be done by directing bilateral funding to the implementation of the Peace Deal, and monitoring the government's efforts to do so.
Social unrest has swept through Colombia like never before, fuelled by frustration and anger at the failure of the Duqué administration to care for its people and fulfil the promises of the accord. Police reform and the full implementation of the Peace Deal are urgently required to end violence and bring Colombia back on the road to peace.
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