3 - Peacebuilding with youth: experience in Cúcuta, Colombia

Summary

Summary

In Colombia, in the wake of a long-term armed conflict that resulted in multiple acts of violence with many victims, peacebuilding has become the daily work of various social and governmental actors. Successive governments adopted peacebuilding strategies in relation to non-state armed actors in the 1980s and 1990s. Then again in 2005 with regard to the paramilitary groups, with an emphasis on mitigating the violence, achieving their demobilisation and their reintegration into civilian life. More recently, the Havana peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia– People’s Army (FARC-EP), has become a milestone, leading to a post-conflict scenario.

The process of demobilisation of paramilitary groups started in 2005 under the government of Alvaro Uribe Vélez. This was a highly critiqued process due to the difficulties in gaining truth, justice and reparation. The Havana process (2016) has also had to overcome a series of stumbling blocks such as a change of government and the staggering level of continuing violence that has resulted in the deaths of nearly a thousand social leaders and excombatants. This clearly demonstrates that the post-conflict path so regularly discussed by the state government and international agencies is not being experienced on the ground.

In the light of this still violent context, talking about peacebuilding, particularly a peace built from below, means talking about day-by-day processes which have the potential to form different relationships and deliver on the actual protection of life rather than it being spoken about as meaningless rhetoric.

This chapter shares reflections on the peacebuilding actions carried out by a youth social organisation in the border town of Cúcuta. It demonstrates the ways in which peacebuilding processes in conflict areas such as Colombia have the greatest impact on community cohesion when they are defined and implemented from below. Everyday peace arises by and for local communities, who are the main promoters and connectors, not only of their lived reality but also of the possibilities of local transformation.

This process also helps us to understand the political role that young people play in the city of Cúcuta; a role that lays the foundations of social transformation from their own experience and analyses how it interacts with communities living in violent and conflictive environments.