A New Plan for Colombia: Negotiated Peace Should be the Goal

By Kathryn Wolford, President, Lutheran World Relief

Imagine living in constant fear for your life. Imagine that you live in a country ravaged by decades of internal conflict, by armed uprisings, by constant drug trafficking. Imagine that you have been uprooted from your home, forced to flee due to ongoing violence.

Imagine that you have denounced the conflict, refusing to take sides and instead committed yourself to working for peace – and that this commitment has made you a target.

This is daily life for many Colombian citizens.

The people of Colombia are suffering: more than 3 million people are internally displaced from their homes and their ancestral lands by the ongoing armed conflict. Nearly two-thirds of the country's citizens live in poverty. Innocent civilians continue to be targeted by all sides in the conflict. The drug trade continues to flourish. The United Nations calls Colombia's humanitarian crisis the worst in the Western hemisphere.

Yet, the United States’ foreign policy toward Colombia , emblemized in the highly militarized Plan Colombia , set to expire this year, is helping neither to end the conflict nor to stop drug trafficking from Colombia to the United States . It is time to seriously evaluate our policy toward Colombia and to refocus it on the need for humanitarian aid and for a democratically negotiated political solution to the armed conflict. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent visit to the country provided a perfect opportunity to affirm the United States ' commitment to democracy, and to policies that create and sustain peace. Instead, Dr. Rice pledged the continuation of an ineffective policy, stating that Washington did not plan to reassess the program. President Bush's budget proposal includes another $734 million next year for Plan Colombia .

Colombia has the oldest armed conflict in the Western Hemisphere , a conflict fueled by drug trafficking and rooted in deep historical social exclusion, poverty and inequality. According to the United Nations Commission for Human Rights' report, 64 percent of Colombians live in poverty, and 31 percent are indigent. In terms of inequalities, the poorest 20 percent of the population receive 2.7 percent of the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP), whereas the richest 20 percent receive almost 62 percent. The World Bank ranks Colombia the third most unequal country in the Americas and one of the most unequal in the world.

Plan Colombia does not respond to this reality. Of the nearly $4 billion the United States government has provided to Colombia, 80% of it has gone to security forces, ignoring other pressing humanitarian needs that are important in addressing the roots causes of the armed conflict and drug trafficking. Early on, in 2001, Lutheran World Relief expressed our concern over this kind of policy, narrowly focused on anti-narcotics operations including the controversial aerial fumigation in the fragile ecosystem of the Amazon basin while inadequately responding to growing humanitarian needs, undervaluing human rights and leaving a gaping hole where we should see focused development efforts for otherwise forgotten communities. With the expansion of the scope of the U.S. involvement in Colombia to cover anti-insurgency operations, the policy has been headed in the wrong direction.
Plan Colombia has not achieved its stated goals of reducing drug trafficking, curbing impunity, decreasing human rights violations and bringing peace to Colombia . In our own work with Colombian communities, we have seen that threats against peace workers, religious leaders, and human rights activists continue, and that people continue to be displaced by the violence. All these factors lead to the persistence of the Colombian internal armed conflict.

Even in this adverse environment, civil society, especially local groups and churches, has played a key role in keeping doors open for peace negotiations. According to these civilian leaders, the negotiations must be carried out with civil society and victims' groups at the table and under a clear set of principles and under a clear framework for justice, truth, and reparations for the victims of human rights violations. These elements are clearly lacking from current talks.

With respect to coca eradication, the Colombian government, to its credit, is beginning to realize that aerial fumigation is not working. Despite massive spraying efforts, the total acreage of coca cultivation has barely been reduced. More effective, and more humane, is manual eradication by farmers themselves, with aid for alternative development – an approach which has already proved effective in Colombia's Putumayo region, and which Colombian officials discussed with Dr. Rice during her visit. Manual eradication is a step in the right direction.

LWR and its Colombian partners say we need a new plan for Colombia – one with less military aid and more social and economic support. We call for new policy that strengthens local and national institutions to provide stability for democracy, provides for schools, roads and hospitals, and implements judicial reform in protection of human rights and dignity.
As Congress prepares to consider extending the policies of Plan Colombia for another year, we urge our leaders to make lasting peace a priority. The role of the United States has been central to the Colombian conflict. It can and should be central to achieving a lasting solution.

[ Kathryn Wolford is president of Lutheran World Relief, a U.S.-based humanitarian aid agency working in Colombia .]