Countries at the Crossroads staff recently visited Colombia, a nation featuring the Western Hemisphere’s longest-running and perhaps most complicated internal conflict. Security gains and economic growth in recent years have improved the situation of many Colombians and resulted in an astronomic approval rating for President Alvaro Uribe. Yet in terms of governance there remain serious unresolved issues in nearly all the spheres of governance analyzed in Countries at the Crossroads. While not all the Crossroads categories were investigated in-depth during this visit, meetings with a range of civil society actors permitted observations regarding a number of key aspects of governance. Note that because the term governance by definition emphasizes state behavior, the focus here is on government actions.
• Effective and Accountable Government: One important feature of current Colombian governance is the absolute dominance of Alvaro Uribe. With approval ratings of over 80 percent in many polls since the liberation of Ingrid Betancourt, President Uribe is considered an indispensable figure by many Colombians. Yet he is also highly polarizing, and among the minority of citizens who disapprove of his administration he often inspires intense opposition. The reasons for Uribe’s ascendant position merit their own blog post. But regardless of whether the president deserves such ratings, it has become increasingly difficult to argue that Colombia’s separation of powers has not been weakened during his presidency. The Congress has been delegitimized by an immense scandal involving ties to paramilitaries. Meanwhile, the judiciary, long viewed as a bastion of institutional strength, is involved in a vicious fight with the president over those investigations, many (but not all) of which involve Uribe’s legislative allies. On the regional and local level, Colombia has in many instances yet to root out the ties between elites and criminals, including leftist guerrillas and (far more commonly) right-wing paramilitaries or drug traffickers. In some cases, sub-national leaders utilize their positions to legitimize wealth derived from illicit activities, while in others, these local leaders act as caudillos within their districts. In urban areas, Colombia still has a more functional state than many of its neighbors, but the risk of institutional debilitation should be watched carefully.
• Civic Engagement and Civic Monitoring: Colombia’s NGO sector is often sophisticated and professional. While the level of engagement with the state has risen in the last few years, many NGOs perceive that the government does little to actually take their views into account. Direct attacks have fallen as the security situation has improved in many parts of the country, notably the larger cities. However, the president has effectively wielded his popularity as a cudgel against NGOs, at times equating dissent with sympathy for terrorism. This stigmatizes rights workers and puts them at risk of attack. Threats against NGOs, particularly human rights ones, are common, and in smaller cities physical attacks still occur.
• Press Freedom: Large national press outlets work in a relatively free environment, permitting the type of investigative journalism that has resulted in the discovery of numerous large-scale scandals. The government offers some protection to journalists who receive plausible threats. However, outside of the main cities journalism remains a very dangerous profession. Many provincial journalists practice self-censorship, especially regarding themes of corruption and other criminal behavior. Those who do print controversial stories are often threatened. Again, President Uribe and other government officials have at times exacerbated the situation (see p. 49) by singling out individual journalists for derisive treatment. Economics also remain difficult, with high media concentration and reliance on publicity from the state and a few other large advertisers. In the last two years several defamation cases have been filed that journalists warn could encourage further self-censorship.
• Protection from Abuses by State or Nonstate Actors: Colombia remains in a state of armed conflict. Until the demobilization of many of the nation’s paramilitary forces, these groups, along with the guerrillas, were responsible for many of the country’s worst abuses. Following the demobilization, observers have documented a rise in extrajudicial executions by the armed forces. While these violations are not on the same scale as the paramilitary and guerrilla destruction, they are of grave concern to human rights groups, who fear that government forces are now taking over some of the “dirty war” style activities that were previously a hallmark of paramilitary groups. The government argues that the abuses reflect the difficulty of identifying guerrillas and are in any event the result of mistakes by individual soldiers and not a systematic practice. Yet incentives offered by the government to leaders of army units that demonstrate aggressive action against the guerrillas may serve to encourage such abuses.
As far as nonstate actors are concerned, this is clearly the area of greatest success for the Uribe administration. The FARC rebels, in particular, have been largely evicted from the larger cities, some major drug cartels have also been weakened, and many of the most feared paramilitaries have been demobilized. Murder rates in many cities have plummeted, as have kidnappings. The symbolic and economic importance for Colombians of being able to drive between cities without fear of guerrilla attack is difficult to overstate. However, in many rural areas, attacks by all of the traditional armed actors remain routine. Displacement continues to be a massive problem as well. Moreover, victims argue that the government, enveloped by hubris, ignores their needs and demands because attending to them would require acknowledging the continuation of conflict in the countryside and disrupt the carefully honed image of Colombia as an international success story. Despite some notable advances, particularly in terms of systematizing efforts to assist victims, the government has far to go to win the confidence of Colombia’s millions of affected citizens.
• Minority Rights: Afro-Colombians and the indigenous have borne a disproportionate burden throughout Colombia’s conflict. For many indigenous groups, one of the biggest problems is displacement. Unlike in Peru or Bolivia, many of Colombia’s indigenous peoples are quite small. When they are displaced to cities, their social networks are broken and their culture is put at risk of dissolution. In addition, indigenous conceptions of land use often clash with commercial interests. Of increasing relevance is the African Oil Palm industry, which is growing rapidly in Colombia. Indigenous groups assert that the state has at best done little to prevent displacement aimed at furthering the expansion of palm plantations and at worst has at times been actively complicit with violators.
Photo Credit: Center for American Progress
