Colombia: ‘proof that world peace is possible’

Victoria Sandino was 25-years-old when she left for the jungle. She was on her way to join Colombia’s Marxist guerrilla forces, known as FARC. It was 1990, she had earned her journalism degree, and she wanted to ‘do something for this country,’ she recalls.

FARC claims to speak for Colombia’s poorest citizens. Since 1964, it — along with several other groups — has fought a brutal civil war against the government. In 52 years, the conflict has killed over 220,000 people and stripped 7m of their homes; when Sandino joined the rebels, her family had been displaced five times.

But in 2013 she laid down her weapons and took her place at the negotiating table with Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos. Peace was finally in sight. And last week, Santos announced a deal.

If Colombian voters approve it in October’s referendum, it will signal the start of a hopeful new chapter for the country. FARC’s soldiers have agreed to surrender their arms, which will be melted down and reformed into three monuments to peace.

It is a historic moment for Colombia. But Santos and the psychologist Stephen Pinker have argued in The New York Times that it is also a ‘milestone in world peace’. For the first time, not a single armed conflict is taking place in the entire western hemisphere. After centuries of violence, no nation in the Americas is at war with itself or another. It has no military governments.

In fact, all of the world’s wars are now concentrated in North Africa and the Middle East. ‘We inhabit a world where five out of six people live in regions largely or entirely free of armed conflict,’ say Santos and Pinker.

That should make us optimistic. If the Americas can go from war to peace in a few decades, why should not the same thing happen again, ‘even in the world’s most stubbornly violent regions’?

No one thinks it will be easy. Ending war involves enormous amounts of compromise, dedication and forgiveness. But could the dream of world peace one day be a reality?

Peace out

It is a lovely idea, say some, but the 2016 Global Peace Index tells a very different story. It found that the world has got more violent over the last decade, not less. Besides, the ongoing wars in the Middle East do not just involve Middle Eastern countries; they are complex struggles involving a web of international interests stretching from the USA to Russia.

Have faith, say Santos and Pinker. There were times in history when Europe, Asia, and the Americas all seemed trapped in never-ending cycles of violence. Now they are almost entirely at peace. Of course it will not happen tomorrow — but we should not assume that humans are doomed to destroy each other; we are capable of so much more.