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Lex Pacificatoria Colombiana: Colombia’s Peace Accord in Comparative Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

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In this short piece, I open a conversation over how the Colombian Final Peace Accord provides evidence of, and a contribution to, a more general lex pacificatoria or “law of the peacemakers” (lex pax for short). In light of the Accord’s recent ballot defeat, I integrate into this assessment the merits of using a referendum to approve (in Colombia’s case “affirm or deny”) the Agreement as a whole. Throughout, I draw on a peace agreement database which has coded over one thousand four hundred peace agreements since 1990 for comparative insight.

Type
Symposium on the Colombian Peace Talks and International Law
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 2016

References

1 Bell, Christine, Agreements: Their Nature and Legal Status, 100 AJIL 373 (2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Christine Bell, On the Law of Peace: Peace Agreements and the Lex Pacificatoria (2008).

2 PA-X: Peace Agreements Database (initial version of provisions of women, available at www.peaceagreements.org, full ver sion forthcoming 2017).

3 Bell, supra note 1; Bell, supra note 1.

4 Stahn, Carsten, ‘Jus ad bellum’, ‘just in bello’ . . . ‘just post bellum’?—Rethinking the Conception of the Law of Armed Force, 17 Eur. J. Int’l L. 921 (2007)Google Scholar.

5 Cf. Neil Walker, Intimations of Global Law (2015).

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7 de El Pais, Redacción, ¿Por qué el centro del país voto No, pero Cali y el Valle se fueron por el Sí?, El País (Colom., Oct. 3, 2016)Google Scholar.

8 On This Day, 9 December 1973: Sunningdale Agreement signed, BBC.

9 Herbolzheimer, Kristian, Innovations in the Colombian peace process, Noref Report (June 2016)Google Scholar.

10 See Céspedes-Báez, Lina M., Gender Panic and the Failure of a Peace Agreement, 110 AJIL Unbound 183 (2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Id., see also new joint communication between Farc and Christian groups, on gender, FARC y grupos cristianos llegan a puntos comunes sobre enfoque de género, Semana (Oct. 29, 2016).

12 But see, Krystalli, Roxanne & Theidon, Kimberly, Here’s how attention to gender affected Colombia’s peace process, Wash. Post (Oct. 9, 2016)Google Scholar, for arguments that these provisions connected to the referendum “No” campaign.

13 See Leon, Nelson Camilo Sanchez, Could the Colombian Peace Accord trigger an Icc investigation on Colombia?, 110 AJIL Unbound 172 (2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Acosta-López, Juana Inés, The Inter-American Human Rights System and the Colombian peace: Redefining the fight against impunity, 110 AJIL Unbound 178 (2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 For the example of the recent “Brexit” vote in the United Kingdom, see Wheeler, Brian & Hunt, Alex, Brexit: All you need to know about the Uk leaving the Eu, BBC News (Oct. 2, 2016)Google Scholar; on referenda generally, see Stephen Tierney, Referendums: the Theory and Practice of Republican Deliberation (2012).

15 Possibly requiring only 13% of all registered voters to vote “Yes”; see Forero, Juan & Vyas, Kejal, Colombian Peace Plan Heads for Vote, Wall St. J. (Aug. 25, 2016 Google Scholar, 7:06 PM).

16 See Bell, supra note 1.

17 See Restrepo, Laura Betancur, The Legal Status of the Colombian Peace Agreement, 110 AJIL Unbound 188 (2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Commentary on Article 3: Conflicts not of an international character, ICRC (2016).

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20 Intervención del Jefe de la Delegación del Gobierno, Humberto de la Calle, en la Corte Constitucional, Presidencia De La RepÚBlica (Colom., May 26, 2016).

21 Peace Accords Matrix, University of Notre Dame.

22 Spagat, Michael & Johnson, Neil, Colombia did not vote ‘no’ in its peace referendum—what the statistics reveal, The Conversation (Oct. 4, 2016, 2:18 PM)Google Scholar.

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26 Krystalli & Theidon, supra note 12.