Colombia

Internal armed conflict between the government forces, paramilitaries, and revolutionary guerrilla groups in Colombia started in 1964. The ceasefire in this conflict officially began in 2016, with the signing of the Peace Agreement between the Government and the main guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). While the 2016 Peace Agreement provides an institutional framework for Colombia’s transition to sustainable peace, including the creation of ‘Special Jurisdiction for Peace’ and land restitution process, armed groups remain present, and violence still take place in some parts of Colombia – a situation that has been exacerbated during the Covid 19 pandemic. One of the salient issues in Colombian peace process remains the protection of social leaders and human rights defenders, whose personal safety could not be guaranteed since the signing of the Agreement. As an additional pressure to the peace process, 1.8 million Venezuelans have arrived in Colombia as of December 2019, according to Colombian official statistics. 

The UN Verification Mission in Colombia was established by the UN Security Council (UN SC Resolution 2366/2017) ‘to verify implementation by the Government of Colombia and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP) of sections 3.2 and 3.4 of the Final Agreement’, with its temporary mandate currently extended until 25 September 2020. From the perspective of development assistance and cooperation, Colombia is a middle-income country, and an important recipient of financial aid from international financial institutions, including the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the International Finance Corporation. The peace process and economic development in Colombia is also supported by a range of bilateral donors, US being the most prominent one. 

Together with Partner Researchers at the University of Rosario, Endless Conflicts project team is currently mapping the humanitarian-development-peace assistance programmes in Colombia, with a view to highlighting the overlapping, diverging and mutually reinforcing mandates of international institutions in the country’s peace process. 

For more details regarding the project in Colombia on the project page of the University of Rosario, click here. The reports will be published in the University’s research paper collections, and the databases will be uploaded on the University’s research data repository (both links lead to micro-sites dedicated to the Endless Conflicts project).

Latest News and Events from Colombia

Events

Presentation – Johanna Del Pilar Cortés-Nieto – June 8th

Our Colombian team member, Johanna Del Pilar Cortés-Nieto, will present…

Read More

Events

Panel: “An Overview of International Cooperation in Territorially Focused Development Programmes (PDET) in Colombia”

We are pleased to invite you to an online panel…

Read More

News

Our team in Colombia is growing!

Professor Andrés Gómez Rey and Master student Andrés Rodríguez Morales,…

Read More

Latest Outputs from Colombia

Country reports on the implementation of the Triple Nexus

Below are the two country reports on the Triple Nexus…

Read More