The long road to peace. Comparing peace negotiations between the FARC and the Colombian government from 1984 to the signing of the final agreement in 2016.

Abstract

The Colombian internal conflict, which began in the mid-1960s, is historically rooted in the fight over land. The predominant issue was the appropriation of uncultivated land conducted by large landowners at the expense of indigenous group and farmers. Along with the persistence of the agrarian issues, new elements emerged in the course of the conflict: the inability of the state and of the military institutions to exercise control over the entire Colombian territory, the development of an exclusive society where only the elites had access to State institutions, and, in the late 1970s the expansion of coca cultivations and drug-trafficking. In this atmosphere of insecurity and social and political demands, the country descended into a state of generalized violence characterized by the suppression of syndicates and urban organizations, and by forced displacements of the rural population. In this period far-left guerrillas like the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) emerged, with the aim of fighting for peasants’ rights and against poverty, social inequality and wealth concentration. In opposition to guerrillas, far-right paramilitary groups emerged, thus spreading the phenomenon of the privatization of violence. All the actors involved in the conflict committed grave violations of human rights. According to a study conducted by the Colombia's National Centre for Historical Memory, in more than 50 years of war, more than 6 million people have been direct victims of the conflict (approximately the 15% of the population). Between 1958 and 2012, as a result of the armed conflict, 220 thousand people were killed, 25 thousand disappeared, 27 thousand were kidnapped, and more than 5 million civilians were forced to leave their homes, making Colombia the second country with the highest number of internally displaced persons in the world. Over the years there have been many attempts to reach peace agreements with the different guerrillas and paramilitary groups with the intention of obtaining their demobilization, disarmament, and the reincorporation of disarmed insurgents in the Colombian political and social system. However, most of these efforts failed, and the war continued to devastate the country for decades. On November 12, 2016 the government of President Juan Manuel Santos signed a peace agreement with the major guerrilla movement, the FARC, after four years of intense negotiations. It was a ground-breaking event in the history of the Colombian internal conflict. In fact, three other Presidents had initiated peace talks with this guerrilla (President Betancur in 1982, President Gaviria in 1991, and President Pastrana in 1998), but none of these negotiations had been successful. This work will focus on three peace negotiations with the FARC, those conducted by President Betancur, those initiated by President Pastrana, and, finally, those concluded by President Santos; it will analyse, on the one hand, the conditions that led the parties to start the talks, and, on the other, the circumstances that caused the collapse of the first peace processes and the successful outcome of the last one. The main issue examined concerns the reasons why the Colombian government and the FARC only managed to reach an agreement after more than 50 years of war and after negotiations had already collapsed three times. The analysis will make reference to the concepts of ripe moment and actors’ readiness for conflict resolution, and it will address the impact of the international community and of civil society on peace negotiations and on the likelihood of reaching an agreement.