Framing Peace Processes: International Policies, Strategies, and Laws in the Colombian Armed Conflict

Peace negotiations between states and insurgents have become an underlying feature to end violent conflicts. As various conflicts became protracted during the 1990s, different global norms, narratives, and practices concerning human rights, political violence, democratization processes, transnational crime, and sovereignty, among others, changed the framework in which both conflicts and negotiations were taking place. This has resulted not only in the increasing involvement of the international community in the politics of intra-state conflicts and fragile settings but also had a decisive impact on the strategies, behavior, and discourses of the actors involved in conflicts and peace negotiations. This paper examines how this increasing internationalization of intra-state wars since the end of the Cold War has changed the dynamics of peace negotiations by examining the fifty-year Colombian armed conflict. The war in Colombia has been primarily examined through the analysis of domestic factors since it has been perceived as an internal strife. This paper challenges this view. Instead, it argues that the agenda, strategies, and scope of peace negotiations have changed due to the increasing interaction between local and global processes over the last thirty years. These processes have rendered the conflict more complex. Indeed, the design and implementation of transitional justice mechanism to redress human rights violations became the most complex and problematic matter to address throughout the negotiations that took place in Havana (Cuba) between 2012 and 2016. Moreover, the peace vs. justice debate have ensued since the signing of the peace agreement in September 2016. The interactions of international human rights law, political considerations, judicial mechanisms, and the mobilisations of victims and their participation in the process shaped the legal and institutional aspects of the agreement. This research problematizes traditional conceptions concerning the dynamics of intra-state armed conflicts in an increasingly globalized world. The research explores peace negotiations incorporating the international environment in which civil wars and peace processes are located. It shows how and to what extent warring parties have had to accommodate themselves to changing realities and evolving policies and norms vis-à-vis human rights, political violence, state fragility, transitional justice, and organized crime.