While President Gustavo Petro seeks to resolve decades of internal conflict, his administration is facing escalating domestic insurgencies, a global tide of militarization and a recalibrated U.S. foreign policy.
Colombia has been internationally known for its long-term armed conflict that began in the 1960s, the illicit cocaine production and trafficking that has been intimately associated with it, and its strategic relations with the United States in security and drug enforcement policy.
After decades of brutal war, a long-awaited and polarizing peace agreement was signed in 2016 between the Colombian government and the largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
According to the Truth Commission, the armed conflict had resulted in over 450,000 documented homicides and more than 120,000 disappeared persons, with right-wing paramilitaries – financed mainly by land-owners – being the main perpetrators, followed by guerrilla groups and state actors. Nearly six million persons had been internally displaced.
The results of the 2022 elections surprised everyone as the country, where many view socialism with suspicion, elected its first-ever left-wing President, Gustavo Petro. Since his election, Petro, a former guerrilla fighter of the M19 rebel group, has been determined to bring all actors of the armed conflict, including violent and illegal rebel and paramilitary groups, to the peace table; thus, the notion of “total” in his peace plan.
Yet internally the threat of violence and the power of criminal groups is on the rise. Meanwhile, the increased militarization and securitization of multilateral peace operations globally, lurks in the background.
The Promise of Total Peace vs. Reality on the Ground
In addition to the FARC, several other guerrilla groups and paramilitary groups were involved in the Colombian conflict. The Total Peace law created two streams of dialogue: political dialogues with illegal armed actors that had recognised political status, and “socio-legal dialogues” with those labelled highly organised criminal groups, including the drug cartels.
Although the Total Peace process began with a national-level approach, in practice, the dialogues that have made the most progress were those with a territorial focus, in which negotiations and agreements have been adapted to the specific context of the regions. Nevertheless, the results of the peace dialogue today, with only five months left of the current presidential term, have been mixed at best and the internal narrative of a false dichotomy between peace efforts and security is strengthened.
The dialogue with the National Liberation Army (ELN), the second largest guerrilla group, has been suspended due to escalating violence and a humanitarian crisis in the Catatumbo region, distrust between the negotiating parties, and the ELN’s continued engagement in human rights violations. For many years, Colombia has been the most dangerous country in the world for human rights defenders, particularly with regard to land, environmental, and Indigenous peoples’ rights.
Although the Total Peace process began with a national-level approach, in practice, the dialogues that have made the most progress were those with a territorial focus, in which negotiations and agreements have been adapted to the specific context of the regions.
However, the Comuneros del Sur, a splinter group, continues to negotiate with the government and has made progress on key issues, including humanitarian demining, the search for missing persons, weapons surrender, substitution of illicit crops, and the development of a territorial transformation programme.
For its part, the Bolivarian National Army Coordinator (CNEB), a group of former FARC combatants who rejected the 2016 peace plan, has begun a pilot programme for the voluntary substitution of coca crops across 30,000 hectares in Nariño and Putumayo, with the potential for nationwide expansion. The negotiations with the Estado Mayor de Bloques y Frentes (EMBF, the FARC dissident sect) have consolidated six agreements focusing on ending child recruitment, protecting the environment, and – most importantly – guaranteeing safety for the 2026 elections.
Dialogues with the Gaitanista Army of Colombia (EGC), a right-wing paramilitary group, and the Autodefensas Conquistadoras de la Sierra Nevada (ACSN), a paramilitary armed group, are facing major hurdles due to a lack of ceasefire compliance and persistent violence. A core challenge is the EGC is not looking to submit to justice, and its territorial control has vastly expanded, with more than 9,000 fighters and a leading role in cocaine and migrant trafficking in the region.
Despite these tensions, and following two rounds of talks in Doha, mediated by Norway, Spain, and Switzerland, the government is moving the negotiations to Tierralta, Córdoba, with the third cycle scheduled to begin in March 2026.
Legacy of the 2016 FARC Peace Agreement
Despite the continuation of violence, the 2016 peace agreement remains a landmark achievement, with nearly 12,000 FARC combatants disarmed. The majority remain committed to the reintegration process through productive projects and the formation of cooperatives. The FARC has transitioned into a political party, the Comunes, which has held seats in Congress for two legislative terms.
The accord also strengthened democratic guarantees for political opposition and expanded political participation more broadly. The agreement established a comprehensive transitional justice system, including the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) and the Truth Commission, to investigate and prosecute serious crimes and provide reparations for victims.
Despite the continuation of violence, the 2016 peace agreement remains a landmark achievement, with nearly 12,000 FARC combatants disarmed.
However, the implementation of its core provisions has been slow and uneven. As its 10th anniversary approaches, key areas like rural reform and security guarantees, as well as transitional justice initiatives, continue to lag, raising concerns about the long-term sustainability of the peace process. In particular, the slow pace of rural reform is a foundational failure that perpetuates the very conditions that fueled the original conflict.
Furthermore, the implementation of gender equality and ethnic inclusion has been particularly slow. Of the 130 gender-focused commitments, only 13% have been completed, while 17% have not even been started. Similarly, out of the 80 ethnically focused commitments, as related to Indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombians, just 13% have been fulfilled, and at least 60% have shown no progress in the last two years.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has been critical towards the lack of progress in implementing the 2016 agreement and of the role of the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia responsible for monitoring its key provisions, leading to a weakening of its mandate.
Trump’s Changing Geopolitics toward Latin America
Traditionally, Colombia has been the strongest US ally in South America. Since the initiation of Plan Colombia in 2000, which focuses on counternarcotics and security efforts, Colombia has consistently ranked as one of the largest recipients of US foreign aid.
While President Joe Biden pronounced Colombia as the most important non-NATO ally to the U.S., tensions have escalated during the second Trump Administration. In January 2025, when Petro declined to accept a US military aircraft carrying Colombian deportees, the relationship between him and Trump – both active social media users – heated up online.
In July 2025, when the US Agency for International Development (USAID) closed its operations worldwide, Colombia was among the hardest-hit countries, losing 82 per cent of its US funding. The impacts have been felt most severely with regard to refugees and internally displaced persons, whose numbers in Colombia are among the highest in the world, not solely due to long histories of war but also due to nearly three million refugees from neighbouring Venezuela.
When the US Agency for International Development (USAID) closed its operations worldwide, Colombia was among the hardest-hit countries, losing 82 per cent of its US funding. The impacts have been felt most severely with regard to refugees and internally displaced persons.
In recent months, the Trump administration has designated Colombia as a major illicit drug-producing country, accusing its political leadership of failing to meet coca eradication goals and allowing coca cultivation and cocaine production to break “all-time records”. Subsequently, President Petro and his family members and other close allies have been sanctioned under the pretext of their involvement in “the global illicit drug trade”.
The situation in Colombia has become tense due to Trump’s revival of the Monroe Doctrine, now known as the “Donroe Doctrine”, which aims at re-establishing U.S. supremacy in the Western hemisphere.
After U.S. attacks on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean in November, Petro announced that Colombia’s security forces would stop sharing intelligence with the US due to its severe human rights violations. Trump responded that he could extend anti-drug military operations in Colombia. After the U.S. military intervention in Venezuela in January, Trump has repeated his threats.
The Fragile Gamble of Colombian Diplomacy
The incomplete implementation of the 2016 peace agreement and the state’s failure to establish a comprehensive presence in areas once controlled by the FARC has created a power vacuum that has led to the rise of dissident groups. As a result, they now pose a significant threat to peace, fueling a new wave of violence and complicating the government’s efforts to achieve “Total Peace.”
Additionally, external challenges to peace have risen from the global shift in geopolitical strategy that prioritizes “hard power” over peace mediation, and the threats of a former ally, the U.S., whose extrajudicial airstrikes and military buildup in the Caribbean signal a new phase in U.S.-Latin American relations.
Carolina Buendía Sarmiento is a doctoral researcher of Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki.
Eija Ranta is an Academy Research Fellow and Senior University Lecturer of Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki.
Article image: David Restrepo / Unsplash
