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2 - Violence, Grassroots Pressure, and Civil War Peace Processes

Insights from the Colombia–FARC Conflict

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2019

By
J. Michael Greig
Edited by
James Meernik ,
Jacqueline H. R. DeMeritt  and
Mauricio Uribe-López
James Meernik
Affiliation:
University of North Texas
Jacqueline H. R. DeMeritt
Affiliation:
University of North Texas
Mauricio Uribe-López
Affiliation:
EAFIT University (Medelin, Coloumbia)
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Summary

The establishment of a peace agreement in November 2016 between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was a landmark achievement for a conflict that has persisted since 1964 in a country that has experienced civil war dating as far back as the 1940s. This peace agreement to end a more than fifty-year-old insurgency is all the more remarkable given the past history of failed peace attempts between the two sides. Over the decades, the two sides have vacillated between violent efforts aimed at winning the conflict outright and imposing their own settlement terms on one another and efforts at dialogue aimed at settling the conflict through negotiation. While these two processes – violence and negotiation – seem distinct, they are inextricably linked to one another. Violence between the FARC and the Colombian government shaped the occurrence and outcomes of peace efforts between them. At the same time, negotiations between the two sides conditioned future violence between them.

Type
Chapter
Information
As War Ends
What Colombia Can Tell Us About the Sustainability of Peace and Transitional Justice
 , pp. 46 - 67
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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