Blog entries, commentaries, and statements from WOLA’s Colombia team

Interview on Colombia’s Peace Process with Danny Ramirez of the National Conference of Afro-Colombian Organizations

January 29, 2015

(Versión en español)

There are few Colombians whose lives have not been directly or indirectly unaffected by the armed conflict between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). However, throughout more than 50 years of conflict, the damages have disproportionately affected a particular segment of the Colombian population, as national and international human rights organizations frequently indicate in reports. These reports unanimously agree that it is Afro-Colombians who have borne the greatest cost of Colombia’s bloodiest war. To illustrate, two million out of the six million people who are currently internally displaced by the conflict are Afro-Colombian. This statistic is especially troubling considering that Afro-Colombians compose only 10 percent of Colombia’s total population. Given the magnitude of this disproportion, it is vital that the concerns and interests of this historically marginalized people are taken into consideration at the peace negotiations that are currently occurring between the government of President Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC in Havana, Cuba if lasting peace is to be achieved.

For this reason, WOLA interviewed Danny Maria Torres Ramirez, Coordinator of Women and Gender component of the National Conference of Afro-Colombian Organizations (Conferencia Nacional de Organizaciones Afrocolombianas, CNOA), a social organization working to protect human rights and to further the collective interests of Afro-Colombians. We had the opportunity to talk with Ramirez after her presentation, “Women and the Peace Process in Colombia”, at the United States Institute of Peace on 25 June 2014 in which she discussed the importance of addressing gender issues during the peace process. As a person with extensive knowledge of the problems affecting Afro-Colombian people, we interviewed Ramirez to learn more about the interests of Afro-Colombian communities in the peace process, the strategies that the CNOA is using to prepare communities to face the challenges of post-conflict, and the organization’s recommendations to President Santos’s administration to successfully overcome the major challenges facing Afro-Colombians.

Could you tell us about CNOA’s mission, and of the women’s component in particular?

The CNOA is the coming together of 246 organizations, which form a series of national support networks. Its members include organizations of women, youth, displaced persons, community councils, and urban organizations. Our mission is to protect the human rights of the Afro-Colombian people and to further their collective interests. We articulate these organizations’ proposals into political and legislative advocacy, organizational strengthening, advising on strategic communications, and territorial strengthening. All of these efforts are done with particular attention to gender issues (women’s rights) and generational issues (children and youth). In that sense, the women’s component focuses on constructing public policies that attempt to transform the adverse reality of Afro-Colombian women. Afro-Colombian women are a population that has been historically impoverished and marginalized; even by the armed conflict. CNOA’s work strategies vary widely, but its advocacy role in the executive and legislative levels of government is of high importance. Through advocacy, we seek to promote positive policies that help us solve structural problems such as political exclusion, lack of education and discrimination. We also work closely with our Afro-Colombian population base to help them develop their own proposals for local government and thereby bring about positive change.

As an organization that works with some one of the most vulnerable people to the conflict’s violence, what is the role of CNOA in building a sustainable peace process?

One of the most important roles of CNOA is to act as a bridge between Afro-Colombians and the state in order to establish a positive and constructive dialogue aimed at overcoming inequality gaps. We must continue to inform the government about many of the issues that affect our communities. A signed agreement will resolve a major social problem that has disproportionately affected our communities; we understand that a ceasefire between the government and the FARC will not end all problems, but it will lift a large burden of oppression and subjugation from our communities’ shoulders. CNOA continues to work to prepare communities to face some of the challenges what will arise in the post-conflict. If these challenges are not addressed adequately, their damage can be as bad as the war itself. In order to achieve this goal, we must conduct the relevant contextual and territorial assessments. For example, we have to be able to handle the reintegration of former combatants into civilian life. Similarly, we must prepare for the countersignature of the negotiation points because it is important to know, in the territories is where the war has been fought, how the final agreements have been established established. These are some of the challenges on which we must focus if the agreement is to be an actually framework for a sustainable and lasting peace, from this point onwards other challenges will unfold with time. Of course we must also continue to educate the general public on issues affecting Afro-Colombian communities and address the lack of economic and social opportunities that strip away our livelihoods and that continue to push us into the systematic violence that we have faced for many years.

Tags: Afro-Descendant Communities, Civil Society Peace Movement

Colombia’s Military and the Peace Process

January 24, 2015
President Santos and government peace negotiators meet with the high military and police command on January 23.

“Fifty-one years of war and we’re going to reach peace, a peace that is your victory,” President Juan Manuel Santos told Colombia’s army in a pre-Christmas speech. “That courage, that determination, have been responsible for us talking about peace, because the enemy finally noticed that you are invincible, and today we have the best Army in our history.”

President Santos, who served as defense minister in the previous administration, regularly offers effusive praise to the armed forces. Except on December 2, when he appeared on the TV station of Bogotá’s left-leaning city government and warned, “People who aren’t acting with loyalty are coming out, and any officer, no matter how important, showing the slightest sign of disloyalty or lack of discipline will be out of the military.”

This comment, which came a day after the resignation of an Army general who had been captured and released by the FARC guerrillas, raised eyebrows in Colombia and reportedly angered the military.

Santos’s words drew attention to a concern brewing below the surface of Colombia’s peace process: that a significant sector of the armed forces and its leadership disagrees with the civilian government’s handling of negotiations with the FARC.

It is impossible to know how large this sector is, as active-duty officers usually respect their constitutional mandate to be “non-deliberative,” avoiding public criticism of civilian leaders. We must rely on off-the-record comments, some of them made to us and some of them reported by a small number of Colombian investigative journalists, as well as the public words of retired officers and of politicians believed to be close to the military.

These comments indicate that military leaders and rank-and-file who are unhappy about the Havana talks aren’t opposed to “peace” or agitating to prolong the conflict. Their likely concerns, listed below, have more to do with the design of the process, or its implications for their institution.

Military discontent is important. Colombia’s armed forces have grown rapidly in this century: today, about 450,000 Colombians wear a military or police uniform, up from less than 300,000 in 2000. While the possibility of a military coup is near zero, opposition from the armed forces could manifest itself in ways that make peace negotiations, or subsequent accord implementation, inviable. Analysts cite military resistance as a key factor in the failure of a 1980s attempt to negotiate with the FARC and mid–1990s efforts to get negotiations started.

Elements in the armed forces can hinder or derail peace talks through what longtime Semana magazine columnist Antonio Caballero called “sometimes quiet and sometimes open opposition, sometimes almost en bloc and sometimes, like now, in the form of surreptitious ‘loose wheels’” within the institution. Methods can include private communications to politicians opposed to the process, incomplete compliance with orders, filtration of damaging allegations (true or invented) by military intelligence, or politically damaging public statements which, as they are rare, often come with high officers’ resignations. In extreme cases, some officers’ opposition could even be expressed through uncredited threats or intimidation against civilians involved in, or supportive of, negotiations.

Evidence of Military Unease

Military commanders insist, and some analysts agree, that the armed forces have stolidly supported President Santos’s peace effort. “The Army’s support for the peace process is proved, clearly, by our work,” Gen. Jaime Lasprilla, the chief of Colombia’s army, told El Espectador journalist Cecilia Orozco in November. “The fact that the transfer of 30 terrorists to Havana has occurred without any incident is a concrete and forceful piece of evidence.”

While the institution as a whole has gone along with the talks, there have been troubling incidents.

Tags: Civil-Military Relations

Bilateral Cease-Fire: What Must Be Negotiated?

January 16, 2015
President Santos last night, announcing his intention to negotiate a bilateral cease-fire with the FARC.

“I have given instructions to the negotiators that they start, as soon as possible, the discussion on the point of the bilateral and definitive cease-fire and cessation of hostilities.”

That was Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, making a rather surprising announcement in the first moments of his televised 2015 new year’s address.

In the nearly two and a half years since peace talks began, the Colombian government had refused the FARC guerrillas’ calls for a bilateral cease-fire, insisting on fighting while negotiations proceeded. Now, one month after the FARC declared a “unilateral, indefinite” but conditional cease-fire, President Santos is talking about making it bilateral. The talks are in such a mature phase, it seems, that the guns and bombs may soon go silent as both sides abstain from offensive actions.

This is a transcendental step. But one might reasonably ask: “If the FARC already wants and has declared a cease-fire, what is there to negotiate?”

There is much to define. “Cease fire” and “cessation of hostilities” are vague terms. When they return to the table on January 26, negotiators—especially the “end of conflict subcommittee” made up of Colombian military personnel and FARC leaders—will have to consider questions like the following.

  • Who would verify it? If the parties at the table in Havana lose time arguing over alleged cease-fire violations, the negotiating agenda could get derailed. Some trusted third party, perhaps an international entity, may be needed to investigate and rule on such allegations.
  • Can the Colombian security forces go after non-participants? In many areas, the FARC are not the only active armed or organized-crime group. The Colombian government is charged with protecting its citizens throughout the national territory and will insist on being able to confront these groups—as well as to confront FARC elements that, in its view, have gone rogue or broken away.
  • Will this be a “cease-fire in place?” The government might suggest that, in order to verify the cease-fire more easily, the FARC concentrate its members in specific locations. The guerrillas will reject this.
  • If guerrillas are not concentrated in specific locations, can the security forces carry out arrest warrants for wanted guerrilla leaders? If the authorities locate or encounter a known and wanted FARC leader, Colombia will insist on the ability to arrest that leader despite the cease-fire.

Tags: Cease-Fire

“There Are Other Circumstances Now”

January 6, 2015
Yesterday, from left to right: lead government negotiator Humberto de la Calle, President Juan Manuel Santos, and High Commissioner for Peace Sergio Jaramillo.

With his declaration about the FARC peace talks yesterday, President Juan Manuel Santos took a big step toward de-escalating Colombia’s conflict.

Santos was indirect, but hinted that—as long as current conditions prevail—the government and guerrillas are approaching a sort of undeclared, de facto cease-fire. Or at least, that the government is no longer insisting on total war on the battlefield while talks proceed at the table.

A translation of the key section:

Of course, we have taken very much into consideration the unilateral and indefinite cease-fire that the FARC declared. And on this point we must recognize that the FARC have complied.

We want to invite the ELN to join the initiative of a unilateral cease-fire, as the FARC did.

Until now, we have followed that maxim made famous by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, where he said that we must negotiate as though the war or conflict didn’t exist, and we had to maintain the military offensive as though the peace process didn’t exist.

But the advances in the negotiations indicate to us that there are other circumstances now, and that this disconnect is no longer applicable.

Colombia’s El Tiempo newspaper explained:

Sources close to the peace process confirmed to El Tiempo that, while this doesn’t refer directly to a “bilateral cease-fire,” which would imply a halt to the security forces’ offensive actions against the FARC, the message of “de-escalation” will begin to be reinforced so that society may understand that a definitive stage of the negotiations has been entered.

El Tiempo noted that the armed forces’ high command asked for clarification last night from Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón. The response came this afternoon in a tweet from the President: “Instructions to the Armed Forces have not changed. Bilateral cease-fire will be discussed when the appropriate moment arrives.”

If this sounds a bit contradictory, so is the situation on the ground. While not quite a bilateral cease-fire, the de facto battlefield status can be summed up in two events that took place on December 31:

  • That day, Colombia’s CERAC think-tank, which monitors conflict activity, reported: “CERAC’s violence monitoring has not registered a single offensive act attributable to the FARC that would violate its cease-fire. Nor have we registered any offensive action against the FARC on the security forces’ part.”
  • That evening, Army soldiers, police, and Prosecutors’ Office police captured Carlos Andrés Bustos Cortez, alias “Richard,” identified as the second-in-command of the FARC’s powerful Teófilo Forero Column in the southwestern department of Huila. “Richard” was located by a joint intelligence operation, and captured after a brief firefight in which he was wounded.

Tags: Cease-Fire, De-escalation