"Who
doesn't long for peace! But this peace is achieved with incentives that look
towards a better future, creating jobs, strengthening culture … When I speak
with the guerrillas, they are also fed up, they want to sleep in peace, they
are also human beings, they also need peace. The army and police also need
peace." Interview with a key actor in Macarena-Guaviare region
(south-east Colombia)
Members of Colombian indigenous communities. Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images
If
the Havana agreement is signed and approved (the probability of this coming to
pass is high), we will witness a new attempt at rapprochement between the
Colombian public institutions and certain regions of the country with which
they have had little dealings in the past: regions precisely where the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia –
the FARC – have greater presence and activity. This will not be the first
attempt at rapprochment: beginning in the 1960's, different programmes have
been implemented with this ambition in mind. However, it seems that these
programmes have been more concerned with bringing a predefined offer to the
table than to understanding local demands. For that reason, it is extremely
important to consider the expectations and the resources of these regions, when
faced with an ever-closer scenario of
post-conflict.
With
the aim of contributing to those considerations, we at the Fundación Ideas para
la Paz (Ideas for Peace Foundation – FIP), in partnership with the Fundación
Paz y Reconciliación (Peace and Reconciliation Foundation – PARES[1]), have
taken a closer look at local capacities for peace in a number of municipalities
with historical FARC presence. The following highlights some aspects of this
analysis, which we propose will help
understand how a post-conflict scenario is seen from the perspective of the
regions and the considerable organisational capital that they have[2].
Correspondence between visions and proposals
In
our approaching the regions, we included a seemingly naive question, which in
practice was key in creating a environment of trust with significant local
actors: "Imagine today is the year 2025, there is no longer any armed
conflict, and the region is as you wish. Tell me what you see. " The
answers to this question were systematised and categorised as shown in the following
table[3]:
This
table is indicative of the most and least important issues for local actors
when they consider a post-conflict scenario and, therefore, give meaning to the
notion of "peace". The table shows how the categories
"Productivity and rural development", "Basic living
conditions" and "Culture and education" account for more than
50% of responses. Comparatively, references to classical aspects of a peace
process such as disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (category
"End of conflict") or reparations for victims (category
"Transitionality") are far fewer. In a way, this shows us that the
regions' interest in the peace process lies less in visible aspects of violence
and instead in structural changes that would underpin it. This is
demonstrated by expressions of the following type:
Peace is not simply an agreement that is signed, it is the security
that people have work, that they have basic needs met, that issues such as
environmental sanitation are managed so that people have access to those
services, from there peace can be built, having met all needs. "Interviews from Cauca-Nariño region (south-west).
However,
these concerns are not absent from the agreement in Havana, particularly in the
first agreement "Towards a new Colombian countryside: comprehensive rural
reform" (Hacia un nuevo campo colombiano: reforma rural integral” -RRI).
In fact, when given most of the issues outlined in first three categories of
the table, it is possible to identify corresponding proposals in the RRI
Agreement. Table 2 contains some examples:
This
correspondence between the RRI policies and the regional 2025 visions takes on
an even more striking character when considering local actors' lack of
knowledge about the Havana agreement. In general, in the regions it is thought
that the agreements are focused on the surrender of weapons and the
reintegration of the FARC; hence the emphasis of different actors on peace
being not "just" that (see quote above). Changing that perception and
generating enthusiasm around the identified correspondence between the regional
visions and the proposals agreed in Havana is a significant opportunity of
which the backers of the agreements could take advantage.
Adverse conditions but not just empty space
The
RRI agreement is not in itself novel, rather it considers a number of issues
which have been the repeated focus of attention in different circles (academia,
civil society organisations, international cooperation). The project interviews
show, too, that the transformation of the countryside is a necessity deeply
felt by local actors. It also reveals, through these actors, the existence of a
vibrant social network in the regions, made up of a wide variety of
associations of women, young people and small-scale producers, among others.
The
preceding discussion challenges an external perception of these regions as
empty spaces, or at best, natural paradises with poor levels of human capital
and no social fabric to speak of. In this sense, more than 1,400 civil,
community and producer organisations were identified in the 35 municipalities
covered in the second year of our research; an average of 40 per municipality.
With the intention of gaining a closer understanding of these organisations,
the experiences of 58 of them were systematised. Our dealing with them
allowed us to note that the most part of these organisations respond to
community strategies to confront adverse conditions of violence and exclusion
from development. Some of them have a more defined political position than
others, indeed they may even have a substantial ideological proximity to the
FARC, although they express a clear distancing from using violent means .
Several
of them apply regularly for state aid, which has reached the regions
principally through national programmes of the Ministry of Agriculture and
Rural Development, the National Apprenticeship Service or the Department for
Social Prosperity. Access to resources provided by these programmes has been an
important source of funding for these organisations and has maintained them.
However, the provision of these programmes (some more successful than others)
coexists with a high level of distrust towards public institutions; so, while
the state is criticised for its absence or chronic failure, applications are
made to government programmes and as a result of these resources the
organisations see gains: for example the construction of a headquarters,
access to supplies or technical training. For all these reasons, many of these
heads of rural organisations deal with both the FARC and the public
authorities, and use these communication channels to provide for the welfare of
the communities to which they belong.
Undoubtedly, the regions
most affected by the conflict will have much to say in an eventual
implementation of the peace agreements; local actors may not have the last word
on all issues, but it will be essential that the current negotiating parties
are willing to be in dialogue with them, recognising their role in motivating
community processes and managing local coexistence. The key space for this
dialogue will be the citizens' participation exercises provided for in the
agreements. At FIP we have identified 61 references to specific mechanisms for
citizens' participation in the thus-far agreed terms (excluding general
references to participation, such as "as a starting point").
Supporting these exercises, from different sectors, and ensuring their quality.
[1] Colombian NGO, based in Bogotá.
[2] In particular, findings from the 2nd year of the study are used,
which focused on different regions in Colombia: a)
Pacífico Cauca/Nariño, b) Sarare (north-east) and c) Macarena/Guaviare
(south-east). These areas are concordant with the findings of the 1st
year of the project, of which details can be found at the following link http://www.ideaspaz.org/especiales/capacidades-locales-para-la-paz/
[3] 224 interviews
were carried out in total, however, responses were not categorised in an
exclusionary manner given that one interviewee, or one response, could well
make reference to different categories. For this reason, in the sum of
interviews, 861 references to visions of a post-conflict scenario were made and
thus is the total included in the table
Translated from Spanish by Katie Oliver, member of Democracia Abierta's Volunteer Program.