From Ending War to Building Peace - Lessons from Latin America

Abstract

While the recent Taliban takeover in Afghanistan sparked new debate about peacebuilding, Latin American experiences have largely been ignored in such discussions. These could be instructive, particularly in their shortcomings, missed opportunities, and violent backsliding. Colombia five years into the peace agreement and Central America more than 25 years after the end of war hold important lessons. Ending the civil wars in Central America had been amongst the first empirical tests of the liberal peacebuilding approach. However, today the region is confronting old problems in new forms: increasing authoritarianism, social exclusion, and high levels of state and non-state violence. The peace process in Colombia remains entangled between those forces pushing for the implementation of the agreements’ transformative agenda and those who staunchly resist it. International actors such as the United Nations and the European Union actively supported the termination of wars. However, they delegated the structural reforms necessary for conflict transformation to the political systems. Peacebuilding is possible through a variety of pathways and is a long-term endeavour. It needs to be based on context-specific combinations of violence reduction and prevention, conflict transformation, and political and social inclusion. Latin America and other post-war societies tend to receive decreasing international attention after wars have ended and initial post-war elections have taken place. At the same time, there has been a shift in emphasis from peacebuilding to stabilisation at the international level. But peacebuilding requires long-term international support beyond short-term interventions. Latin American experiences show how short-term success can be forfeited through the re-creation of path-dependent developments, which reproduce old problems in new forms. Neither peace nor democracy is feasible without transformative reforms and an inclusive social basis.