Channels, Fall 2018

Page 42 Holm • A Call to Peace United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). Largely, these groups were composed of landowners who organized to protect themselves from the guerilla groups. The AUC, like FARC and ELN, was also listed as a terrorist group by the State Department. The group officially disbanded in 2006, yet to this day, splinter groups remain (Felter & Renwick, 2017). At the end of 2014, Colombia had six million internally displaced people. Nearly 14% of Colombia’s population were victims of this conflict. In 2011, Colombia registered 7.7 million victims of forced displacement, murder, torture, sexual violence, forced disappearance, and kidnapping, among other grave violations of human rights. Another staggering statistic is that between 1970 and 2010 Colombia registered 39,058 kidnappings. FARC was even so bold as to kidnap a presidential candidate. This translates into someone being kidnapped every twelve hours during those years. The Colombian government was unfortunately not blameless; it is estimated that the military carried out 5,000 extrajudicial killings (Maldonado, 2017). With so much violence, at times it seemed unlikely that Colombia would ever be able to achieve peace. However, the two sides were eventually able to reach a peace deal. Similar, to the Northern Irish peace process, Colombia benefited from the idea of “ripeness”. After five decades of violence, the Colombian people were ready for peace. Both sides had too much to lose from more violence. Another part of what helped the Colombian peace process was its organized framework, which will be discussed at length later in the paper. In the “talks about the talks” the two sides agreed to three essential elements. The first element outlined that the aim of the peace talks was to put an end to armed conflict, rather than to bring about peace in a positive way. In this way, they were extremely realistic about what they wanted the peace talks to accomplish, and they were able to manage external and internal expectations: their goal was simply to end the violence, not promise peace- dividends. This is like the discussion in Conflict Resolution Quarterly on how to frame a peace process. One of the most difficult parts of a peace process is managing the public’s expectations. Colombia tried to do this by being extremely practical in what they wanted to achieve. The second element that the two sides agreed to was a discussion agenda of six points. The points related to things such as agrarian policy, the transitional justice mechanisms for state military forces, and the national policy in the fight against drugs. The third element that they agreed to was confidentiality. Through this element, both sides came to an agreement on how they would interact with the media (Maldonado, 2017). One of the most difficult topics in the Colombian peace process was victims’ rights. The framers of the Colombian peace process were determined that victim’s rights should be central to the entire process, and they created three mechanisms to facilitate this goal. The first mechanism was the creation of a channel for victims to send proposals to both delegations. The second mechanism was the appointment of the United Nations, the Universidad Nacional, and the Catholic Church to create events, which victims could attend, to express their views and concerns. The final mechanism was allowing the victims to go to Havana, Cuba, where the talks were taking place, and share their stories. In this way, Colombia was the first peace process to incorporate victims from the start (Maldonado, 2017).