Negotiating with criminal groups: Colombia’s Total Peace policy
Project Live
PROJECT TEAM
Felipe Botero Escobar
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime
Contact: felipe.botero@globalinitiative.net
Felipe joined GI-TOC in 2021 as Coordinator for Colombia. He focuses on strengthening community resilience against organised crime and crime prevention, supporting the Resilience Fund, and expanding the GI-TOC presence in Colombia and the region. Felipe has extensive experience in peace building, DDR, human rights, citizen security, and civic participation. Previously, he served as Undersecretary of human rights and Peacebuilding in Cali, implementing public policies and supporting Colombia's peace agreement. Felipe holds a master’s degree in public policy and a Political Science degree.
Mariana Botero Restrepo
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime
Contact: mariana.boterorestrepo@globalinitiative.net
Mariana joined the GI-TOC in 2021 as an Analyst in Colombia, where her work has focused on prevention, community resilience against organised crime, research, and supporting the expansion of GI-TOC in the country. Mariana previously worked as a political advisor and human rights policy officer for the British Embassy in Colombia and focuses on the peace process, human rights defenders, PSVI and media freedom. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science.
Juanita Durán
Laboratorio de Justicia y Política Criminal
Contact: juanitaduran@labjpc.org
Juanita is a lawyer specialising in economics and constitutional law, with an LLM from UCL, with over 15 years of experience drafting and evaluating public policy, regulation and legislation, designing and implementing strategies for institutional transformation and connecting data analysis and policy on criminal policy and access to justice. Ms. Duran served in the Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office as Director of Policies and Strategies and led the implementation of the Protocol to investigate sexual violence and the implementation of the peace strategy. She is currently a senior researcher at the LJPC and from there she has led and participated, among others, in the police transformation process.
Gina Cabarcas Macía
Laboratorio de Justicia y Política Criminal
Contact: ginacabarcas@labjpc.org
Gina Cabarcas Macía, founding member and director of LJPC, is one of Colombia’s leading experts with 15+ years of experience on criminal analysis and the design and implementation of complex investigations for serious criminal offences and grave human right violations. She is a criminal justice and social researcher with undergraduate and graduate degrees in Law and History from Andes University and Yale University. Ms. Cabarcas served in Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office for six years as prosecutor specialising in contextual analysis and then as Deputy Director of Public Policy and Director of Analysis, where she led the design and implementation of prioritisation and criminal analysis policies. From 2018 to 2020, she was in charge of designing the strategy for the search of disappeared persons within the Unit for the Search created after the Peace Agreements. She is a Justice Rapid Response rostered expert on international criminal investigations
Juanita Vélez
Conflict Responses - CORE
Contact: jvelez@conflictresponses.org
Senior analyst at Conflict Responses - CORE. Journalist and political scientist from Universidad Javeriana. Expert in peace agreement with former guerrilla FARC; armed groups; deforestation and armed conflict. She was editor of La Silla Sur in La Silla Vacia, a Colombian media outlet. Author of the book "A war later", edited by Penguin Random House.
Kyle Johnson
Conflict Responses - CORE
Contact: kjohnson@conflictresponses.org
Senior analyst at Conflict Responses - CORE. Political scientist from the University of Connecticut and with a master's degree in political science from the Universidad de los Andes. He has researched the Colombian armed conflict since 2006. His focus has been illegal armed groups; rebel and criminal governance; local peacebuilding; illicit economies; and DDR. Worked for the Nuevo Arco Iris Corporation, the National Center for Historical Memory, the International Organization for Migrants, the International Crisis Group, Human Rights Watch, and the Kroc Institute.
Ángela Liliana Olaya Castro
Conflict Responses - CORE
Contact: aolaya@conflictresponses.org
Senior analyst at Conflict Responses - CORE. Member of the network of Women in Security and Defence in Latin America and the Caribbean - Amassuru. Political scientist from the Universidad de Los Andes, with an emphasis in Colombian history. Her experience focuses on the analysis of the relationship between the Colombian armed conflict, organised crime, and humanitarian impacts. She has worked on the Early Warning System of the Ombudsman Office in Colombia, the International Organization for Migrants and different NGOs to investigate the conflict and transnational organised crime.
PROJECT SUMMARY
This research results from the opportunity provided by the approval and implementation of the Total Peace policy in Colombia, a country that, despite the signature of a peace process in 2016, still has numerous armed and criminal groups inflicting significant violence onto the population. The Total Peace policy allows the government to negotiate with armed and criminal groups in order to reduce violence and protect life, providing a unique opportunity to conduct research on ongoing negotiations.
Within this context and using three study cases, this project aims to research the legal framework applied for the different types of engagement at the local and national level, the way in which criminal governance and the Total Peace policy interacts and finally, identify the extent into which legal frameworks and local criminal governance structures shape negotiations with armed and criminal groups in Colombia. The case studies will include different types of armed groups with different levels of criminal governance in different settings (urban and rural), setting the path for further comparative research.
This research will feed into the growing literature on negotiations with criminal groups and will inform national and subnational debates regarding negotiations with criminal groups. Finally, it has the potential to influence policy and programming by providing time-sensitive recommendations applicable to the ongoing implementation of the Total Peace policy.
PUBLICATIONS
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Publications from this project will be posted here when available
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Publications from this project will be posted here when available
MEDIA
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The first in a three part series, this episode provides an overview of the Total Peace policy including its aims, scope and mechanisms as well as the actors involved, and starts to explore how the policy is progressing, its implications for communities and whether its working. Listen HERE!
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In this podcast episode, the team discusses how in September 2022, two gangs in Buenaventura signed a truce to end the bloodshed that had gripped the city for two years - called 'The Pact for Life'. show how there has been a reduction in homicides since the Pact’s signing, but that this statistic hides the fact that other crimes have increased - extortion, disappearances, control of movement, and the "justice" (fines, beatings or murder) meted out on the population by the gangs. Listen HERE!