Andrei Gomez-Suarez presents "Multilevel Infrastructures for Peace: The Case of Colombia."
The 2016 Colombian peace agreement ended a fifty-two-year war with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). According to the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, it is the most comprehensive peace agreement to date. It established national, regional and local infrastructures to formulate development plans in Colombia's sixteen most conflict-affected regions, a coca crop substitution programme, political reform measures to ensure the political participation of marginalised sectors of society, the political, economic and social reintegration of former FARC combatants with security guarantees, and the satisfaction of victims' rights to truth, justice, reparations and non-recurrence. It also created international peace infrastructures to aid implementation, monitor progress, and offer recommendations. These multilevel infrastructures for peace have been fundamental for building sustainable peace, despite the rocky implementation of the peace agreement after the arrival of a new government bent on reforming it 2018. In this talk I outline six infrastructures (Rural Development Plans, Coca Crop Substitution Programme, the National Reincorporation Council, the Truth Commission, the Peace Tribunal, and the UN Mission to Colombia) which, amid rising violence, have so far halted the return of full-scale war.
