Juan Manuel Santos on Colombia’s peace process, 10 years on

Juan Manuel Santos, who served as Colombia's president from 2010 to 2018 and orchestrated the landmark peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), has offered a sobering assessment of the nation's progress one decade after the historic 2016 accord that formally ended more than five decades of armed conflict. Speaking in reflection on the agreement's anniversary, Santos confronted an uncomfortable reality: despite the transformative nature of the peace deal and his subsequent Nobel Peace Prize recognition, Colombia has witnessed a troubling resurgence of violence in recent years, threatening to unravel the fragile stability that the accord established. The former president's candid evaluation comes at a critical juncture, as the country grapples with the emergence of rival criminal organisations, persistent drug trafficking operations, and territorial disputes in regions previously controlled by the FARC, revealing fundamental weaknesses in the peace process's implementation and the international community's commitment to supporting Colombia's post-conflict reconstruction.

The 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC represented a watershed moment in Latin American history, concluding a civil conflict that claimed an estimated 220,000 lives and displaced millions of Colombians. Santos' negotiation of this accord, facilitated by Cuban intermediaries and supported by international observers including the United States and European nations, was regarded as a diplomatic triumph that transformed Colombia's position on the global stage, shifting perceptions from a narco-state plagued by paramilitarism to a nation attempting genuine reconciliation and institutional reform. However, the trajectory of post-agreement Colombia has proven significantly more complicated than peace architects anticipated, with successive governments failing to adequately fund reintegration programmes, rural development initiatives, and transitional justice mechanisms that were central to the accord's comprehensive design. The broader context matters because Colombia's experience serves as a crucial test case for modern peace-building efforts globally, influencing how international actors approach post-conflict societies from Myanmar to Yemen, making the peace process's current vulnerabilities particularly significant for understanding contemporary conflict resolution challenges.

The statistical reality underlying Santos' reflections is stark and undeniable. Homicide rates in Colombia, which had shown marked improvement during the immediate post-agreement years, have climbed substantially, with violence concentrated in regions including the Pacific coast and border areas where FARC dissidents and successor criminal organisations operate with minimal state presence. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime documented that cocaine production in Colombia reached record levels in 2021, fundamentally undermining the peace agreement's intended outcomes of crop substitution and economic diversification in rural areas. These measurable indicators reveal that while the formal armed conflict with the FARC officially concluded, the underlying structural conditions that generated violence—poverty, weak institutional capacity in peripheral regions, lucrative illicit drug markets, and the proliferation of armed groups competing for territorial control—have proven far more resilient than policy frameworks anticipated. Santos' acknowledgement of these facts reflects a maturation in his public positioning, moving beyond the triumphalism that characterised immediate post-agreement rhetoric toward a more nuanced understanding of the gap between diplomatic achievement and sustainable peace consolidation.

For contemporary readers and policymakers, the implications of Colombia's peace process trajectory extend beyond the country's borders, directly affecting regional stability, migration patterns, and the efficacy of international development interventions. The persistence of violence in Colombia has contributed to elevated flows of displaced persons throughout Latin America, with implications for countries including Panama, Costa Rica, and beyond, affecting humanitarian systems and border security across the hemisphere. Furthermore, the continued cocaine production and trafficking through Colombian territory directly supplies North American and European markets, meaning that the failure to consolidate peace tangibly impacts drug policy effectiveness and public health outcomes in distant jurisdictions. For international investors and development institutions, Colombia's experience demonstrates the substantial resource requirements and multi-generational timelines necessary for meaningful post-conflict transformation, challenging optimistic assessments that associate peace treaties with immediate economic stabilisation and security improvements. The case also illustrates how domestic political dynamics can derail peace consolidation, particularly when successive governments prioritise other policy objectives or face budgetary constraints that compromise implementation of agreed-upon programmes.

The broader significance of Santos' retrospective assessment lies in what it reveals about the limitations of contemporary peace-building models that emphasize negotiated settlements and formal agreements while underestimating the institutional capacity and sustained international engagement required to address underlying drivers of conflict. Colombia's peace process, despite its intellectual sophistication and international support, has encountered persistent challenges that reflect systemic weaknesses in post-conflict state-building: the absence of effective territorial control in peripheral regions, weak fiscal capacity to fund rural development, insufficient judicial mechanisms to ensure accountability without recreating grievances, and the persistence of highly profitable criminal markets that incentivise violence regardless of formal peace agreements. This pattern connects to broader global trends observable in numerous post-conflict societies, where the signing of agreements represents a necessary but dramatically insufficient condition for establishing durable peace. Santos' candour about these challenges serves an important analytical function, providing crucial evidence that durability in peace processes depends not merely on the negotiating skill of diplomats or the prestige of international mediators, but rather on the sustained commitment of governments, civil society, and international actors to the grinding, resource-intensive work of institutional development, economic transformation, and cultural change that follows formal conflict termination.

Looking forward, the sustainability of Colombia's peace process depends on several measurable developments that observers should monitor closely. The Colombian government's implementation of remaining provisions of the 2016 accord, particularly rural development programmes and transitional justice mechanisms overseen by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, will provide concrete indicators of commitment to the peace framework's full realisation, with key benchmarks emerging throughout 2024 and 2025 as these institutions approach critical junctures in their operational mandates. International financial institutions, including the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, have signalled continued support for post-conflict reconstruction, yet the adequacy of these funding commitments relative to stated developmental objectives remains contested and requires transparent evaluation. Additionally, the regional response to criminal organisations that have filled the vacuum created by FARC's demobilisation—particularly groups operating in border regions—will significantly influence whether Colombia's conflict transformation proves durable or whether the underlying structural drivers of violence reassert themselves with renewed intensity. Santos' reflections suggest that the critical phase of Colombia's peace consolidation remains ahead rather than behind, requiring sustained attention, substantial resources, and genuine political will across multiple international and domestic actors to transform the diplomatic achievement of 2016 into a genuinely sustainable peace that extends beyond formal agreement into the lived reality of Colombian communities most affected by decades of conflict.