Introduction: Citizenship, Participation and Community Action in Colombia's Post-Peace Accord Security Landscape

Abstract

Colombia has experienced numerous peace initiatives in recent decades, most notably the 2016 Peace Accords between the Government of Colombia and the largest insurgent group the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People's Army). Despite these multilevel initiatives, the security panorama in Colombia continues to be characterised by instability. Reductive understandings of security and the lack of widespread citizen participation have stymied peacebuilding efforts and led to policy responses that are often not in accordance with societal needs. One example of this is the state promotion of heavy-handed coca eradication policies, notably during the 2018–2022 Duque government, that consider neither the vulnerabilities nor the rural political economies that motivate people to grow coca. State actions that ignore, or even exacerbate, people's security concerns end up causing frustration and resentment, particularly among already marginalised communities. The sense of disconnection thereby generated between citizens and the government threatens to undermine the progress made in reducing the harms caused by armed conflict in Colombia.

This special section features a range of analytical approaches to the study of citizen security, community action and participation, highlighting how state-centred perspectives often overlook the sociospatial dynamics that increase the risk of marginalisation and insecurity. The genesis of this Special Section is the constructive conversations held in a series of Cross-Stakeholder Forums in 2019 featuring participants from the Colombian state, international organisations, academia, professional civil society and grassroots communities. The Cross-Stakeholder Forums were organised by Pembroke College Oxford's CONPEACE (from Conflict Actors to Architects of Peace) Programme thanks to funding from Global Affairs Canada's Peace and Stabilisation Operations Program with the objective of analysing ongoing challenges to peace and security in the aftermath of the Peace Accords.

The opening article by Dáire McGill, Jan Boesten, Annette Idler and Oscar Palma sets out a conceptual framework on marginalisation and insecurity in Colombia using citizen security as an analytical lens to explore the relationship between constrained citizenship, marginalisation and violence. Tracing historical and contemporary patterns of geographic, sociocultural, political and economic marginalisation reveals the violence inherent in the processes of economic accumulation, human settlement and state creation. The article further highlights the de-marginalising potential of some recent processes, arguing that realising such potential will depend on their levels of community participation and inclusiveness. Drawing on fieldwork in Colombia's Northern Cesar Department and a series of Cross-Stakeholder Forums in 2019, this article centres the perspectives of those experiencing marginalisation to better understand and conceptualise the challenges of citizenship during transitions from armed conflict to sustainable peace. It is hoped that this enhanced understanding of the intersecting processes that make particular regions, groups, communities and individuals prone to insecurity can improve peacebuilding initiatives and build more equitable societies.

The second article by Magali Alba-Niño focusses on the role of communities in maintaining and strengthening social fabric and resisting the control of armed actors in the Colombian Catatumbo, a marginalised region with geostrategic importance, great natural wealth and high rates of inequality, violence and unsatisfied basic needs. Drawing on thinkers such as Fals Borda, Mancinas and Lefebvre, Alba-Niño argues that the ‘Community of Catatumbo’ is a collective subject constituted by diverse social groups such as indigenous peoples, peasants, organisations and social movements. This Community vindicates itself through human rights and social justice framings amid oppression and exclusion, in addition to constructing social fabric through (a) the creation of strong social bonds, (b) the importance of space to construct collective social identification among a heterogeneous population and (c) agreements to create associative spaces that can defend the territory from the sphere of armed violence. The article concludes by showing how the painstaking construction of social fabric creates a viable opportunity for peace and revolutionary change – nevertheless, structural dynamics ensure that such transformation requires the ongoing commitment of other social actors from academia, organised civil society and state institutions.

In the final article, Inge Helena Valencia, Cristian Castaño and David Alonso Silva-Ojeda's in-depth study of two municipalities in ‘Alto Patía and Norte del Cauca’ in south-western Colombia illustrates the strengths and limitations of the Peace Accords' Programas de Desarrollo con Enfoque Territorial (PDET, Development Programmes with a Territorial Focus). PDETs were conceived as a key tool to overcome Colombia's territorially unequal institutional configuration, consolidate citizen coexistence relations and strengthen the institutional state apparatus in territories historically affected by war in which different forms of rebel governance exist alongside areas of effective state presence. This would be done by supporting peasant economies and decreasing urban–rural inequalities through rural development plans created in democratic participatory processes that themselves recognise, respect and strengthen community agency and popular citizenship. By doing so, PDET would improve upon past experiences of territorial organisation that entailed the imposition of centralist perspectives on marginalised regions. The article acknowledges the excellent level of community participation in the initial consultations and the construction of the Regional Transformation Action Plan while highlighting serious reservations about the exclusion of local peasant agency in implementation and governance. For the authors, this reflects a failure by the state to engage constructively with existing forms of popular agency, especially where these have become strong governance actors through their roles as local interlocutors of de-facto rebel governors. Recognising the social value of these organisations would allow the articulation of a multi-scalar relationship between the national and the local that makes PDETs more likely to fulfil their potential as instruments of territorial peace and the reconstruction of state-society relationships.

Running through all articles is the sense that the 2016 peace accord between the Government of Colombia and FARC-EP has presented the state with an opportunity to fulfil historic debts to its citizens in a manner that improves the security panorama and strengthens incipient processes of de-marginalistion. To ensure a more peaceful and equitable future, it is incumbent upon all social actors to ensure these debts are paid and that marginalised communities are facilitated to exercise full citizenship and agency.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.