Policy & Advocacy
Backgrounder Colombia, January 2018
Backgrounder Colombia, January 2018
The Colombian government and FARC negotiated a peace accord to end a 52‑year conflict that killed over 220,000 people and displaced 7 million. After a narrow plebiscite defeat in October 2016, a revised agreement was ratified by Congress on November 30, 2016, moving the process from negotiation into implementation with the historic opportunity to integrate marginalized rural regions into national political, economic, and legal life.
Peace implementation priorities
- Integrate ex‑combatants and extend state presence, services, and rule of law across the national territory.
- Promote just, equitable rural development to repair social fabric broken by decades of violence, illicit economies, and impunity.
- Address criminal economies (narcotics, illegal mining, extortion, trafficking) that financed armed groups and perpetuated local insecurity.
U.S. assistance and its evolving role
- Since 2000, Plan Colombia provided over $10 billion, focused largely on counter‑narcotics and counterinsurgency (military training, equipment, intelligence, and aerial fumigation).
- Current U.S. support should shift toward backing peace‑implementation: redirecting public investment to marginalized areas, fostering sustainable rural livelihoods, and strengthening transitional justice and democratic institutions.
USCCB position and principles
- U.S. aid must balance security assistance with programs that address root causes of conflict and be conditioned on human‑rights standards.
- Priorities include alternative development, judicial reform, extending democratic institutions into rural areas, and humanitarian assistance for the displaced.
- Support for the peace process by the Holy See and USCCB includes urging the U.S. to help consolidate peace without undermining negotiated reconciliation (e.g., careful handling of extradition issues).
Specific recommendations
- Continue flexible U.S.–Colombian collaboration focused on implementing the Peace Agreement.
- Monitor demobilization zones and protect ex‑combatants, human‑rights, labor, and political activists from reprisals.
- Increase development and humanitarian assistance for rural resilience, transitional justice, and internally displaced persons.
- Permanently end aerial fumigation and expand viable alternative development for impoverished farmers to prevent displacement into illicit economies.