The News Roundup is a regular feature of the blog where we select news articles from various sources around the web, with the goal of providing an overview of the weekly conversation about the countries where MCC works in the region. Quotes in italics are drawn directly from sources and do not necessarily reflect the position of MCC. Due to current events, this week is a special edition featuring Colombia.
Colombians take to streets to support FARC peace deal
Wednesday’s march on the Plaza Bolivar, adjacent to the congress and presidential palace, appeared to be larger than last week’s rally, a potential sign of how politically apathetic Colombians have been jolted into action by the fading prospects for peace. In recent days, the Plaza has been overtaken by dozens of tents set up by peace activists and on Tuesday was blanketed with a giant, white shroud containing the names of almost 2,000 victims of the conflict stenciled in ash. Santos has applauded the outburst of activism, and on Wednesday reiterated the need to seek a quick solution to the impasse so that a ceasefire in place does not unravel. “The great majority of people have asked me to find a solution soon because uncertainty is the enemy,” he said in televised address.
Thousands of Colombians Protest for Peace After Unexpected Rejection of Historic Accord
More than 30,000 citizens demonstrated in the country’s capital city Bogotá on Wednesday, with thousands more holding simultaneous marches in Cartagena,Cali, Barranquilla, and several other major Colombian cities. On Friday, an estimated 10,000 citizens joined a pro-peace march in Medellín, the country’s second largest city and a stronghold of the movement against the peace deal. Medellín, and the department of Antioquia where it is located, has long been a bastion of support for former president and current senator Álvaro Uribe who led the conservative Democratic Center party’s opposition to the peace accord. But the thousands of demonstrators who turned out on Friday sought to make clear that the popular politician’s views on the peace accord are not shared by all of the area’s residents. They repeatedly chanted “Antioquia is not Uribe,” a phrase that later became a trending hashtag on Twitter.
Santos extends ceasefire with FARC
Santos said in a televised address that he was extending by two months the ceasefire with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia until Dec. 31. He made the announcement after meeting with students who have been organizing demonstrations across the country to demand the accord be implemented immediately despite it being rejected in a referendum. “Let it be clear: this isn’t an ultimatum or deadline,” Santos said, adding that he hoped to have an agreement before year’s end. He said the lives of soldiers and guerrillas depended on warfare not resuming. “Time is conspiring against peace and life.”
Colombian artist creates enormous shroud to honor country’s war dead
And while talks between the government and leaders of the No campaign continue, tens of thousands of Colombians have mobilised in demonstrations in favour of a peace deal. A group of peace activists has been camped out on the square since last week, and marches have been held in cities across the country. Sergio Jaramillo, the government’s peace commissioner who led more than four years of negotiations with the Farc, joined volunteers at Bolívar Square to add his own stitches to the cloth. “This is extraordinarily important because a strong sentiment for peace has been awoken in all Colombians,” he said. Juan David Sánchez, a journalism student, said he participated in the installation to help sensitize urban Colombians who have been relatively unscathed by the war – and who, to a large extent voted No.
The Man Blocking Peace in Colombia
In order for the FARC deal to get back on track, and for talks with the ELN to succeed, Mr. Uribe will need to play a constructive role. After the referendum, Mr. Uribe made a series of unrealistic demands on the peace deal with the FARC, including scrapping the transitional justice system with a special tribunal that was at the heart of the deal. That tribunal would offer amnesty to most rank-and-file fighters and leniently punish guerrilla members who confess to grave crimes. If Mr. Uribe has a better, workable idea, he should dispatch a delegation to Havana, where the FARC leaders are currently based, to seek compromises on issues involving justice and political participation. If all sides are willing to negotiate in good faith, a final peace agreement could be reached before the end of the year. In recent days, thousands of Colombians who support the peace agreement have taken to the streets to call on the political establishment to work together toward a prompt resolution.
FARC Peace Talks and Drug Trafficking: Uribe’s Nuclear Option
Uribe’s proposals also contain one more potential spoiler. His calls for security guarantees for the FARC appear to be attached to the condition that the FARC stop committing crimes such as drug trafficking and extortion in order to fund themselves. With the FARC caught in limbo and uncertain if and when the demobilization process will proceed, it is all but inevitable that many units will continue or return to criminal activities to sustain themselves, especially if negotiations drag on. Uribe can use this fact to discredit the FARC at any time he chooses. It is an argument he deployed many times throughout his opposition to the peace process. But this time he will be making it as a key player in the negotiations rather than sniping from the outside. In sum, the leverage the former executive has on the issue of drug trafficking cannot be understated. And if Uribe stands firm on these issues, it could be a way of derailing the renegotiation talks and extracting other political concessions that have nothing to do with the peace agreement.
Colombia’s opposition wants to modify peace deal — with a scalpel, not a hammer
Rather than establish a separate judiciary, the opposition proposal would create special tribunals within Colombia’s existing court system. Under this proposal, by fully confessing their crimes and paying reparations to victims, FARC leaders could serve five-to-eight-year terms on work farms, avoiding prison. But those convicted of atrocities would not be eligible to run for office. The proposed modifications would open the tribunals to members of the security forces convicted of rights abuses and other crimes over the course of the war and afford them preferential treatment.
Getting to yes in Colombia: What it would take to reintegrate the FARC
What these objectors miss is the complex definitions of justice among conflict-affected individuals and demobilizing combatants alike. The geographic distribution of the referendum votes suggests that people in regions that experienced high rates of violence voted in favor of the peace accords. Our research with conflict-affected individuals and former combatants highlights the broader range of justice that operates in war-torn regions of Colombia. It is not simply a dichotomy between criminal justice and jail time, or impunity for the damage former FARC members have done. What the “no” vote revealed is the deep gap that exists between certain urban centers – whose inhabitants see the war as distant, past and currently a subject for television series – and people in regions of the country in which the living legacies of war are a part of daily life. In those areas, the peace accords were embraced not for their perfection, but for their promise.
And fourth, those in favor of the accords did not have the requisite time, resources, or infrastructure to persuade desperately poor people on the urban peripheries — nearly all of which are undeclared war zones between local youth gangs involved in retail drug sales, and/or between contending factions of organized crime that employ some of them — that the peace accords’ implementation would bring benefits to all. In the long run, Colombia’s future will be decided in these zones — that is where a majority (or close to a majority) of Colombians live. Organized crime, youth gangs, and their corollaries — extortion, narcotics, homicide — along with grinding poverty and precarious access to public services and waged employment in the licit economy, define everyday life beyond the reach of state sovereignty.
What did you do as you prepared for church today? Were you so busy getting ready that you left feeding the children to your wife? Did you help make the breakfast? Wash some of the dishes? Dress the children? If not, then you are not living the Word.
On the ground, in other words, some religious leaders and communities may see gender in more nuanced ways than is portrayed in the narrative of religious opposition to the gendered peace accords.