The eighth chapter, by Ángela Marcela Castillo Burbano, reflects on viable paths to consolidate rural development in Colombia; through social and solidarity economy practices. It argues that to overcome the limitations of conventional development paradigms, alternative fundamental conditions of good living must be considered: a broad guarantee of rights, the sovereignty of the State and the consolidation of public policies with the opening to new concepts and approaches, such as that provided by food sovereignty, the right to water and the rights of Nature.
The authors Alba Lucy Ortega and Amanda Riascos, in the ninth chapter, suggest that the formation of associations in the rural sector is a fundamental factor that can strengthen the potential of productive sectors, in order for communities to contribute to rural development, based on strategies that improve skills for the sustainability of rural enterprises.
In the tenth chapter, the authors Alba Lucy Ortega and Claudia Guerrero analyze, in a cross-cutting manner, corporate social responsibility as a strategy that stimulates investment, production and marketing activities in the countryside, addressing areas of governance, human rights, labor practices and the environment. Their case study of the “Federación de Cafeteros” or “Federation of Coffee Growers” provides insight into how a second-degree organization affects rural productive dynamics and how coffee production activity can be improved in territories dedicated to agriculture or in territories where this production has been decided as an alternative to the cultivating of crops for illicit use.
Finally, the eleventh chapter, by authors David López, Andrés Mosquera and Esteban Guerrero, punctually analyzes the economic opportunities of coffee for the generation of employment and income in the municipalities of Leiva, Policarpa and Los Andes, to the extent that they replicate quality and specialty criteria that generate greater added value and take advantage of opportunities in the market.
The ensemble of these chapters should demonstrate an academic work that tries to cast a light on the multiple dialogues around rural development from a polysemic and critical perspective that incorporates the visible realities of the territory. The Nariñense mountain range is a region full of cultural and ecological diversity with a significant community fabric, driven by leaders who hope to overcome the consequences of the armed conflict and interweave the paths of truth, justice, reparation and non-repetition. Current efforts, in adding inter-institutional and community alliances, are not enough and it should be a permanent task to ensure that the rural population appropriates the role of protagonist in this unfinished peacebuilding process.
References
Jaramillo, S. (2014). La paz territorial. Presentación en la Universidad de Harvard, Cambridge, MA, Estados Unidos.
Molano, A. (Mayo de 2016). Lanzamiento de la Revista de Derechos Humanos, No.1 ¿Cuándo Nace La Esperanza?. Evento llevado a cabo en la Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia, Pasto, Colombia.
Nussbaum, M. (2016). Paz en Colombia: perspectivas, desafíos, opciones. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.
Sandoval, M. F. L., Robertsdotter, A. y Paredes, M. (2017). Space, power, and locality: The contemporary use of territorio in Latin American Geography. Journal of Latin American Geography, 16(1), 43-67.
| how to cite this chapterBiel Portero, I. & Casanova Mejía, A. C. (2019). The challenges of building a stable and lasting peace in Colombia. In Á. M. Castillo Burbano & C. A. Guerrero Martínez (comps.), Challenges and alternatives towards peacebuilding: a rural development perspective (Philippe White, Transl.) (pp. 29-53). Bogota: Ediciones UCC & Centro Editorial Uniminuto. (Original title published in 2019). https://dx.doi.org/10.16925/9789587602388 |
Chapter I
The challenges of building a stable and lasting peace in Colombia
Israel Biel Portero, Andrea Carolina Casanova Mejía
Abstract
Following the Final Peace Agreement, signed between the Government and the FARC-EP, Colombia faces countless challenges in order to satisfy and guarantee the rights of historically excluded and underprivileged populations in different political, economic and social contexts. Therefore, the construction of a stable and lasting peace implies rethinking not only the old structures that generate inequality and poverty in the country, but also the way of understanding justice and reconciliation. In this sense, this chapter aims to review transitional justice as a set of instruments and mechanisms aimed at promoting such transformations, identifying in turn the major developments and particular challenges of the department of Nariño.
Keywords: armed conflict, peace agreement, transitional justice, human rights and rural development.
Resumen
Tras el Acuerdo Final de Paz suscrito entre el Gobierno y las FARC-EP, Colombia se enfrenta a un sinnúmero de desafíos para satisfacer y garantizar los derechos de poblaciones históricamente excluidas y vulneradas en los diferentes contextos políticos, económicos y sociales. Por eso, la construcción de una paz estable y duradera implica repensar, no solo las viejas estructuras generadoras de desigualdad y pobreza en el país, sino también el modo de entender la justicia y la reconciliación. En este sentido, el presente capítulo tiene como objetivo realizar un acercamiento a la justicia transicional como un conjunto de instrumentos y mecanismos dirigidos a promover dichas trasformaciones, identificando a su vez los principales avances y retos concretos del departamento de Nariño.
Palabras clave: conflicto armado, acuerdo de paz, justicia transicional, derechos humanos y desarrollo rural.
Introduction
The guarantee of success from the negotiated exit to the armed conflict in Colombia requires a rigorous analysis of the factors that explain its origin, its temporary extension and its complexity. If the problems and circumstances that motivated and intensified the armed confrontation are not addressed and corrected, it will be very difficult to achieve a peace that is stable and lasting. Thus, when analyzing the challenges of peacebuilding in Colombia, one inevitably refers to the processes involved in the transformation of land use and tenure, to the opening of real spaces of political and citizen participation, to the satisfaction and guarantee of the rights of victims, those who have suffered serious violations of their human rights or where infractions of International Humanitarian Law have taken place and, especially, to the set of instruments and mechanisms of transitional justice that will boost the transformation of a society moving from war to peace.
The armed conflict has been experienced in a very heterogeneous way throughout the national territory. Rural areas have been more affected than urban areas and some departments have suffered the dynamics of war more than others. Nariño has been one of the territories most affected by violence. Its geographical conditions have made the department a strategic point of the armed conflict. The concurrence of all armed actors in the conflict and the entrenched presence of drug trafficking, combined with the poverty and structural inequalities within the region, configure Nariño as an enclave of extreme vulnerability.
This chapter aims to present a systematic analysis of the antecedents of the armed conflict from a regional perspective, its political, economic and social repercussions, as well as the post-conflict challenges of peacebuilding through a transitional justice process.
The political and agrarian dispute: background to the armed conflict in Colombia
Colombia has seen more than half a century of continuous armed violence, albeit with varying intensity. The longevity of the conflict has also transformed the actors involved, the strategies used and the ways of conducting the war; factors that when combined, directly affect the different degrees and modalities of victimization.
The Colombian war is not exclusively a war of combatants. In its modalities and dynamics, it has been generating what could be defined as a process of outsourcing