GSUM Interviews Sergio Guarín, Post-Conflict and Peacebuilding Coordinator at Fundación Ideas para la Paz by Manuela Trindade Viana and Isa Mendes* The Colombian people is looking for peace since 1956. We are not going to miss this opportunity (Fundación Ideas para la Paz) participated in a roundtable entitled "Challenges for the Peace Process". In the next pages, Mr. Guarín shares with GSUM some of his thoughts on the topic. Photo: Academia.edu On December 4th, 2015, the Global South Unit for Mediation (GSUM) held the seminar At last, peace? Colombia's Peace Process and Challenges Ahead. Gathering specialists, students, diplomats and members of civil society, the event discussed the final push of the peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) in Havana, as well as the challenges to the post-conflict. Alongside Maria Elena Rodríguez (IBASE) and Virginia Bouvier (USIP), Sergio Guarín Sergio Guarín is a Historian from Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Bogota) and holds a Masters Degree in Political Science from Universidad de Los Andes (Bogota). Prior to his engagement with Fundación Ideas para la Paz, in Colombia, he served as National Coordinator for the Network of Regional Programs on Peace and Development (REDPRODEPAZ); Coordinator of the working groups for Peace and Development and Coexistence and Civil Security of the National Planning Department (NPD); Head of the Program on Political Sciences and Foreign Relations of Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar (Cartagena de Indias) and National Project Manager at Fundación Dividendo por Colombia. He has extensive expertise in the evaluation and formulation of programs related to peacebuilding, coexistence and civil security, civil participation and education. *Special thanks to Luisa Fenizola.
GSUM: How has Fundación Ideas para la Paz been involved in the current Colombian peace process? Guarín: Not directly. We are a think tank promoted by a group of businessmen and we work in Colombia for 15 years now, giving technical advice for peace processes and promoting public debates about some issues we consider key for peace, security and development. In this specific process, we are giving technical advice to many institutions. For example, based on opinions we gathered from civil society organizations, we have prepared analytical reports for High Commissioner for Peace [Sergio Jaramillo]. We also gave technical assistance to the police and to the Interior Ministry. So I would say we are not directly involved with Havana, but we have given support and technical advice to many actors in the process. GSUM: The peace process has been considered innovative and inclusive by specialists of the mediation field. Has it given enough attention to the issue of representation at the negotiation table? Guarín: No, I don t think so. In my opinion, the peace process is not innovative because of its representativeness, but because of the way in which it was designed. If you look at the ones formally involved in the process, you will see that there are only the government and key actors like interpreters, businessmen, the Military, and that is it. There is no permanent representative for civil society organizations, for the media or academia, so, that said, the table in Havana is not representative of the Colombian society. I think it is a good process and I think it is going to succeed. But I don't think that it is a representative process in terms of having the main actors of society implicated. GSUM: How do you feel about the argument that inclusion and efficacy are incompatible while negotiating peace? Guarín: I will say two things. The first one is that there is a risk when you invite all sectors and main actors to the table in the case of Colombia, because the line between the conflict agenda and the development agenda is quite blurred. So, for many people the conflict stems from development problems, and if you include them, it makes it so much more difficult to design specific measures to stop the conflict. The FARC itself has an extensive agenda on social development, so I think it was a good idea not to imply too many additional actors. This doesn't mean I think better negotiations need fewer actors necessarily, but I do think it is the specific case of Colombia in this specific moment. My second point is that the Colombian government thought, going into this process, that bringing in many other relevant voices into the table would empower the guerrilla, since many such actors victims, peasants, journalists, students are much more leftist than the government. So I think there was a predisposition in this sense, although I don't think this is true right now, civil
society organizations and the public opinion in Colombia are not with the guerrilla at all. GSUM: A recent publication by Fundación Ideas para la Paz mentions there is a huge distance between the signature of a final accord in Havana and the construction of peace itself. In what way do the accords signed so far contribute to this more challenging post-conflict process? Which of the negotiated aspects may obstruct or make the peacebuilding process more difficult? Guarín: This is a pretty good question. I would say first that we need the peace process with the guerrillas in order to build peace in the territories. This is a necessary condition, albeit not a sufficient one. It is necessary, however, because we have this guerrilla in the field, a group that erodes state legitimacy, and this makes peace impossible. So, in that sense, I think, first off, that this agreement is a necessary condition to build peace in Colombia. Second, the measures included in the agreement on rural development, and the fight against inequality, are also necessary. This peace process is a very strange and expensive way to make a rural reform in Colombia. So many countries have gone through this without a peace process and without so much violence. But overall I believe we need a deep reform the gap between urban and rural areas is unacceptable. Colombia doesn't have a rural middle class, and the inequality, the lack of the most basic rights water supply, health, education is terrible. Third, the agreement on illicit drugs is very important. The reason why a guerrilla could make so much damage for such a long time is not state illegitimacy or people's belief in a communist society, but narcotraffic. You have an economy that daily supplies illegal actors in Colombia with massive amounts of money, and this isn't due to state fragility our state isn't more fragile than Bolivia or Ecuador. This is because narcotraffic generates so much money and so much power; people involved in it get the sensation that they can rule the country. One thing that can end up being an obstruction, in my point of view, is a blind faith in citizen participation with no consideration for the specific measures of the agreement, or the political aspects of programs, in order to make this participation possible. Colombian experiences with citizen participation have been terrible. The agreements determine that we make a plan, right? In a participatory way. But how? We need capacity sharing with the people, with civil society organizations, local administrations. GSUM: Do you feel that, in a process as complex as this one, peace and justice are contradictory goals? Did the September agreements manage to overcome the feeling that we cannot have both? Guarín: I personally don't agree with putting peace and justice on a scale. It is a common idea that if you want more peace,
you have to sacrifice justice, and vice-versa. But I think peace is a social consensus, it's a way of living. And, in this, you have to get your social consensus clear. In some societies, truth is seen as a path towards peace; in others, punitive sentences are seen as the solution. Having said that, I believe that, in Colombia, the main problem right now is that we don't have a social consensus about what our sense of justice is. We are struggling between two opposite poles. On the one hand, you have a very strong feeling of unfairness due to the harm caused by the guerrilla and a need for criminal punishment, which means jail time. On the other, there is an idea of justice linked to the satisfaction of the victims' rights and the understanding of what happened to us as a society throughout the last 50 years. We are dealing with two struggling senses of justice, and our society is very divided between them. If you ask me, I'd say most people adhere to the first one. Public opinion polls in Colombia will show that at least 75% of the population do. But there is also a minority that believes in the second one, a very influent minority academics, victims' organizations, progressive groups. So this is a huge problem, because in a transitional justice agreement, the whole point is to make amends to satisfy the social consensus. When you read the September 23rd agreements, you see that they were guided by the second perspective, but they also tried to satisfy some aspects of the first one. This is the reason why they determine jail time for those who don't say the truth and the suspension of some civil rights. But I don't think these two measures are going to satisfy the majority of the population's demands and, again, this is because the peace process is not driven by social consensus. Once the final agreement is reached, we have to build a social consensus. And things will be better for people. If people don't recognize benefits in this peace, it will be difficult to deal with the thought of having guerrilla members free and politically active. This is the reason why I think the main objective after the agreement is to consolidate a social consensus. GSUM: What will be the role of the international community in the postconflict phase in terms of expertise and financing? Guarín: In terms of financing, the international community doesn't have to play an essential role Colombia has a good system of taxes, and it has a good income. For example, during the reform of the security sector in the late 1990s, only 10% of the resources came from US cooperation. The rest was financed through taxes. And I think we can finance the postconflict with taxes as well. But international financing is important in terms of political strategy, and it is important in terms of having another actor, a third actor, seeing the process, so I think redirecting American and European funds towards development cooperation may be a very good idea. It is very important, however, at this moment, that funds for
international cooperation can go directly to Colombian social organizations instead of going through foreign ones before reaching them. Not only due to their high administrative costs, but also for the sake of building social participation. As for technical expertise, international cooperation is going to be very useful and very important. The international community can support us with the ceasefire and the demining, with monitoring. We also need technical expertise to foster citizen participation and South-South cooperation projects for rural innovation and development. For example, in Brazil there is vast experience in rural productivity, which could be very useful. India has a lot of experience with managing water resources for agriculture. In this sense, we need so much help. Hopefully international cooperation will turn this way [the sharing of expertise], not toward the economic and financing agenda. GSUM: What, in your opinion, is the best format for submitting the final accords to popular approval, considering the government seems eager to both guarantee a sense of legitimacy and avoid a rejection of all the effort put forth in Havana? Do you see a risk of the final agreement not passing the popular vote? Guarín: In the beginning, there were two options a referendum or a constituent assembly, and this generated some intense debates among political officers. At first, the government preferred a referendum, which would entail writing specific laws whose text the population would need to evaluate by voting either "yes" or "no". It was seen as a way of legitimating the agreement as a whole and designing clear and mandatory political horizons for the authorities. But this is very problematic, because it meant gathering a majority for all laws put into the vote. FARC argued in favor of a constituent assembly. This meant Congress would have to approve the formation of an assembly, and there would be an election for picking representatives responsible for reforming the constitution. My personal opinion was that having a constituent assembly is better in this option, you can have an additional moment of deliberation in order to improve the agreement. But this was not acceptable for the population, since it implied FARC would be making constitutional reforms. And this is possible without a popular threshold all you need is for Congress to approve a law calling for elections. A referendum, on the other hand, needs a vote by 40% of the electoral census, which is very hard to achieve. So, last month, [government's chief negotiator] Humberto de la Calle said "let's hold a plebiscite", which is not the same as a referendum. A plebiscito, like the referendum, is a direct democracy instrument, but not for specific laws it reviews general opinions. And with the general opinion expressed by the population, the legislators make the specific laws. The government now thinks this is an easier format of approval, because it seems more difficult for people
to vote "no" for a general question such as "do you want peace?". The threshold in Congress (the plebiscite traditionally also needs a 40% vote) has been changed to a 13% minimum. This means only 4 million people voting "yes". As a comparison, in his first presidential election, Juan Manuel Santos got almost 10 million votes. As I said, I believe a constituent assembly is the most dialectic, legitimate option. But among the two formats of public legitimation, I'd say the plebiscite is the best. My point here is, there is an erroneous perspective at the base of this debate. You have two different objectives: one thing is to legitimize the agreement, and another is to build the institutional framework for implementation. The referendum versus constituent assembly debate has mixed these two things. But I don't see a risk of the agreement not passing the popular vote. The Colombian people is looking for peace since 1956. We've gone through five failed attempts of negotiation with this guerrilla alone. And we are not going to miss this opportunity.