Contents

• Political and Economic Situation
• Political Background and Colombia's Internal Conflict
• Roots of the Conflict
• The Uribe Administration (2002-2010)
• The Santos Government (2010-2014)
• Santos's 2014 Reelection
Administration (2010-2018)
• Colombia's Legislative and Presidential Elections in 2018
• Economic Background
• The Current Security Environment
• Peace Talks
Accord Implementation
• Ongoing Domestic Challenges: Human Rights Issues
Concerns
• Extrajudicial Executions and "False Positives"
• Human Rights Defenders and Journalists
• Violence and Labor
• Internal Displacement
• Regional Relations and Security
• Colombia's Role in Training Security Personnel Abroad
• U.S. Relations and Policy
• Plan Colombia and Its Follow-On Strategies
• National Consolidation Plan and Beyond
Peace Colombia
• Funding
• Counternarcotics Efforts
for Plan Colombia and Peace Colombia
• Human Rights Conditions on U.S. Assistance
• U.S.-Colombia Economic Relations
• Outlook

Summary

Colombia is the third-most- most populous country in Latin America, with roughly 4749 million inhabitants. A key U.S. ally in the region, Colombia has endured an internal armed conflict for half a century. Drug trafficking has fueled the violence by funding both left-wing and right-wing armed groups. In the late 1990s, some analysts feared Colombia—threatened by a multi-sidedmultisided, violent conflict—would become a failed state. The Colombian government countereddefied those predictions, however, through an evolving security strategy known as Plan Colombia, originally a six-year program, but now generally applied to Colombian initiatives carried out over 16 years in close cooperation with the United States.

Political Background and Colombia's Internal Conflict

Colombia, one of the oldest democracies in the Western Hemisphere, has been plagued by a multi-sided civil conflict that has persisted for more than half a century. According to a report presented to the Colombian government in July 2013 by the National Center for Historical Memoryendured a multisided civil conflict for more than five decades until President Juan Manuel Santos declared the conflict over in August 2017 at the end of a UN-monitored disarmament, initiating a fragile post-conflict phase.¹ According to the National Center for Historical Memory 2013 report, presented to the Colombian government as part of the peace process, some 220,000 Colombians died in the armed conflict through 2012, 81% of them civilians.¹2 The report also providesprovided statistics quantifying the scale of the conflict, which has taken a huge toll on Colombian society: more than 23,000 selective assassinations between 1981 and 2012; internal displacement of more than 5 million Colombians due to land seizure and violence; 27,000 kidnappings between 1970 and 2010; and 11,000 deaths or amputees from anti-personnel land mines laid primarily by Colombia's main insurgent guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).² According to the International Crisis Group, 7.6 million Colombians have registered as victims of the conflict3 To date, more than 8 million Colombians, or roughly 15% of the population, have registered as conflict victims. Although.

While the violence has scarred Colombia, the country has also achieved a significant turnaround. Once considered a likely candidate to become a failed state, Colombia has in, over the past decadetwo decades, has overcome much of the violence that oncehad clouded its future. For example, between 20022000 and 20122016, Colombia saw an 89a 94% decrease in kidnappings and a 4853% reduction in homicides (below 25 per 100,000 in 2016).⁴.³ Coupled with success in lowering violence, Colombia has opened its economy and promoted trade, investment, and growth. Colombia has become one of Latin America's most attractive locations for foreign direct investment. In 2014, the Colombian economy grew by 4.6%, but slowed to just below 3% growth in 2015 according to most estimates, as a result of low oil and other commodity prices.⁴

Roots of the Conflict

The roots of the present conflict predateYet, after steady growth over several years, Colombia's economy slowed to 3.1% growth in 2015 and about 2% in 2016.⁵ Many analysts identified Colombia's dependence on oil and other commodity exports as the primary cause.

Between 2012 and 2016, the Colombian government held formal peace talks with the FARC, Colombia's largest guerrilla organization. Upon taking office for a second term in August 2014, President Santos declared peace, equality, and education as his top priorities, although achieving the peace agreement remained clearly his major focus. In August 2016, the government and FARC negotiators announced they had concluded their talks and achieved a 300-page peace agreement covering six topics. The accord was subsequently narrowly defeated in a popular referendum, but was revised by the Santos government and agreed to by the FARC and then ratified by the Colombian Congress in late November 2016.

After a brief military rule (1953-1958), the Liberal and Conservative parties agreed to the creation of a form of coalition governing, known as the National Front. Under the arrangement, the presidency of the country alternated between Conservatives and Liberals, each holding office in turn for four-year intervals. This form of government persisted for 16 years (1958-1974). The power -sharing formula did not resolve the tension between the two historic parties, and many leftist insurgent groups aroseleftists, Marxist-inspired insurgencies took root in Colombia, including the FARC, launched in 1964, and the smaller ELNNational Liberation Army (ELN) formed the following year. The FARC and ELN conducted kidnappings, committed serious human rights violations, and carried out a campaign of terrorist activities to pursue their goal of unseating the central government in Bogotá.

Rightist paramilitary groups had formed in the 1980s when wealthy ranchers and farmers, including drug traffickers, hired armed groups to protect them from the kidnapping and extortion plots of the FARC and the ELN. In the 1990s, most of the paramilitary groups formed an umbrella organization, the United-Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). The AUC massacred and assassinated suspected insurgent supporters and directly engaged the FARC and ELN in military battles. The Colombian military has long been accused of close collaboration with the AUC, accusations ranging from ignoring their activities to active support foractively supporting them. The AUC became increasingly engaged in drug trafficking. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the U.S. government designated the FARC, the ELN, and the AUCAUC as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).⁵6 The AUC was formally dissolved in a collective demobilization between 2003 and 2006 whenafter many of its leaders stepped down. However, former paramilitaries joined armed groups (called criminal bands, or Bacrim, by the Colombian government) thatwho continued to participate in the lucrative drug trade and commit other crimes and human rights abuses. (See alsoWhen the FARC demobilized in 2017, other illegally armed groups made aggressive efforts to take control of former FARC territory and its criminal enterprises as FARC forces withdrew. (For more, see "The Current Security Environment," below.)

Figure 1. Map of Colombia

Source: CRSCongressional Research Service.

The Uribe Administration (2002-2010)

The inability of Colombia's two dominant parties to address the root causes of violence in the country led to the election of an independent, Álvaro Uribe, in the presidential contest of 2002. Uribe, who served two terms, came to office with promises to take on the violent leftist guerrillas, address the paramilitary problem, and combat illegal drug trafficking that had grown exponentially in Colombia. During the 1990s, Colombia had become the region's—and the world's—largest producer of cocaine.

At President Uribe's 2002 inauguration, the FARC showered the event with mortar fire, signaling the group's displeasure at the election of a hardliner who believed a military victory over the Marxist rebels was possible. The FARC was then reportedly at the apogee of its strength, numbering an estimated 16,000 to 20,000 fighters under arms. Peace negotiations with the FARC under the prior Pastrana Administration Peace negotiations with the FARC under the prior administration of President Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002) had ended in failure; the FARC had used a large demilitarized zone to regroup and strengthen itself. The FARC had been granted this demilitarized zone by the government as a safehavenlocated in the central Meta department (see map in Figure 1) to regroup and strengthen itself. The central Colombian government granted the FARC this demilitarized zone, a traditional practice in Colombian peace negotiations, but the FARC used it to launch terror attacks, conduct operations, and increase the cultivation of coca and its processing, while failing to negotiate seriously. Many analysts, noting the FARC's strength throughout the country, feared that the Colombian state might fail. During this time, opinion polling indicated that some Colombians thought the FARC might at some point successfully take power.⁶

In his first term (2002-2006), President Uribe sought to shore up and expand the country's military, seeking to reverse the armed forces' losses by aggressively combating the FARC. He entered into peace negotiations with the AUC, striking an agreement with the paramilitaries in 2003 to demobilize. Uribe's predecessor, President Andrés Pastrana. President Pastrana, however, had refused to negotiate with the rightist AUC, but Uribe promoted the process and urged the country to back a controversial Justice and Peace Law that went into effect in July 2005 and provided a framework for the AUC demobilization. By mid-2006, some 31,000 AUC paramilitary forces had demobilized. CombinedThe AUC demobilization, combined with the stepped -up counternarcotic efforts of the Uribe Administration and increasingadministration and increased military victories against the FARC's irregular forces, the AUC demobilization helped to bring down violence, although a high level of human rights violations still plagued the country.⁷8 Uribe became widely popular for the effectiveness of his security policies, a strategy he called "Democratic Security." Colombians approved a referendum to amend their constitution in 2005 to permit Uribe to run for a second term. He ran and won reelection with strong majorities in both houses of the Colombian Congress, giving President Uribe a mandate to continue to consolidate Democratic Security in his second term.

In the battle with the FARC, 2008 was a banner yearFollowing his re-election in 2006, President Uribe continued to aggressively combat the FARC and his government had a successful year in 2008. In March 2008, the Colombian military bombed the camp of FARC's second-in-command, Raul Reyes (located inside Ecuador a short distance from the border), killing him and 25 others. Also in March, another member of FARC's ruling seven-member secretariat was murdered by his security guard. In May, the FARC announced that their supreme leader and founder, Manuel Marulanda, had died of a heart attack. The near-simultaneous deaths of three of the seven most important FARC leaders were a significant blow to the organization. In July 2008, the Colombian government dramatically rescued 15 long-time FARC hostages, including three U.S. defense contractors who had been held since 2003 and Colombian Senatorsenator and former presidential candidate Ingrid Bentancourt. The widely acclaimed, bloodless rescue further undermined FARC morale.⁹

Uribe's success and reputation, however, were marred by several scandals. They included the "parapolitics" scandal in 2006 that exposed links between illegal paramilitaries and politicians, especially prominent members of the national legislature. Subsequent scandals that came to light during Uribe's tenure included the "False Positivefalse positive" murders allegedly carried out by the military (primarily the armyColombian Army) in which innocent civilians were executed and then dressed to look like guerilla fighters to increase the military's rebel body count. In 2009, the media revealed another scandal of illegal wiretapping and other surveillance by the government intelligence agency, the Department of Administrative Security (DAS), to discredit journalists, members of the judiciary, and political opponents of the Uribe government. (In early 2012, the tarnished national intelligence agency was replaced by Uribe's successor.) Despite the controversy surrounding these scandals, President Uribe remained popular and his supporters urged him to run for a third term in 2010. Another referendum was proposed to alter the constitution to allow a third term; however, it was turned down by Colombia's Constitutional Court.

The Santos Government (2010-2014Administration (2010-2018)

Once it became clear that President Uribe was constitutionally ineligible to run for a third term, Juan Manuel Santos of the pro-Uribe National Unity party (or Party of the U) quickly consolidated his preeminence in the 2010 presidential campaign. Legislative elections for all the seats in Colombia's bicameral Congress took place in March 2010, and the results seemed to favor the Santos candidacy. The U Party and the Conservative party won the most seats, which indicated strong support for a continuation of Uribe's policies such as the Democratic Security strategy.

Santos, who had recently served in the Uribe Administration as minister of defense,Santos, a centrist, who comes from an elite family who once owned the country's largest newspaper, was educated in part in the United States. He had recently served as Uribe's defense minister. In 2010, Santos campaigned on a continuation of the Uribe government approaches's approach to security and economic opening. He calledits role encouraging free markets and economic opening, calling his reform policy "Democratic Prosperity." In the May 2010 presidential race, Santos took almost twice as many votes as his nearest competitor, Antanas Mockus of the centrist Green Party, but he did not win a majority of cast votes. This necessitated a runoff vote in June 2010 that he wonSantos won the runoff handily with 69% of the vote in June. Santos's "national unity" ruling coalition formed during his campaign included the center-right National Unity and Conservative parties, the centrist Radical Change Party, and the center-left Liberal party.¹⁰

On August 7, 2010, President Santos said atin his first inauguration on August 7, 2010,speech that he planned to follow in the path of President Uribe, but that "the door to peace[peace] talks [with armed rebels was] is not locked.^"11 Under President Uribe, relations with both neighboring Ecuador and Venezuela had been significantly strained and Colombia had become somewhat isolated. The new administration, however, quickly reestablished diplomatic ties with both governments. Relations with Ecuador became closer . Under the new Santos administration, relations with Ecuador and cooperation on cross-border issues improved. Venezuela also increased its counternarcotics and counterterrorism cooperation with the Santos government and repaired economic relations that had deteriorated sharply by a conflict betweensharply deteriorated between the governments of President Uribe and then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. (Uribe repeatedly accused Chávez of harboring FARC and ELN forces on Venezuelan territory.)

InDuring his first two years in office, President Santos reorganized the executive branch, eliminating the scandal-tainted intelligence agency, the Department of Administrative Security (DAS), and reorganizingDAS, and restructuring three executive-level ministries into six. He achieved some significant accomplished some legislative victories and launched several reforms, including a fiscal reform and a plan to redistribute royalties from land and mineral development more widely. He built on the market opening strategies of the Uribe Administrationadministration and secured a free-trade agreement with the United States, Colombia's largest trade partner, which went into effect in May 2012. To address U.S. congressional concerns about labor relations in Colombia, including the issue of violence against labor union members, the United States and Colombia agreed to an "Action Plan Related to Labor Rights" (Labor Action Plan) in April 2011. Many of the steps prescribed by the plan were completed in 2011 while the U.S. Congress was considering the free trade agreement.

Significantly, the Santos government maintained a vigorous security strategy and struck hard at the FARC's top leadership. In September 2010, the Colombian military killed the FARC's top military commander, Victor Julio Suárez (known as "Mono Jojoy"), in a bombing raid on his camp in central Colombia. In a November 2011 bombing raid, the Colombian security forces tracked down and killed the FARC's supreme leader, Guillermo Leon Saenz (aka "Alfonso Cano"). He was replaced by Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri (known as "Timoleón Jiménez" or "Timochenko"), the group's current supreme leader.

The Santos Administration reorientedWhile continuing the security strategy, the Santos administration began to re-orient the Colombian government's stance toward the internal armed conflict with a number of reforms that it proposed to the Colombian Congress. The firstthrough a series of reforms. The first legislative reform that moved this new vision along, signed by President Santos in June 2011, iswas the Victims' and Land Restitution Law (Victims' Law), to provide comprehensive reparations to an estimated (at the time) 4 million to 5 million victims of the conflict. Reparations under the Victims' Law includeincluded monetary compensation, psycho-social support and other aid for victims, and the return of millions of hectares of stolen land to thethose displaced.¹² The law was intended to process an estimated 360,000 land restitution cases. The government estimates over its 10-year timeframe the Victims' Law will cost about $32 billion to carry out.¹³ The government's implementation of this complex law began in early 2012, and it has received mixed reviews.¹⁴ Between 2011 and 2016, there were more than 100,000 applications for restitution and 5,000 properties, or about 5%, were resolved by judges.¹⁵ The Victims' Law, while not a land reform measure, tackled issues of land distribution including the restitution of stolen property to victims of displacementdisplaced victims. Given the centrality of land issues to the rural peasant-based FARC, passage of the Victims' Law was a strong indicator that the Santos government shared its interest in addressing land and agrarian concerns.

Santos's 2014 Reelection

In his inaugural address on August 7, 2014, President Santos declared three pillars for his second term: peace, equality, and education. His clear top priority was to conclude the peace negotiations launched with the FARC in 2012. He celebrated progress but warned the FARC that Colombia's patience to bring the process to a timely end was not "infinite."²⁵ In the period until the June presidential runnoff in mid-2014, the negotiations in Havana, Cuba (see "Peace Talks"), had reached tentative agreements on three topics, including land and rural development, FARC's political participation after disarmament, and in May 2014 the scourge that fueled the conflict—illegal drug trafficking. The drug partial agreement was signed just days before the June 2014 vote that secured Santos's reelection. For the next year, however, FARC-government negotiations seemed to stall, although there were several unilateral ceasefires by the FARC and the negotiators took unprecedented steps to involve conflict victims in the peace process by inviting five delegations of conflict victims to address negotiating sessions held from August through December 2014.

Economic Background

The Current Security Environment

Peace Talks⁴⁷

Ongoing Domestic Challenges: Human Rights Issues

According to the U.S. State Department's annual report on human rights covering 2014, Colombia's most serious human rights abuses were the consequence of "impunity, an inefficient judiciary, forced displacement, corruption, and societal discrimination." The report cited as significant issues extrajudicial and unlawful killings; slow prosecution of extrajudicial killings; military collaboration with members of illegal armed groups; forced disappearances; overcrowded and insecure prisons; harassment of human rights groups and activists, including lethal violence and death threats; violence against women and girls; and trafficking in persons. In addition to the State Department, numerous sources report regularly on human rights conditions in Colombia. (See Appendix.)

Extrajudicial Executions and "False Positives"

According to a June 2015 Human Rights Watch report on False Positives, prosecutors in the Human Rights Unit of the Prosecutor General's office in more than 3,000 False Positive homicide cases allegedly committed by army personnel have resulted in about 800 convictions, mostly of lower-ranking soldiers.⁵² Only a few of those convictions involved former battalion or other tactical unit commanders, and none of the investigations of 16 active and retired army generals have produced charges. Most cases remain in the preliminary stages, according to Human Rights Watch, although their report indicates there are some 180 battalions (part of 41 brigades) that allegedly committed extrajudicial killings between 2002 and 2008. Some human rights observers maintain that the low number of convictions has resulted in the impression that the security forces enjoy impunity for the crime of extrajudicial execution.⁵³ The Colombian government has reiterated its commitment to successfully prosecute all human rights cases and is especially concerned to achieve a just outcome in the False Positive cases.

Human Rights Defenders and Journalists

Violence against land rights activists has risen sharply with the start of implementation of the Victims' Law in early 2012. A September 2013 report by Human Rights Watch pointing to the rise in violence against land activists and claimants maintained that the environment had become so threatening that claimants who had received land judgments were too frightened to return to their restituted land, and more than 500 serious threats against claimants had been received by the government just since January 2012. According to Human Rights Watch, many of the threats and killings have been conducted by paramilitary-influenced criminal bands (Bacrim), although the Bacrim may be operating at the behest of third-party landownersIn June 2012, another government initiative—the Peace Framework Law, also known as the Legal Framework for Peace—was approved by the Colombian Congress, which signaled that congressional support for a peace process was growing.¹⁶

In August 2012, President Santos announced he had opened exploratory peace talks with the FARC and subsequently launched formal peace negotiations in October 2012 in Norway. The countries of Norway, Cuba, Venezuela, and Chile each held an international support role to the talks, with Norway and Cuba serving as peace talk hosts and "guarantors." Following the formal start in Norway, the actual negotiations began a month later in mid-November 2012 in Cuba, where the FARC-government talks continued until their conclusion in August 2016.

In the midst of extended peace negotiations, Colombia's 2014 national elections presented a unique juncture for the country. During the elections, the opposition Centro Democrático (CD) party gained 20 seats in the Senate and 19 in the less powerful Chamber of Representatives,¹⁷ and its leader, former President Uribe, became a popular senator. His presence in the Senate challenged the new ruling coalition that backed President Santos. The coalition contained the center-right "U" Party, the Liberal Party, and the centrist Radical Change Party but lacked the strong numeric majority the national coalition had enjoyed in Santos's first term. With a safe majority in the Chamber of Representatives, the ruling coalition had to build a working majority in the Senate through alliances with either leftist parties or parties on the right, such as the Conservative Party, that contained both Uribe and Santos supporters. In a tight but decisive contest, President Santos won reelection in a June 2014 runoff with 51% of the vote to his CD opponent's 45%, with about 4% of voters casting blank ballots, suggesting some disillusionment with both candidates whose campaigns had been marred by corruption allegations.

In August 2014, President Santos, during his second-term inaugural address, declared three pillars—peace, equality, and education. His clear top priority was to conclude the peace negotiations launched with the FARC. Ultimately, the peace talks became the signature policy of the Santos government. Former President Uribe, who had become the most vocal critic of the Santos presidency soon after his one-time protégé first took office, attacked the president over social media, accusing his successor of caving to terrorists by engaging the FARC, and led the opposition from the Colombian Senate during Santos's second term. In February 2015, the Obama Administration provided support to the peace talks by naming Bernard Aronson, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs, as the U.S. Special Envoy to the Colombian peace talks.

The talks with the FARC, the country's oldest, largest, and best-financed guerrilla organization, concluded in August 2016. In early October, to the surprise of many, approval of the accord was narrowly defeated by less than 0.5% of voters, revealing a polarized electorate. The accord covered many significant issues, including the illicit drugs problem, land and rural development issues, and how to deliver justice for the millions of victims of Colombia's five-decade conflict. Although President Santos claimed he revised the accord during an intense 40-day consultation with opponents, many did not believe that the revised agreement had been sufficiently altered. In late November, when President Santos put the accord to a vote before the Colombian Congress, the major opposition party, CD, walked out in protest.

The peace process to end the five-decade conflict was deemed the most significant achievement of the Santos presidency and lauded outside of Colombia, throughout the region, and at the United Nations. Over the course of two terms, the President's approval ratings rose and fell rather significantly. For example, in a September 2017 poll, 54% of all Colombians disapproved of Santos's mandate, and only 16% polled viewed the president favorably. A large number of Colombians contend that President Santos ignored major issues, such as unemployment, health care, and growing corruption. Other Colombians believe that Santos's investments in peace have been historic and worthwhile, citing large reductions in crime and violence, including the lowest homicide rate recorded since the early 1970s.

The president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2016, although the peace plebiscite had been defeated in October. In March 2017, President Santos reshuffled his cabinet and brought General Óscar Naranjo (a former head of the Colombian National Police) to replace his vice president, Germán Vargas Lleras, who had decided to run in the 2018 presidential race on the right-leaning Cambio Radical ticket. Subsequently, in October 2017, Cambio Radical left the national coalition and became openly critical of some parts of the peace accord, suggesting that candidate Vargas Lleras may not support full implementation of some elements of the accord negotiated by a government he was once part of.

Colombians are scheduled to elect a new president and vice president on May 27, 2018, with a runoff on June 17, if needed. Presidential hopefuls are preparing for next year's election amid long-standing disapproval of the Santos administration among a majority of Colombians. Disgruntled Colombians point to an aloof president whose energy and political capital have been spent on accommodating an often-despised criminal group.

Many observers are watching the initial campaigns closely, as the outcome of the 2018 elections will have serious repercussions for the longevity and direction of President Santos's peace legacy. The 2018 election cycle will be a response to the peace agenda and its aftermath even as some analysts caution that recent polling results indicate solely focusing on implementation of the controversial accord will not be popular. Newly demobilized FARC members are expected to exercise the right to vote, and the FARC, for the first time in Colombian history, will hold seats in both chambers of Congress. According to the peace accord, the FARC's new political party will hold 5 seats in the 102-member Senate and 5 seats in the 166-member House chamber for two terms (through 2026).

Many of the candidates have begun to explore ways to broaden their appeal through forming political coalitions and running as independents rather than with traditional parties. The efforts were in the initial stages in October 2017, but finding coalition partners who held common views on issues such as security, combating corruption, peace accord implementation, and jobs and the economy was actively being pursued. Some, such as the Uribe-Pastrana coalition led by former Presidents Álvaro Uribe and Andrés Pastrana, appear more well-defined than others. A carryover of the coalition that voted down the peace accord on October 2, 2016, by less than a half percent of votes cast, the Uribe-Pastrana coalition was awaiting a final decision on the candidate that the conservative CD party would support.¹⁹ According to President Uribe, the new coalition will build support from the same groups that helped win the "no" vote, which would attract a broader audience to their candidate.

On the liberal end of the spectrum, the Colombian Coalition or Coalición Colombiana has coalesced around the themes of combating corruption and supporting peace. This recently created group, made up of former Medellín Mayor Sergio Fajardo and Senators Claudia López and Jorge Enrique Robledo, coalesced around the idea of addressing corruption and clientelism that plagues the Colombian public sector. ²⁰ Liberal party hopeful Humberto de la Calle has expressed interest in joining this group. His party's leadership, however, has stated it intends to form a "great coalition" geared toward defending the peace accords and their implementation, topics that the Colombian Coalition also supports, but perhaps less centrally.²¹

Colombian electoral law stipulates presidential candidates must win half of all votes, plus one, to win in the first round. If no single candidate is declared the winner, a run-off election between the two highest-polling candidates will be held in June 2018. The winning candidate will serve for four years with no option for reelection because the Colombian Congress voted to snap back the provision prohibiting reelection that had been altered under President Uribe.

Colombia's concern with corruption has been particularly acute in 2017. Similar to many countries in the region, government officials, including the president's 2014 campaign for reelection and the opposition candidate's campaign, both alleged to have received payoffs (bribes) from the Odebrecht firm, the Brazilian construction company. In June 2017, the Santos administration was embarrassed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's arrest of its top official in anti-corruption, Gustavo Moreno. In mid-September, the former chief justice of Colombia's Supreme Court was then arrested for his alleged role in a corruption scandal that involves other former justices who are accused of taking bribes from corrupt congressmen, some with ties to illegal paramilitary groups. The series of corruption charges made against members or former members of Colombia's judicial branch, politicians, and other officials have clearly made the issue a prominent one in Colombian politics and led to a referendum on cleaning up corruption to be held in March 2018, just days before the national congressional elections on March 11, 2018.²²

Colombia's economy is the fourth largest in Latin America after Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina. The World Bank characterizes Colombia as an upper middle-income country, although its commodities-dependent economy has been hit by oil price declines and peso devaluation related to the erosion of fiscal revenue. Between 2010 and 2014, Colombia's economy grew at an average of more than 4% but slowed to 3.1% gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2015 and 2.0% in 2016.²³ Despite its relative economic stability, high poverty rates and inequality have contributed to social upheaval in Colombia for decades. The poverty rate in 2005 was slightly above 45%, but declined to below 27% in 2016. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) cites the capacity of the Colombian economy to sustain a slowdown in 2016 while continuing to achieve gains in addressing inequality. Yet, concentrated land ownership and high rural poverty rates remain a problem.²⁴

According to a United Nations study published in 2011, 1.2% of the population owned 52% of the land,²⁵ and in later data about 49% of Colombians in 2016 continued to work in the informal economy. Colombia is often described as a country bifurcated between metropolitan areas with a developed, middle-income economy, and some rural areas that are poor, conflict-ridden, and weakly governed. The fruits of the growing economy have not been shared equally with this ungoverned, largely rural periphery. Frequently these more remote areas are inhabited by ethnic minorities or other disadvantaged groups, such as Afro-Colombians, indigenous populations, or landless peasants and subsistence farmers, who are vulnerable to illicit economies due to few connections to the formal economy.

Promoting more equitable growth and ending the internal conflict have been twin goals of the two-term Santos administration. Unemployment, which has historically been high and over 10%, fell below that double digit mark during Santos's first term and remained at 9.2% in 2016 but rose slightly in the first quarter of 2017 to an estimated 9.4%.²⁶ Colombia has secured free trade agreements with the European Union, Canada, and the United States, and with most nations in Latin America. Colombia is a founding member of the Pacific Alliance along with Chile, Mexico, and Peru, and has sought to deepen trade integration and cross-border investment with its partners in the Alliance, while reducing trade barriers. Colombian officials have worked over the past decade to increase the attractiveness of investing in Colombia, and foreign direct investment (FDI) grew by 16% between 2015 and 2016. This investment increase came not only from the extractive industries, such as petroleum and mining, but also from such areas as agricultural products, transportation, and financial services.

Although Colombia is ranked highly for business-friendly practices and has a favorable regulatory environment that encourages trade across borders, it is still plagued by persistent corruption and an inability to effectively implement institutional reforms it has undertaken, particularly in regions where government presence is weak. According to the U.S. State Department in its analysis of national investment climates, Colombia has demonstrated a political commitment to create jobs, develop sound capital markets, and achieve a legal and regulatory system that meets international norms for transparency and consistency. Some of the problems in its business environment include a still-complicated tax system, a high corporate tax burden, and continuing piracy and counterfeiting issues. Colombia's rural-sector protestors formed strikes and blockades beginning in 2013 with demands for long-term and integrated-agricultural reform in a country with one of the most unequal patterns of land ownership.²⁷

Given the Santos administration's outward-looking, market-oriented approach to the economy and interest in inclusive and sustainable economic growth, many Colombian policymakers and business leaders want to see Colombia's accession to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). President Santos acknowledges that OECD full membership will constitute recognition of Colombia's attainment of world-class development standards and policies.²⁸

Colombia has confronted a complex security environment of armed groups: two violent leftist insurgencies, the FARC and the ELN, and groups that succeeded the AUC following its demobilization during the Uribe administration. The FARC, whittled down by the government's military campaign against it, continued to conduct a campaign of terrorist activities during peace negotiations with the government through mid-2015, but imposed temporary unilateral ceasefires in succession that did lower violence levels significantly. In August 2016, the FARC and the government concluded negotiations on a peace accord that was narrowly rejected in a referendum in October but approved by Congress in November 2016.

In 2017, the FARC largely demobilized in the first half of the year, with a majority of the estimated 12,000 combatants and militia members turning in their arms at designated normalization areas under the supervision of UN monitors.²⁹ Authorities and some analysts maintain that 5% to 10% of the FARC have become dissidents, who reject the peace settlement, although other estimates suggest a higher percentage. These armed individuals remain a threat.³⁰ As agreed in the peace accord, the demobilized rebels transitioned to a political party that became known as the Common Alternative Revolutionary Force (retaining the acronym FARC) in September 2017.³¹ On November 1, 2017, the FARC announced their party's presidential ticket: current FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño (aka Timochenko) for president and Imelda Daza for vice president.³²

The ELN, like the FARC, became deeply involved in the drug trade and used extortion, kidnapping, and other criminal activities to fund themselves.³³The ELN, with diminished resources and reduced offensive capability, according to government estimates, declined to fewer than 2,000 fighters. Some analysts maintain that former FARC were recruited to join the ELN as the larger rebel group demobilized. In early 2015, the ELN leadership began exploratory peace talks with the Santos government in Ecuador, although the ELN continued to attack oil and transportation infrastructures and conduct kidnappings and extortions, at least periodically. Formal talks with the ELN finally opened in February 2017 in Quito, Ecuador. The ELN's chief leadership, which includes Nicolás Rodríguez Bautista, alias "Gabino," is represented in Quito but the organization is far more regionally oriented, decentralized, and nonhierarchical in its decisionmaking, in contrast to the centralized control of the FARC. In September, the government and ELN negotiators announced that a 100-day bilateral ceasefire would begin in October 2017.

The AUC, the loosely affiliated national umbrella organization of paramilitaries, officially disbanded a decade ago. The organization was removed from the State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organizations list in July 2014. More than 31,000 AUC members demobilized between 2003 and 2006, and many AUC leaders stepped down. However, as noted, many former AUC paramilitaries continued their illicit activities or re-armed and joined criminal groups—known as Bacrim. Viewed by many observers as successors to the paramilitaries,³⁴ the Bacrim are seen by the Colombian government as the biggest threat to Colombia's security since 2011, although these groups do not appear to be motivated by the dream of defeating the national government, they do seek territorial control and appear to provide rudimentary justice in ungoverned parts of the country.³⁵ Human rights groups maintain that these paramilitary successors are responsible for widespread abuses against civilians. The Bacrim are primarily involved in drug trafficking, but also extortion and many other violent crimes.

In 2013, the criminal group Los Urabeños, launched in 2006, emerged as the dominant Bacrim. Over its lifetime, the group has been referred to as the Gaitanistas, the Clan Úsuga, and most recently El Clan del Golfo, growing to about 3,000 members by 2015.³⁶ The Urabeños organization is heavily involved in cocaine trafficking as well as arms trafficking, money laundering, extortion, gold mining, human trafficking, and prostitution.³⁷ Early leaders of the group, such as founder Daniel Rendón Herrera (alias "Don Mario") and his brother Feddy Rendón Herrera were designated drug kingpins under the U.S. Kingpin Act in 2009 and 2010, respectively, but because these men had been part of the AUC peace process, they could not be extradited to the United States until they had served time and paid reparations.

In 2015, the Colombian government conducted operations against the Urabeños, apparently in tandem with U.S. efforts. In June 2015, the Justice Department unsealed indictments against 17 alleged Urabeños members.³⁸ The Colombian government's efforts to dismantle the Urabeños and interrupt its operations began to result in the capture of top leaders and gradually to disrupt its illicit activities.³⁹ The Urabeños faced an intense enforcement campaign by the Colombian police and military, especially after the Urabeños reportedly advertised and paid rewards to its subcontracted assassins to murder Colombian police.⁴⁰ In September 2017, the Urabeños top leader, Dairo Antonio Úsuga (alias "Otoniel"), requested terms of surrender from the Santos government after the arrest of his wife, and the killing or arrest of siblings and co-leaders of this group. As of late October 2017, the Santos government continued to assess Otoniel's offer and had not announced its response. However, in Colombia's largest cocaine seizure to date, the government seized 12 metric tons of cocaine linked to the Los Urabeños in November 2017.⁴¹

Splinter groups of the large Colombian drug cartels of the 1980s and 1990s, such as the Medellin Cartel and Cali Cartel, have come and gone in Colombia, including the powerful transnational criminal organization (TCO), the Norte del Valle Cartel and Los Rastrajos. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's 2017 National Drug Threat Assessment maintains "Colombian TCOs continue to control [cocaine] production and supply." According to the report published in October 2017, for the most part, "large-scale Colombian TCOs work closely with Mexican and Central American TCOs to export ton quantities of cocaine out of Colombia every year."⁴² Traditionally, the FARC and ELN have been willing to cooperate with Bacrim and other Colombian crime groups in defense of drug trafficking and other illicit activities despite the groups' ideological differences. The demobilization of the FARC and possibly a future demobilization of the ELN may lead to the emergence of new criminal groups or restructuring of old groups into new ones.

The four-year peace talks between the FARC and the Santos administration started in Norway and moved to Cuba where negotiators worked through a six-point agenda during more than 50 rounds of talks that produced agreements on six major topics. They include land and rural development (May 2013), the FARC's political participation after disarmament (November 2013), illicit drug crops and drug trafficking (May 2014), victims' reparations and transitional justice (finalized in December 2015), and the demobilization and disarmament of the FARC and a bilateral cease-fire (June 2016). The final topic—verification to enact the programs outlined in the final accord—all parties knew would be the most challenging, especially with a polarized public and many Colombians skeptical of whether the FARC would be held accountable for its violence and crimes during the years of conflict.⁴³

Some analysts have estimated that to implement the programs required by the commitments in the accord to ensure stable post-conflict development may require 15 years and cost from $30 billion to $45 billion. The country faces steep challenges to underwrite the post-accord peace programs in an era of declining revenues. While progress has been uneven, some programs (those related to drug trafficking) had external pressure to move forward quickly and some considered urgent received "fast track" treatment to expedite their regulation by Congress. The revised peace accord that was approved by the Colombian Congress in late 2016 was granted fast track implementation by the Colombian Constitutional Court in a ruling on December 13, 2016, particularly applied to the FARC's disarmament and demobilization. However, in May 2017, a new ruling by the high court determined that all legislation related to the implementation of the accord needed to be fully debated rather than passed in an expedited fashion. Some observers note that this could slow the process of implementation significantly.

The first provision undertaken was the demobilization of the FARC, monitored by a U.N. mission that was approved by the U.N. Security Council to verify implementation of the accords. In June 2017, the U.N. monitors certified that the demobilization was complete with more than 7,000 FARC combatants turning in their arms. In the summer of 2017, U.N. monitors also emptied large arm caches identified by FARC leaders, seizing the contents of more than 750 of the reported nearly 1,000 caches of hidden weapons. The United Nations plans to collaborate with the newly formed special peace police unit to extract the remaining weapons. With the final disarmament, President Santos declared the conflict over in mid-August 2017.

One of Colombia's greatest challenges continues to be ensuring security for ex-combatants. The FARC's reintegration into civil society is a charged topic because the FARC's efforts in the 1980s to start a political party, known as the Patriotic Union, or the UP by its Spanish acronym, resulted in more than 3,000 party members being killed by rightwing paramilitaries and others.⁴⁵ As of late October 2017, about two dozen ex-FARC or demobilized FARC members and their close relatives have reportedly been killed. In addition to unmet government guarantees of security, the FARC also has criticized the government for not adequately preparing for the group's demobilization. According to analysts, the government failed to provide basic resources to FARC gathered throughout the country in specially designated zones for disarmament and demobilization (later renamed reintegration zones). The demobilization areas or cantonments had been so little prepared in early 2017 that the FARC had in many cases to construct their own housing and locate food and other provisions.

Following the disarmament, the reintegration process has proceeded slowly. In addition, the complex transitional justice mechanism has been delayed due to complicated approval of laws that must pass through the Colombian Congress, slowed by the Constitutional Court's May 2017 ruling to restrict fast track, and controversy about the new court to try war crimes and other serious violations, the "Special Jurisdiction of Peace." Another area of criticism by peace process advocates is the limited attention to include ethnic Colombians, such as Afro-Colombian leaders and indigenous communities, into the accord's implementation, as required by the "ethnic chapter" of the peace accord. In contrast, a U.N. deputy human rights official warned in October 2017 that after a successful demobilization it would be dangerous not to reintegrate FARC former combatants by providing them realistic options for income and delaying effective reintegration could undermine peace going forward.⁴⁶

Efforts to make rapid progress that can demonstrate the peace accord's effectiveness will be scrutinized as presidential and congressional races begin before the official start of campaigning in early 2018. Peace process opponents are making a case that the process was flawed based on mistakes that gave too many concessions to the FARC. How a successor to President Santos will carry out the peace accords remains to be seen. In October 2017, Colombia's Constitutional Court determined that the next three governments (until 2030) must follow the accord commitments negotiated by the Santos administration and approved by the Colombian Congress in 2016.⁴⁷

Colombia's multisided internal conflict over the last half century generated a lengthy record of human rights abuses. Violence targeting noncombatants, including killings, tortures, kidnappings, disappearances, forced displacements, forced recruitments, massacres, and sexual attacks, has been committed by most of the various actors in the conflict: the guerillas, the paramilitaries and their successors, and some elements of the Colombian security forces. Although it is widely recognized that Colombia's efforts to reduce violence, combat drug trafficking and terrorism, and strengthen the economy have met with success, many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and human rights groups continue to report significant human rights violations. Colombia continues to experience murders and threats of violence against journalists, human rights defenders, labor union members, social activists such as land rights leaders, and others. Crimes of violence against women, children, Afro-Colombian and indigenous leaders, and other vulnerable groups continue at high rates.

Prominent human rights issues, involving homicides and threats of violence, remain relevant and illustrate the scale of the human rights problem still facing the Colombian government. These ongoing issues reflect constraints of the Colombian judicial system to effectively prosecute crimes and overcome impunity despite increased efforts to better finance prosecution efforts and streamline processes.

For many years, human rights organizations have raised concerns about extrajudicial executions committed by Colombian security forces, particularly the military. In 2008, it was revealed that several young men from the impoverished community of Soacha—who had been lured allegedly by military personnel from their homes to another part of the country with the promise of employment—had been executed. When discovered, the Soacha murder victims had been disguised as guerrilla fighters to inflate military claims of enemy body counts, resulting in the term false positives. Following an investigation into the Soacha murders, the military quickly fired 27 soldiers and officers, including three generals, and the army's commander resigned. The Colombian prosecutor general's criminal investigations of soldiers and officers who allegedly participated in the Soacha executions have proceeded quite slowly. Some 48 of the military members eventually charged with involvement in the Soacha cases were released due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. Whereas some soldiers have received long sentences, few sergeants or colonels have been successfully prosecuted.⁴⁹

In 2009, the false positive phenomenon was investigated by the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, who issued a report that concluded with no finding that such killings were a result of an official government policy. However, the Special Rapporteur did find, "the sheer number of cases, their geographic spread, and the diversity of military units implicated, indicate that these killings were carried out in a more or less systematic fashion by significant elements within the military."⁵⁰ The majority of the cases took place between 2004 and 2008, when U.S. assistance to Colombia peaked. In recent years, the number of new alleged false positive cases declined steeply, but human rights NGOs still reported a few cases in 2012 through 2015.

To address the military's human rights violations, the Santos administration proposed a change that did not prevail. This reform was a constitutional change to expand the jurisdiction of military courts and, it was approved by the Colombian Congress in late December 2012 by a wide margin despite controversy.⁵¹ Human rights groups criticized the legislation's shift in the jurisdiction over serious human rights crimes allegedly committed by Colombia's public security forces from the civilian to the military justice system.⁵² In its review of the constitutional amendment, the Colombian Constitutional Court struck down the law over procedural issues in October 2013.⁵³

Although estimates diverge, the number of human rights defenders murdered in 2016 totaled 80 and another 51 in the first half of 2017, according to Somos Defensores ("We are Defenders"), a Colombian NGO that tracks violence against defenders and is cited by the State Department.⁵⁷ Some groups, such as the Colombian think tank, Indepaz, say the numbers are higher, up to 117 murders in 2016.⁵⁸ Human rights activists are generally pleased with the tone of the Santos government's policies and statements on human rights that have frequently denounced attacks, but they have been critical of inadequate levels of prosecution of such crimes. Few, if any, of those accused of making threats and ordering or carrying out assassinations have been prosecuted. According to these activists, perpetrators still have little to fear of legal consequences.

Since early 2012, violence against land rights activists has risen sharply with the start of implementation of the Victims' Law that authorized the return of stolen land. A September 2013 report by Human Rights Watch pointing to the rise in violence against land activists and claimants maintained that the environment had turned so threatening that claimants who had received land judgments were too frightened to return, and the government had received more than 500 serious threats against claimants in less than 18 months. According to Human Rights Watch, many of the threats and killings have been conducted by paramilitary-influenced Bacrim, although they may be operating at the behest of third-party "landowners," who are trying to protect their land from seizure. In 2017, Bacrim attacks on leaders supporting the voluntary substitution of coca crops had become another serious problem. In addition, the confusion about forced eradication of coca crops in lieu of voluntary eradication of crops led to the murders of four farmers protesting the eradication of their fields in Tumaco (in the southwestern department of Nariño), allegedly by Colombian security forces, although the event remains under investigation.⁵⁹

For more than a decade, the Colombian government has addressedtried to suppress violence against groups facing extraordinary risk through itsthe National Protection Unit (UPN) programs. Colombia's UPN provides protection measures, such as body guards and protective gear, to individuals in at-risk groups, including human rights defenders, journalists, trade unionists, and others.⁵⁷ However, according to international and Colombian human rights groups, the UPN has been plagued by corruption issues and has inadequately supported prosecutionsthe prosecution of those responsible for attacks. The UPN had a budget in 2014 of roughly $140 million to protect some 7,527According to the State Department's Report on Human Rights Practices, in 2016, the UPN protected roughly 6,200 at-risk individuals, including 622478 human rights activists, according to the State Department's Human Rights Practices for 2014.⁵⁸.⁶⁰

Journalists, a group long receiving protection measures from the UPN, continue to operate in a dangerous environment in Colombia. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 47 journalists in Colombia have been killed in work-related circumstances since 1992. NGOs working in Colombia have reported that two journalists were killed in 2015. In addition, according to a CPJ ranking of impunity Colombia was not included for the first time in their ranking for 2014 of countries where "journalists are slain and killers go free." Colombia exited the group because it did not have five or more unsolved journalist homicides that had occurred between 2005 and 2015Two journalists were reported killed in 2015, according to human rights groups working in Colombia. The ELN kidnapped three journalists in 2016, but they were released after six days of captivity. CPJ acknowledged some recent improvement in prosecuting cases in Colombia, and murders of working journalists have declined. It added hopefully that this phenomenon may be receding into the country's violence-torn past.⁵⁹

Violence and Labor

The issue of violence against the labor movement in Colombia has sparked controversy and debate for years. Many human rights groups and labor advocates have maintained that Colombia's poor record on protecting its trade union members and leaders from violence is one reason to avoid closer trade relations with Colombia. The U.S. Congress's approval of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (also known as the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement) could not be enacted without addressing the deep concern of many Members of Congress that Colombia must enforce basic labor standards and especially measures to mitigate the alleged violence against trade union members and bring perpetrators of such violence to justice.

In April 2011, the United States and Colombia agreed to an "Action Plan Related to Labor Rights" (the Labor Action Plan, LAP), which contained 37 measures that Colombia would implement to address violence, impunity, and protection of workers' rights protection. Before the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement entered into force in April 2012, the U.S. Trade Representative determined that Colombia had met all the important milestones in the LAP to date.⁶⁰62 Some U.S. and Colombian labor groups contend that progress on the plan's objectives as of 2014 had been minimal and urge that the United States and Colombia continue to cooperate for an additional four years.⁶¹

Despite the programs launched and measures taken to implement the LAP, human rights and labor organizations claim that violence targeting labor union members continues. (Some analysts continue to debate whether labor activists are being targeted because of their union activities or for other reasons.) The government of ColombiaColombian government has acknowledged that violence and threats continue, but points to success in reducing violence generally and the number of homicides of labor unionists specifically. Violence levels in general are high in Colombia, but have steadily been decreasing. According to the data reported by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its annual report on homicidehomicide report, rates have decreased dramatically since 2002, when the homicide rate was at 68.9 per 100,000.⁶²64 The Colombian governmentMinistry of Defense reported in 20142016 that the homicide rate had declined to 2724.4 per 100,000.⁶³

In this context of an overall steady decline in homicides, the number of labor union killings has also declined. For many years, the government and the leading NGO source that tabulates these crimes did not agree on the number of labor union murders because of usingthey used different methodologies. Both sources recorded a decline, but the government generally saw a steeper decline. According to the Colombian labor rights NGO and think tank, the National Labor School (Escuela Nacional Sindical, ENS), there has been a significant decline from 191 labor union murders in 2001 to 20 reported in 2012.⁶⁴66 One element of the Action Plan was that the government and ENS would meet to develop a single methodology to define, identify, and provide information on cases involving crimes against trade union members. While this process of unifying their approaches has been slow, the U.S. State Department and other official sources now frequently report the ENS figure. For 2015, ENS reportedThe ENS reported for 2015 17 labor homicides as of the end of August and for 2016 8 labor homicides through August.⁶⁷ A new government information system, supported with U.S. funding, has registered between January 2011 and August 2017, 162 homicide cases in which victims were labor union members. There have been 409 convictions, 31 for cases after 2011 and 378 for cases before 2011.⁶⁸.⁶⁵

In addition, labor advocates note that tracking homicides does not capture the climate of intimidation faced bythat Colombian labor unions in Colombia. Besidesface. In addition to lethal attacks, trade union members face rising numbers ofencounter increased death threats, arbitrary detention, and other types of harassment. Measures to strengthen the judicial system to combat impunity for such crimes are also part of the Labor Action Plan. Nevertheless, many analysts maintain there remains a large backlog of cases yet to be investigated and prosecuted involving violent crimes against union members. According to the State Department's country report on Colombia covering human rights in 2014, while2016, some prominent cases were resolved, but the pace of investigations and convictions for trade unionist homicides "remained slow and high rates of impunity continued." This has been especially true regarding recent cases. Of the 121 cases of trade unionist killings committed since 2011, the government has won only nine convictions as of September 2014, according to Colombia's Office of the Prosecutor General.⁶⁶ The State Department country report maintained that in 2014, as in previous years, teachers in Colombia comprised the largest group of organized workers, and union members who are teachers continued to be the most likely victims of violence by illegal armed groups.

Internal Displacement

The internal conflict has been the major cause of a massive displacement of the civilian population that has many societal consequences, including implications for Colombia's poverty levels and stability. Colombia has one of the largest populations of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the world. Most estimates place the total at more than 57 million IDPs, or greatermore than 10% of Colombia's estimated population of 4749 million.⁶⁷70 This enormous number of Colombians, forcibly displaced and impoverished as a result of the armed conflict, continues to grow and has been described by many observers as a humanitarian crisis. Indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoplespeople make up an estimated 15%-22% of the Colombian population.⁶⁸71 They are, however, disproportionately represented among those displaced. The leading Colombian NGO that monitors displacement, Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), reports that 36% of the victims of forced displacement nationwide in 2012 came from the country's Pacific region. Afro-Colombian and indigenous people, who live predominantly predominate in the Pacific coastal departments of Nariño, Cauca, Valle del Cauca, and Chocó, (see map, Figure 1), were the most affected.⁶⁹.⁷²

The Pacific region, historically inhabited by ethnic minorities, has been largely marginalized as a result of weak central government presence and societal discrimination. (Some 84% of the land in the Pacific region is subject to collective-title rights granted to Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities.)⁷⁰73 Illegal armed groups are active in usurping land in this region, which is valued for its proximity to a major port and drug trafficking routes, and the Afro- and indigenous communities are also caught in the middle of skirmishes between illegal groups and Colombian security forces.

IDPs suffer stigma and poverty and are often subject to abuse and exploitation. BesidesIn addition to the disproportionate representation of Colombia's ethnic communities among the displaced, other vulnerable populations, including women and children, have been disproportionally affected. Women, who make up more than half of the displaced population in Colombia, can become targets for sexual harassment, violence, and human trafficking. Displacement is driven by a number of factors, most, but not all, linked to the internal armed conflict. It occurs frequently in more remote regions of the country where armed groups compete and seek to control territory or where they confront Colombian security forces. Violence that uproots people includes threatened or actual child recruitment or other forced recruitment by illegal armed groups, as well as physical, psychological, and sexual violence. Other contributing factors reported by NGOs include counternarcotics measures such as aerial spraying, illegal mining, and large-scale economic projects in rural areas. Inter-urban displacement is a growing phenomenon in cities such as Buenaventura and Medellin, which often results from violence and threats by organized crime groups.

The Victims' Law of 2011, which began to be implemented in 2012, is the major piece of legislation to redress Colombian victims of displacementdisplacement victims with the return of their stolen land. The historic law provides restitution of land to those IDPs who were displaced since January 1, 1991. The law aims to return land to as many as 360,000 families (impacting up to 1.5 million people) who had their land stolen. But the law thus far has been applied during a time of ongoing violence and many observers have noted it is far from reaching its promised goals. The government notes that some 50% of the land to be restituted has the presence of land mines and that the presence of illegally armed groups in areas where victims have presented their applications for land restitution has slowed implementation of the law.⁷¹

The In 2015, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released a report in 2015 on Humanitarian and Peace Trends—ColombiaColombia (November 2012-June 2015) chronicling trends since the government-FARC peace process began over three years ago. The OCHA report notes that within the two-and-a-half-year timeframe covered in the report, the government agency known as the Victims Unit maintained that there were more than 541,000 new forced displacements, or IDPs, in Colombia, mostly concentrated in the Pacific coast region and in the department of Antioquia. OCHA estimates, given several factors that the U.N. agency takes into account, that there were actually closer to 648,000 forced displacements or new IDPs. The report cites several reasons for this large continuing wave of displacements, including a significant increase in violent confrontations between "post-demobilization" crime groups (often called Bacrim) in later 2013. On the positive side, OCHA notes between late 2012 and June 2015, a period punctuated by unilateral ceasefires by the FARC, the country experienced a significant decline in mass displacements.⁷⁴

Regional Relations and Security

Colombia shares long borders with neighboring countries, and some of these border areas have been described as porous to illegal armed groups that threaten regional security. Colombia has a 1,367-mile border with Venezuela, approximately 1,000-mile borders with both Peru and Brazil, and shorter borders with Ecuador and Panama. Much of the territory is remote and rugged and suffers from inconsistent state presence. WhileAlthough all of Colombia's borders have been problematic and subject to spillover effects from Colombia's armed conflict, the most affected are Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama.

Over the years, Colombia's relations with Venezuela and Ecuador have been strained by Colombia's counterinsurgency operations, including cross-border military activity. The FARC and ELN insurgents have been present in shared -border regions and in some cases the terrorist groups have used the neighboring countrycountries to rest, resupply, and shelter. Former President Uribe accused the Venezuelan government of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez of harboring the FARC and ELN and maintained that he had evidence of FARC financing of the 2006 political campaign of Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa. Under President Uribe,Relations between Ecuador and Colombia remained tense following the Colombian military bombedbombardment of a FARC camp inside of Ecuador in March 2008. Ecuador severed diplomatic relations with Colombia for 33 months. Also in 2008, Ecuador filed a suit against Colombia in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), claiming damages to Ecuadorian residents affected by spray drift from Colombia's aerial eradication of drug crops. In September 2013, Colombia reached an out-of-court settlement awarding Ecuador $15 million. Once in office, President Santos reestablished diplomatic ties with both countries and in hisrelations with Colombia for 33 months. In support of Ecuador, Venezuela also broke off relations with Colombia and sent troops to its border with Colombia. Relations between Venezuela and Colombia remained tense for many years.

During President Santos's first term (2010-2014) cooperation greatly increased between Colombia and Venezuela on border and security issues despite the State Department's concerns about Venezuelan links to the FARC. According to the State Department's Country Reports on Terrorism 2013, published in April 2014, Venezuela has not taken action against senior level government officials who were designated as Foreign Narcotics Kingpins by the United States. Some officials were also sanctioned for links to the FARC's drug-trafficking and arms-smuggling activities in 2011. The State Department's 2013 terrorism report maintained that the FARC and ELN continued to use Venezuela as a safe haven and and with Ecuador's Correa. However, concerns about Venezuelan links to the FARC and the continued use of Venezuela by the FARC and ELN as a safe haven to make incursions into Colombia.⁷⁵ In August 2013 stoked remaining tension. Nevertheless, the Venezuelan and Colombian governments committed to jointly combat narcotics trafficking and the activities of illegal armed groupsgroup activities along the porous Venezuelan-Colombian border.

Venezuela in 2014 continued not to take action against senior Venezuelan government officials sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for directly supporting the narcotics and arms trafficking activities of the FARC. YetIn the meantime, Venezuela remained a supporting government of the FARC-government peace talks (along with Chile, Norway, and Cuba) through 2016, even after former President Chávez passed awaydied in office in March 2013. (In 2015, Ecuador's government hosted exploratory talks between the ELN and the Santos Administration, but these have not evolved into formal talks as of early February 2016.)

The State Department's 20142016 terrorism report (published in July 2017) maintained that the number of terrorist incidents in Colombia—perpetrated largelycarried out by the FARC and the ELN—decreased during the year compared to 2013 and that government statistics showed that infrastructure sabotage was down. According to the report, the FARC reportedly focused on low-cost high-impact attacks, such as firing mortars at police stations or the military, placing explosive devices near roads or paths, and carrying out sniper attacks. The report also notes that the Colombian government kept up military pressure on the armed insurgents during 2014 and that guerrilla fighters were captured and demobilized in slightly higher numbers than in the previous year.⁷⁶

Colombia's Role in Training Security Personnel Abroad

When Colombia hosted the Sixth Summit of the Americas in April 2012, President Obama and President Santos announced a new joint endeavor, the Action Plan on Regional Security Cooperation. This joint effort, built on ongoing security cooperation, addresses hemispheric challenges, such as combating transnational organized crime, bolstering counternarcotics, strengthening institutions, and fostering resilient communities.⁷⁷78 The Action Plan focuses on capacity building for security personnel in Central America and the Caribbean by Colombian security forces (both Colombian military and police). To implement the plan, Colombia undertook 39 cooperation activities in 2013 to train more than 700 individuals from Panama, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Under the Action Plan in 2014, Colombia conducted 152 activities, reportedly training more than 6,500 security personnel from the same countries and also Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. According to the Colombian government, the cooperation activities for 2015 numbered 215 in all six countries.⁷⁸

Colombia has increasingly trained military and police from other countries both under this partnership and other arrangements, including 24,00036,300 officials from 7173 countries across the globe. According to the Colombian Ministry of Defense, around 80% of those trained were from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. U.S. and Colombian officials maintain that the broader effort is designed to "export"export Colombian expertise in combating crime and terrorism while promoting the rule of law and greater bilateral and multilateral law enforcement cooperation. Critics of the effort to "export Colombian security successes" maintain that human rights concerns have not been adequately addressed.⁷⁹81 Some observers question the portion of these activities that are funded by the U.S. government and want to see more transparency.⁸⁰82 In one analysis of the training, a majority of the training was provided by Colombian National Police rather than the Colombian Army, in such areas as ground, air, maritime, and river interdiction; police testimony; explosives,; intelligence operations; psychological operations; and Comando JUNGLA, Colombia's elite counternarcotics police program.⁸¹83

Source: Data from the Colombian Ministry of Defense provided by the Embassy of Colombia.

Notes: U.S.-Colombia Action Plan on Regional Security Cooperation (USCAP) trainees included 3,606 security personnel from Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama in 2016; 3,299 in 2015; 3,574 in 2014; and 702 in 2013.

Other analysts praise the Colombian training as a way to "multiply"multiply U.S. security assistance and its impact with partner nations. They maintain that Colombian trainers provide partner nations in Latin America in particular with experts who are fluent in their language and familiar with the crime and security challenges facing the region. If the peace talks end in an accord approved by the Colombian populace, these observers contend that Colombia's regional role in combating transnational organized crime through training security personnel in other nations, both in the region and elsewhere, should continue to expand. TheyThese analysts maintain that U.S. assistance has helped to train, professionalize, and expand the Colombian military to make, making it the region's second largest. As that highly trained military shifts from combating the insurgency and the Colombian National Police take the dominant role in guaranteeing domestic security, it shouldColombia may play a greater role in regional security and even in coalition efforts internationally.⁸²

U.S. Relations and Policy

Colombia is a key U.S. ally in the region. With diplomatic relations that began in the 19^th century following Colombia's independence from Spain, the countries have enjoyed close and strong ties. Because of Colombia's prominence in the production of illegal drugs, the United States and Colombia forged a close partnership over the lastpast 16 years. Focused initially on counternarcotics, and later counterterrorism, a program called Plan Colombia laid the foundation for a strategic partnership that has broadened to include sustainable development, human rights, trade, regional security, and many other areas of cooperation. Between FY2000 and FY2016, the U.S. Congress appropriated more than $10 billion in assistance from U.S. State Department and Department of Defense (DOD) accounts to carry out Plan Colombia and its follow-on strategies. During this time, Colombia made notable progress combating drug trafficking and terrorist activities and reestablishing government control over much of its territory. Its economic and social policies have reduced the poverty rate and its security policies have lowered the homicide rate.

Counternarcotics policy has been the defining issue in U.S.-Colombian relations since the 1980s because of Colombia's preeminence as a source country for illicit drugs. Peru and Bolivia were the main global producers of cocaine in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, successful efforts there in reducing supply pushed cocaine production from those countries to Colombia, which soon surpassed both its Andean neighbors. The FARC and other armed groups in the country financed themselves primarily through narcotics trafficking, and that lucrative illicit trade provided the "gasoline"gasoline for the decades-long internal armed conflict at least since the 1990s.⁸³86 Colombia emerged to dominate the cocaine trade by the late 1990s. National concern about the crack cocaine epidemic and extensive drug use in the United States led to greater concern with Colombia as a source. As Colombia became the largest producer of coca leaf and the largest exporter of finished cocaine, heroin produced from Colombian-grown poppies was supplying a growing proportion of the U.S. market.⁸⁴87 Alarm over the volumes of heroin and cocaine being exported to the United States was a driving force behind U.S. support for Plan Colombia at its inception.

The evolution of Plan Colombia took place under changing leadership and changing conditions in both the United States and Colombia. Plan Colombia was followed by successor strategies such as the National Consolidation Plan, described below, and U.S.-Colombia policy has reached a new phase anticipating the possibility of a post-conflict Colombia.

Plan Colombia and Its Follow-On Strategies

Announced in 1999, Plan Colombia originally was a six-year strategy to end the country's decades-long armed conflict, eliminate drug trafficking, and promote development. The counternarcotics and security strategy was developed by the government of President Andrés Pastrana in consultation with U.S. officials.⁸⁹88 Colombia and its allies in the United States realized that for the nation to gain control of drug trafficking required a stronger security presence, the rebuilding of institutions, and extending state presence where it was weak or nonexistent.

Initially, the U.S. policy focus was on programs to reduce the production of illicit drugs. U.S. support to Plan Colombia consisted of training and equipping counternarcotics battalions in the Colombian Army and specialized units of the Colombian National Police, drug eradication programs, alternative development, and other supply reduction programs. The original plan announced by President Pastrana in 19991999 plan had a goal to reduce "the cultivation, processing, and distribution of narcotics by 50%" over the plan's six-year timeframe. The means to achieve this ambitious goal were a special focus on eradication and alternative development; strengthening, equipping, and professionalizing the Colombian Armed Forces and the police; strengthening the judiciary; and fighting corruption. Other objectives were to protect citizens from violence; to, promote human rights; to, bolster the economy;, and to improve governance. U.S. officials expressed their support for the program by emphasizing its counterdrug elements (including interdiction). The focus on counternarcotics was the basis for building bipartisan support to fund the program in U.S. Congress because some in CongressMembers were leery of involvement in fighting a counterinsurgency, which they likened to the "slippery slope" of the war in Vietnam.⁹⁰

President George W. Bush came to office in 2001 and oversaw some changes to Plan Colombia. The primary vehicle for providing U.S. support to Plan Colombia was the Andean Counterdrug Initiative, which was included in foreign operations appropriations. The Bush Administration requested new flexibility so that U.S.-provided assistance would back a "unified campaign against narcotics trafficking, terrorist activities, and other threats to [Colombia's] national security" due to the breakdown of peace talks between the FARC and the Pastrana government in February 2002.⁹¹90 Congress granted this request for a unified campaign to fight drug trafficking and terrorist organizations as Members of Congress came to realize how deeply intertwined the activities of Colombia's terrorist groups were with the illicit drug trade that funded them.⁹²91 However, Congress prohibited U.S. personnel from directly participating in combat missions. Congress placed a legislative cap on the number of U.S. military and civilian contractor personnel who can be stationed in Colombia, although the cap was adjusted to meet needs over time. The current limit (specified in the National Defense Authorization Act, as amended) caps total military personnel at 800 and civilian contractors at 600, although numbers deployed have been far below the 1,400-person cap in recent years.⁹³

President Uribe (2002-2010) embraced Plan Colombia with an aggressive strategy toward the insurgent forces that prioritized citizen security. His Democratic Security Policy, implemented first in a military campaign called Plan Patriota, relied on the military to push the FARC forces away from the major cities to remote rural areas and the borderlands. Like his predecessor, President Pastrana, Uribe continued to expand the Colombian military and police. He enhanced the intelligence capacity, professionalization, and coordination of the forces, in part with training provided by U.S. forces. His strategy resulted in expanded state control over national territory⁹⁴93 and a significant reduction in kidnappings, terrorist attacks, and homicides. In 2007, the Uribe Administrationadministration announced a shift to a "Policy of Consolidation of Democratic Security." The new doctrine was based on a "whole-of-government" approach to consolidate state presence in marginal areas that were historically neglected—vulnerable to drug crop cultivation, violence, and control by illegal armed groups. Called a strategic leap forward by then-Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, in 2009 the new strategy came to be called the National Consolidation Plan.

Colombian support for Plan Colombia and for the nation's security program grew under Uribe's leadership. President Uribe levied a "wealth tax" to fund Colombia's security efforts, taxing the wealthiest taxpayers to fund growing defense and security expenditures. Overall U.S. expenditures on Plan Colombia were only a modest portion of what Colombians spent on their own security. By one 2009 estimate, U.S. expenditures were not more than 10% of what Colombians invested in their total security costs.⁹⁵94 In 2000, Colombia devoted less than 2% of its GDP to military and police expenditures and in 2010 that investment had grown to more than 4% of GDP. One assessment notes "in the end there is no substitute for host country dedication and funding" to turn around a security crisis such as Colombia faced at the beginning of the millennium.⁹⁶95

In 2008, congressional support for Plan Colombia and its successor programs also shifted. Some Members of Congress believed that the balance of programming was too heavily weighted toward security. Prior to 2008, the emphasis had been on "hard side" security assistance (to the military and police) compared towith "soft side" traditional development and rule of law programs. Members debated if the roughly 75% / /25% mix should be realigned. Since FY2008, Congress has reduced the proportion of assistance for security-related programs and increased the proportion for economic and social aid. As Colombia's security situation improved and Colombia's economy recovered, the United States also began turning over to Colombians operational and financial responsibility for efforts formerly funded by the U.S. government. The Colombian government "nationalized" the training, equipping, and support for Colombian military programs, such as the counterdrug brigade, Colombian Army aviation, and the air bridge denial program. U.S. funding overall began to decline. The nationalization efforts were not intended to end U.S. assistance, but rather to gradually reduce it to pre-Plan Colombia levels, adjusted for inflation.⁹⁷

National Consolidation Plan and Beyond

The National Consolidation Plan (renamed the National Plan for Consolidation and Territorial Reconstruction [PNCRT, by its Spanish acronym]) is96

A key goal of Plan Colombia was to reduce the supply of illegal drugs produced and exported by Colombia but the goals became broader over time. Bipartisan support for the policy endured through three U.S. Administrations—President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, and President Barack Obama. Plan Colombia came to be viewed by some analysts as one of the most enduring and effective U.S. policy initiatives in the Western Hemisphere. Some have lauded the strategy as a model. In 2009, William Brownfield, then-U.S. Ambassador to Colombia, described Plan Colombia as "the most successful nation-building exercise that the United States has associated itself with perhaps in the last 25-30 years." Other observers, however, were critical of the policy as it unfolded. Many in the NGO and human rights community maintained the strategy, with its emphasis on militarization and security, was inadequate for solving Colombia's persistent, underlying problems of rural violence, poverty, neglect and institutional weakness. Nevertheless, it appears that improvements in security conditions have been accompanied by substantial economic growth and a reduction in poverty levels over time.

The United States has supported the Colombian government's consolidation strategy through an inter-agency program called the Colombia Strategic Development Initiative (CSDI). CSDI providesprovided U.S. assistance to "fill gaps" in Colombian government programming. At the U.S. Embassy in Colombia, CSDI brings together thecoordinated efforts of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the State Department's Narcotics Affairs Section, the U.S. Military Group, and the Department of Justice to assist Colombia in carrying out the consolidation plan through the expansion ofby expanding state presence and promotion ofpromoting economic opportunities in priority zones.⁹⁹ It combines97 It combined traditional counternarcotics assistance for eradication, interdiction, alternative development, and capacity building for the police, military, and justice sector institutions with other economic and social development initiatives.

As the peace negotiationsagreement between the FARC and the government move forwardmoved forward into implementation, the focus of U.S. assistance to Colombia is shifting again. It builds onhas shifted again. With a foundation of the work done to advance consolidation, but over the next few years the focus will be on assisting withU.S. assistance has begun to aid in post-conflict planning and assisting Colombia's transition to peace. The current U.S. assistance program recognizes the substantial ability of Colombia to maintain security and retains flexibility concerning changes if the peace talks are successfully concluded. Specific programs to support the peace process will emphasize the importance of strengtheningsupport Colombia's transition to peace by building up democratic institutions, protecting human rights, and racial and ethnic minorities, promoting reconciliation, and strengtheningand promoting economic opportunities. According to the U.S. State Department's FY2015 budget request, foreign assistance to Colombia will concentrate on the following: (1) drug crop eradication and interdiction; (2) citizen participation in the licit economy; (3) land restitution; (4) demobilization and reintegration of ex-combatants and child soldiers; (5) human rights promotion; (6) protection for, and services to, internally displaced persons, Afro-Colombians, indigenous populations, and other vulnerable citizens; (7) initiatives to address global climate change; and (8) humanitarian assistance and reparations for conflict victims and other vulnerable populations.¹⁰⁰

opportunity. USAID's country cooperation strategy for 2014-2018 anticipatesanticipated the Colombian government reaching a negotiated agreement with the FARC, but isremained flexible if an agreement is not signed. It can be scaled up to assist Colombia to meet the "extraordinary demands" associated with implementing an agreement, especially in the first 24 months after signature. USAID anticipates that, after five more years of assistance, the development program will wind down as Colombia will transitionwas not signed. It recognized early implementation efforts, especially in the first 24 months after signature, would be critical to demonstrate or model effective practices. In the next five years, it envisioned Colombia evolving from aid recipient to provider of technical assistance to neighbors in the region.¹⁰¹

Critics contend that even if a peace accord is signed, the Colombian government will have difficulty reclaiming ungoverned space or territory where the insurgents have been in control. The process of consolidating state authority and presence in the rural areas with weak institutions will continue to be a challenge; the challenge may increase following an agreement to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate the FARC and possibly other insurgent forces. In particular, critics of the "consolidation"98 Consolidating state authority and presence in the rural areas with weak institutions remains a significant challenge following the FARC's disarmament in the summer of 2017. Reintegration of the FARC and possibly other insurgent forces, such as the ELN, will be expensive and delicate. In particular, critics of the consolidation efforts of the Colombian government maintain that the Santos Administration has demonstrated a lack of commitment to the process and an inabilityadministration has often lacked the commitment to hand off targeted areas from the military to civilian-led development and achieve locally led democratic governance.¹⁰²99 Consolidation efforts have lacked political support, suffered from disorganization at the top levels of government, and failed to administer national budgets effectively and efficiently in more remote areas, among other challenges.

Funding

The U.S. Congress initially approved legislation in support of Plan Colombia in 2000, as part of the Military Construction Appropriations Act of 2001 (P.L. 106-246). Plan Colombia was never authorized by Congress, but it was funded annually through appropriations. From FY2000 through FY2016, U.S. funding for Plan Colombia and its follow-on strategies exceeded $10 billion in State Department and Defense Department programs. From FY2000 to FY2009, the United States provided foreign operations assistance to Colombia through the Andean Counterdrug Program (ACP) account, formerly known as the Andean Counterdrug Initiative (ACI), and other aid accounts. In FY2008, Congress continued to fund eradication and interdiction programs through the ACP account, but funded alternative development and institution building programs through the Economic Support Fund (ESF) account. In the FY2010 request, the Obama Administration shifted ACP funds into the International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) account.

With tightening foreign aid budgets and the nationalization of Plan Colombia-related programs, U.S. assistance has gradually declined since FY2008Since FY2008, U.S. assistance has gradually declined because of tighter foreign aid budgets and nationalized Plan Colombia-related programs. In FY2014, in line with other foreign assistance reductions, funds appropriated to Colombia from State Department accounts declined to slightly below $325 million. In FY2015, Congress appropriated $300 million for bilateral assistance to Colombia in foreign operations. The Obama Administration's request for Colombia in FY2016 was for roughly $285 million, according to the FY2016 Congressional Budget Justification. In the FY2016 Omnibus Appropriations bill (P.L. 114-113) assistance to Colombia from foreign aid accounts of the U.S. State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development was about $300 million, nearly identical to the estimate for FY2015. Projected assistance in FY2016 for the Department of Defense is almost $59 million.

Tables below show U.S. assistance provided in support of Plan Colombia and its follow-on strategies from FY2010 through FY2016. The source for Table 1 is the U.S. State Department and USAID foreign operations account data from the annual international affairs congressional budget justification documents. The information in Table 2 about programs funded by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) was provided to CRS by analysts from the Department of Defense in December 2015.

Counternarcotics Efforts

Human Rights Conditions on U.S. Assistance

U.S.-Colombia Economic Relations

Outlook

The annual level of assistance appropriated by Congress has gradually declined as U.S.-funded programs are nationalized and Colombians increasingly pay for their own security and development. In the event a peace accord is signed and ratified, Congress is likely to consider how the makeup and level of U.S. assistance might change to address Colombia's needs as it transitions to a post-conflict situation. Congress may consider increased support as Colombia faces the challenge of reclaiming governance in areas long held by the guerrillas following demobilization. As close allies, the United States has provided extensive training to Colombia's armed forces helping to professionalize a force that some argue has become one of the most highly trained and effective in the region. Congress might consider how the U.S. government can assist its partners in the Colombian military to reshape their core mission away from combating the insurgency.

Appendix. Selected Online Human Rights Reporting on Colombia

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