Colombia: an election which will determine the fate of peace
By Thomas Mortensen, Colombia Country Manager, Christian Aid
As Colombians head to the polls on the 27th May, the internationally recognised peace agreement signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in late 2016, hangs in the balance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGh4F_AlWxA&feature=youtu.be
Edited highlights of a debate between Colombian presidential candidates Ivan Duque and Gustavo...
20 December 2017
Dear LAB Supporter and Friend,
The ghosts of elections past, present and future
Across the world, polls this year have been confounded as elections yielded surprising results (not least, for those of us in the UK, in the 2016 referendum on EU membership and the general election in 2017). These results have led many analysts to identify strands...
For the national peace process to succeed, local communities need to make sense of their past and keep alive historical memory.
This has been a historic year for Colombia, with the signing of the peace accords in September 2016 and the continent’s oldest guerrilla group, FARC-EP, laying down its arms and becoming a formal political party. The process has had many sceptics. Questions abound about how effective implementation will be and many city dwellers doubt whether the peace accords have...
Former President Alvaro Uribe is critical of the current Colombian government's attempts to secure peace with the FARC guerrillas.
As the country awaits the signing of a definitive ceasefire, the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet offers instructive parallels.
Brigadier General Gustavo Moreno is sitting behind a wide desk in his air-conditioned office. It overlooks the parade ground of the police compound which sits vacant, belted by the midday sun. A receptionist brings in cups of weak, sugary coffee that Colombians call tinto.
As the police commander for ‘Region Five’, General Moreno is in charge of security for one...
LAB's Gwen Burnyeat travels with members of Rodeemos el Diálogo to meet and seek to understand the FARC, who are about to hold their 10th conference.
Sulay Pino is waiting for us at the main entrance to the San Javier metro station wearing a bright green t-shirt that reads ‘Stairway Storytellers’, the name of the project she founded along with her friend and co-worker Stiven Álvarez.
https://vimeo.com/260256060
This is the Stairway Storytellers' video.
We are booked...
As rain-soaked soldiers carried coffin after coffin into the football stadium in the small city of Chapecó, in a procession which seemed as though it would never end, Brazilians were mourning not only the loss of sons, husbands, brothers and idols, but the loss of a dream. “Even God is crying, “said Chapecó’s mayor, as the heavens opened and...