What If Colombia Does Not Fulfill Its Promise to the FARC?
Alejandro Jiménez October 2, 2017
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Colombia has a unique opportunity to build a future without an armed conflict. However, the statistics are against Colombian success, since 45% of the peace accords signed between 1989 and 2004 failed within the first five years of implementation. Therefore, there should not be additional destabilizing factors such as a breach of agreement.
Colombia has a unique opportunity to build a future without an armed conflict. However, the statistics are against Colombian success, since 45% of the peace accords signed between 1989 and 2004 failed within the first five years of implementation. Therefore, there should not be additional destabilizing factors such as a breach of agreement.
In November 2016, after four years of negotiations, the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla signed a peace agreement to end a more than five-decades-long internal armed conflict. It is not a secret that peace signed on paper is not yet guaranteed. Months after the agreement was signed, spokespeople for the opposition affirmed that it was necessary to “(…) tear to shreds that damn paper called the agreement with the FARC”. It has even become known that a Constitutional Court magistrate suggested to eliminate the text in the Constitution that forces the State to fulfill what was agreed in good faith.
But what are the risks associated with a decision to “shred” a peace agreement that is in full implementation? The experience of El Salvador, where the amnesty law was in legal limbo for a long time, may shed some light on the matter. In particular, it shows how one of the risks arising from the lack of compliance with a peace agreement is the failure to guarantee a complete legal and political end to the war and that this will become a factor of social and political destabilization, especially in democracies in consolidation.
On January 1992, in Mexico City, the government of El Salvador signed a peace agreement with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), with whom it had sustained an armed conflict for twelve years. A Truth Commission was then created and it was determined that only those involved in serious acts of violence, which required to be publicly known, would be judged.
Colombians waive their flag during a demonstration. Photo: Leon Hernandez