The organisation's agenda

THE CONSTRUCTION OF PEACE

“El conflicto colombiano es de carácter social, político, económico, cultural y ambiental, y una de sus expresiones es la lucha armada, caso en el cual el campo de resolución no se agota en el desarme de los grupos insurgentes sino que requiere también de transformaciones de las condiciones que dan lugar a la concentración de la riqueza y la apropiación violenta de los recursos a partir de la generación de exclusión y discriminación y, en consecuencia, a nuevas oleadas de conflictos cada vez más dramáticos y bárbaros. El desarme debe entenderse entonces como un mecanismo para desactivar los conflictos, pero no el único ni el fundamental” (Agenda Mínima de Paz, 2007)

Agenda Común para la Paz

The Agenda seeks to:

Support the strengthening of networks of population and victim organisations and contribute to their articulation with its capacity to dialogue and qualify its development and peace-building proposals, with emphasis on sustainable rural development and multidisciplinary approaches, in the territories where the National Peace Observatory implements the project.
Contribute to the transition between the negotiation of the conflict and the construction of peace, contributing to the debates on the following thematic axes: rural development, mining and environmental protection; victims' rights, and political and social participation.
Strengthen the dialogues of popular networks and organisations with civil society and authorities, in such a way that they influence public opinion and influence the scenarios of peace building: local regional, national and international peace-building scenarios.
Reinforce territorial experiences that generate lessons for the Agenda Común for peace.

The process of construction of peace is broader and requires the active participation of the whole of Colombian society, through grassroots organisations in the redefinition of development (especially rural development) and the Colombian political system. Thus, the eradication of the state of war and the construction of peace comprises at least three requirements:

Institutional

Institutionally and socially guarantee that social conflicts can be resolved or qualified through democratic political mechanisms, which allow the direct and decision-making participation of those most affected

Prevention of militarisation

Prevent the militarisation, legal or illegal, of Colombian social life and the imposition of a warlike logic of socialisation, by virtue of which political antagonists are turned into enemies that can be treated below the limits that separate what is human from what is inhuman.

Social conflicts

Stop the social, political and economic mechanisms that turn social conflicts into warlike conflicts, treating them as dysfunctions or deviations that must be fought and repressed to safeguard the social order, and not as clear signs of deficient institutional and systemic functioning of Colombian society

Actors involved

Organisations and social movements

The organisations involved in the matter were able to stress the importance of different themes and problems that help make clearance on the current activities: rural development, victims and political participation. These topics can be divided into the following aspects:

Political participation: generates and recognises the decisional participation of popular sectors and alternative political movements as a base for the construction of democracy

Public and communal goods and social rights: recognises the new critical development for the defence and identification of the basic criteria for buen vivir that communities and organisations deserve.

Social organisation of the territory: recognises the dynamics of resistance created by the social popular organisations in their field of action.

Memory in the construction of peace: recognises the historical character of social and political confrontation that marks the way social sectors have been actors of proposals to transform the conflicts and the society and that enabled to create an agenda for the construction of peace.

Strengthening of the social and alternative popular movement: support through development, construction and appropriation of the Agenda Común, the articulation and convergence of national, regional and local processes that lead to peace.

Victims

It is proposed to popular social organisation to address the discussion on pace building in Colombia from these questions:

From your perspective, who are the victims of the armed conflict in Colombia?
How have the agendas of popular social organisations related to the specific agendas of the victims?
What do Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-repetition mean for the victims of the conflict in the region?

Principles of truth, justice, integral reparation should be at the ethics and political basis so that the conflicts that broke the social lace of solidarity and life and human integrity, do not encounter justification in any ideology or political reason or state. discussions on the construction of peace should not just derive from the individuals but the community all together.