Colombia essays on conflict, peace and development

Achieving peace and promoting economic and social development are the two main challenges facing Colombia. The analyses presented in this volume indicate that violence and armed conflict in Colombia result from a complex group of economic, social, historical, and political factors. For decades, economic growth has coexisted with poverty and inequality in the distribution of income and wealth, in the access to economic opportunities (jobs, education, credit), and unequal capacities to influence public decision making. Colombia also has a long history of armed conflict: confrontations between liberals and conservatives in the nineteenth century;the period of "la violence" in the mid-twentieth century;and the escalation of armed conflict since the 1980s and 1990s with the onset of drug-trafficking and the emergence of paramilitary groups. Internal conflict is indicative of the profound difficulties besetting Colombia's political institutions as they try to confront their society's underlying conflicts. A prosperous, peaceful, and democratic Colombia needs a new social contract, which is founded around the principles of peace, prosperity, and social justice. Achieving peace requires broad domestic consensus and effective economic and institutional policies that promote economic growth, job creation, equal opportunity, institutional transparency, and civic education on the values of work peaceful coexistence.