Collective Reincorporation of Ex-Combatants: Experiences in the Post-Peace Agreement with the FARC-EP in Colombia

Andrea Carolina Jaramillo Contreras¹

Abstract

DDR (Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration) are essential in countries in which peace operations involve armed groups. This is the case of the peace process in Colombia in which more than 7,000 ex-combatants were involved. As part of the peace agreement, the Colombian government has the compromise to implement a reincorporation process to the ex-combatants but with a prevalence on a collective perspective, which means the implementation of economic, social and political collective actions not just for the ex-combatants but also in benefit of surrounding communities. This approach has not been easy for both the ex-combatants and the government as this is the first reincorporation policy that focuses on a collective perspective in the phase of implementation, going against the approach of the traditional individual mechanism of reintegration. The author employed an ethnography approach to analyse the local characteristics of collective reincorporation in the daily life of ex-combatants and surrounding communities. The study was carried out in three territories where ex-combatants are located, in the department of Caquetá and Antioquia. Using in depth interviews and daily participatory observation, the author identifies that social bonds emerged during conflict times are necessary to build a process of collective reincorporation of the ex-combatants as well as way to attach to the territories in which they are living now, avoiding therefore their returning to illegal armed groups. Hence, the role of surrounding communities plays a reciprocal contribution in the development of the territories. This study found different external and internal aspects that have effects in the success of a collective reincorporation, such as international aid, security conditions, local support, internal organization, sense of belonging to the FARC and to the collectively, and local peacebuilding agency. The fact of having the interplay of external and internal factors lead to analyses the local as a mobile intervention that can fit with the political and economic fluctuation of the territories emerged after the peace agreement.

Keywords

• Collective Reincorporation, Colombia, DDR, Ex-combatants, Reintegration

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Cite this Article as Follows

Andrea Carolina Jaramillo Contreras. Collective Reincorporation of Ex-Combatants: Experiences in the Post-Peace Agreement with the FARC-EP in Colombia. International Conference on Global Peace (2019): 02. Print.