Negotiating with Criminal Groups: Colombia’s “Total Peace”

ColombiaBriefing Note

26 Mar

Written By Lyndsey Hand

March 2025

Briefing Note 35

Felipe Botero, GI-TOC

Kyle Johnson, Conflict Response

Juanita Durán, Laboratorio de Justicia y Política Criminal (LJPC)

Mariana Botero, GI-TOC

Andrés Aponte, GI-TOC

Lina Asprilla, GI-TOC

SOC ACE Project: Negotiating with criminal groups: Colombia’s Total Peace policy

PUBLICATION SUMMARY

The Total Peace Policy (TPP) began as a broad, ambitious and comprehensive policy in Colombia aimed at containing and reducing violence, with the intention of encouraging armed and criminal actors, both in urban and rural areas, to lay down their arms, reduce armed confrontation, and lessen the impact of violence on the communities and civilians where they operate.

The TPP is notable for its ambition, involving eight simultaneous negotiations with armed groups and rapprochements with high-impact organised crime structures. This is not the first time an effort of such magnitude has been made; between 1980 and 2016, reaching a negotiated solution to a long-running conflict and signing peace agreements with different armed groups was a priority on the public agenda of six different governments. The TPP is innovative because it marks the first attempt to also negotiate with criminal organisations, recognising their capacity to govern populations and acknowledging that the conflict has an urban component that must be addressed.

This Briefing Note summarises lessons from the TPP for negotiating with criminal groups found in research papers coming out of the SOC ACE research project “Negotiating with Criminal Groups: Colombia’s Total Peace”. Drawing on fieldwork in three regions – Buenaventura, Arauca and Tumaco – the note focuses on two critical issues that emerge in contexts where rebel and criminal governance coexist with formal institutions: the institutional context of the policy; and its implementation at the local level so far.

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