FOCUS: Democracy and Deep-Rooted Conflict: Colombia's Challenges

International IDEA has recently published a Spanish language edition of its Handbook Democracy and Deep-Rooted Conflict: Options for Negotiators (Democracia y Conflictos Profundamente arraigados. Opciones para la Negociación). The new Handbook was launched in August 2001 in Colombia. Alongside a translation of the original English version, the Spanish edition includes new case studies and themes of particular importance for Latin America.

Latin American Perspective

The handbook underscores the regional particularities of the different peace processes that have taken place in Latin America. The majority occurred in the context of a 'third wave' of democratization, following long and protracted negotiations, significant numbers of casualties and high levels of suffering among the civil population. In most cases, too, the collapse of the Soviet Union added an extra dimension to existing conflicts, by forcing guerrilla groups to find alternative means of funding that, in turn, created new conflict dynamics.

Such has been the case of Colombia, the only intra-state conflict in the region where there is still no negotiated settlement, and where guerrilla groups have resorted to the drugs trade to finance their military operations, thereby further complicating this particular armed conflict. The Handbook shows how, in the majority of the cases - specifically El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala - only the impossibility of either party winning the struggle through military operations led them to work towards a negotiated settlement - a settlement that in most cases also relied heavily on support from the international community for its achievement.

In tandem with the regional specifities, the original Handbook's central message concerning the need for sustainable peace processes and negotiated settlements to be anchored in truly democratic institutions that can effectively address the root causes of conflicts is very much in focus. And in Latin America, poverty and high levels of inequality are particularly dramatic aspects of the fundamental causes of conflict.

Prominent Latin Americans who participated in or otherwise played a decisive role in the resolution of conflicts in individual countries or the transition to democracy have contributed to the analysis presented in the Handbook. As a consequence, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala have been given special attention in the Spanish edition. Other regional aspects of the Handbook include:

• a thematic analysis of truth commissions
  
• electoral administration
  
• electoral systems
  
• a regional overview of the main lessons learned from different peace processes that gives full weight to the specific nature and features of the intra-state conflicts that have occurred in Latin America in the past 20 years.

Photo: Pontificia Unversidad Javeriana

Colombian Minister of Interior Armando Estrada Villa

The official launch of the Handbook took place 27-28 August 2001 in Bogota, Colombia. The occasion was a Forum co-organized by International IDEA with Universidad Javeriana, Universidad Sergio Arboleda, Universidad de la Paz (UPEACE) and sponsored by the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, the Minister of Interior, the Colombian newspapers El Tiempo and Semana and the Swedish International Development Agency. The Forum, titled 'Challenges for Building Peace', had Colombian Minister of Interior Armando Estrada Villa as keynote speaker and the participation of a number of Colombian and international experts. It provided an opportunity both for reflection on the Colombian conflict from a comparative perspective and for examination of the ways in which a tool such as the International IDEA Handbook on Democracy and Deep-Rooted Conflict can be used practically by those involved in working toward the resolution of a particular conflict.

Colombia in Focus

Colombia's internal war dates back 40 years. Today this unprecedented and extremely complex conflict has acquired new dimensions that pose a serious threat to regional stability. A peace process began three years ago when President Andrés Pastrana took office after winning an election whose main campaign platform had been the prospect of peace settlements with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN).

Now, after three years of an incipient peace process and with no hopes of reaching a final settlement in the near future negotiations have come to a standstill, both with the FARC guerrillas - who control a territory the size of Switzerland, given to them by the government as an incentive to start negotiations - and the ELN, with whom they never really started. And with Colombia approaching a general election in the first half of 2002 and the different presidential candidates seeming both to question the viability of the peace process currently underway and hinting at the possibility of resort to military rather than negotiated solutions, the need for sustained attention to the Colombian conflict from the international community is becoming increasingly acute.

During the Handbook launch International IDEA Secretary-General Bengt Säve-Söderbergh, noted that President Pastrana has shown 'great courage' in trying to tackle the peace process. He continued by noting that 'he [President Pastrana] has done it with the conviction that sustainable peace can only be reached through a political process of negotiation.' At the opening of the current round of negotiations, he continued, 'hopes of a rapid success were high'. One lesson from this, he concluded, is that such processes 'take more time and require more patience than might have been expected at the beginning.'

Addressing the Bogota Forum, the Colombian Minister of Interior also stressed the need for high levels of patience, tolerance, dialogue and broad understanding of Colombian realities, and emphasised the need to search for alternative, non-violent means of resolving the conflict.

During the Forum critical issues for the understanding of the Colombian conflict and the peace process currently underway were also examined by international and national experts. These included: the role of drugs and drug profits in the conflict; social reactions to the violence; the role of the Armed Forces; the peace process and 'Plan Colombia'; the media; and the role of the international community in the construction and consolidation of peace. The different presidential candidates in Colombia's forthcoming general election also participated in the Forum in a discussion of what is currently considered to be the most critical issue on the national agenda.

Jan Egeland, Special Envoy of the Secretary General of the United Nations in Colombia, and other international experts emphasized a number of conditions that would need to be fulfilled for the Colombian peace process to make substantial progress: the need for real willingness to reach a negotiated settlement among the parties; the involvement of a legitimate 'interlocutor'; high levels of discretion and tolerance; the need to treat the peace process as state policy; and a conviction of the impossibility of resolving the conflict through military means.

'Achieving peace in Colombia is the responsibility of the people of Colombia. The problems facing Colombia are in many ways unique but there is certainly an opportunity for learning from others how they have achieved peace and democracy despite the horrors of war that have torn their countries apart', noted the International IDEA Secretary-General.

The Forum also dealt with the cases presented in the Handbook through international experts such as Ana Guadalupe Martinez, Director of the Institute for a New El Salvador, Rodolfo Parker, former Co-ordinator of the Office for the Implementation of the Peace Agreements of El Salvador, Lord John Alderdice, Speaker of the Northern Ireland Parliament, Rodrigo Asturias, member of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG) and participant in the Guatemalan peace process, and retired General Joaquin Cuadra, former chief of the Armed Forces of Nicaragua.