Weekly Report - 31 March 2016 (WR-16-12)

After failing to announce the conclusion of a peace process with one guerrilla group, Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos has managed to announce the start of a peace process with another. The deadline for the government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) to seal a peace accord came and went on 23 March. This came as no surprise but that there was no significant progress announced at all was unexpected. The sticking point that precluded a deal on a bilateral ceasefire was over the precise nature of the future ‘concentration zones’ where guerrillas would disarm and demobilise. The absence of such an accord damaged the credibility of the peace process in the eyes of a sceptical public, but the announcement of peace talks with the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) allowed Santos to regain the initiative.

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