OxPeace 2018: Private Sector and Peacebuilding: Lessons from Colombia

Andres Ucros is currently Director of Peace Building in the Chamber of Commerce of Bogota, Colombia.

Colombia has suffered one of the longest internal armed conflicts in the world. This long and tainted war has been active for over five decades and its magnitude was, and still is greater than many major internal conflicts around the world. During the last five years, the Colombian government and the FARC-EP guerrillas have been engaged in peace talks with the aim of putting an end to armed struggle. Throughout this process, both parties have deployed a number of innovative strategies and techniques that are setting new standards in the field of conflict resolution. These new approaches are now informing developments in peace-making, peace-building, security, human rights, and international law at the regional and global levels. The aim of this presentation is to describe how the private sector has engaged in the negotiation and with the implementation of the agreement itself to draw some lessons from the Colombian experience.