Violence after Peace

Abstract

Coming up to the end of the peace process in 2016, Colombia has experienced a general improvement in homicide rates and security in the last decade, yet targeted attacks against social leaders continue. For example, indigenous leaders, union leaders, mining and peasant leaders, and others have been attacked despite an earlier paramilitary demobilization effort and the recent peace processes. After four years of peace talks, with a full range of suspensions, re-starts, and flare-ups of conflict, the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) and the government of Colombia agreed to formally end their decades-long conflict. After an animated campaign against the peace deal, led by former president Alvaro Uribe, Colombian voters narrowly rejected it (50.2 percent) on October 2, 2016. Despite the failure of the referendum, the Colombian Congress unanimously passed a revised accord in late November 2016, and the country officially entered into a post-conflict stage.