Can the local business community bring peace to Colombia?

Colombia’s business community has reacted in different ways to continuing conflict and insecurity. Many businesses have been passive, but others have financed militias or profited by providing insurance and private security. Some Colombian businesses have launched local level peace-building initiatives: what motivates them and what lessons can be learned?

Ever since the 1980s, representatives of business associations have taken part in peace talks. When Andrés Pastrana became Colombian President in 1998 corporate enthusiasm for peace increased, with discussions on peace at business congresses, workshops and other public events. A poll of 500 executives in March 2000 showed 70 percent in favour of a negotiated solution with Colombia’s guerrilla groups.

Disillusion set in as peace talks got nowhere. By 2002, when the hardliner Álvaro Uribe became president, most businesses felt that a military solution was necessary. With all the talk of ‘fighting terrorism’, many business-led peace-building projects have run into problems. But the concept has not been completely abandoned. A paper from the Crisis States Research Centre at the London School of Economics examines case studies to discover the motivation for and impact of local business-led peace-building in Colombia.

In Cali, business leaders have tried to rebuild local state institutions in guerilla strongholds and empower local communities by promoting sugar and cocoa production. A palm oil extraction business in the Magdalena River Valley found that turning employees into entrepreneurs increased living standards and slightly improved security. The Bogotá Chamber of Commerce’s President’s Forum has helped raise the quality of public education and job training: members pledge at least four hours a month to promote peaceful conflict resolution techniques. In Medellín, a failed scheme to persuade firms to take on demobilised ex-gang members led to refocus on promoting corporate social responsibility, civic participation, peaceful coexistence and communication skills.

The author finds that local businesses initiate peace-building because of:

• the intensification of the costs of conflict, exacerbated by economic crisis
• the absence of the state at a local level
• specific contexts as well as specific company traits such as limited mobility, fixed assets and company size, which may mean that businesses are dependent on local stability
• the availability of public or external funding: businesses can be involved and take credit at minimal cost to themselves.

Business peacemakers are not only motivated by altruism but by the desire to find innovative and pragmatic solutions to the threats of conflict. The author suggests that groups seeking to encourage and sustain business involvement in peace-building should:

• be aware of threat levels so as to predict business commitment to peace-building: the reduction of threat makes it difficult to sustain peace-building initiatives
• address company-relevant issues such as worker training, community relations, strengthening of local distribution networks, and other forms of raising productivity and profitability
• link peace-building to philanthropic organisations, whose involvement will make it less likely that such initiatives will become mere publicity for businesses
• look for external resources, as its ongoing availability is an important incentive for durable business-led peace-building.

For the consumer of public services – the citizen – it may be irrelevant who is satisfying his or her needs. In fulfilling the role of the state at a local level, businesses involved in peace-building may actually help strengthen the state as a whole.

Source(s):
‘Business-led peace building in Colombia: fad or future of a country in crisis?’ by Angelika Rettberg, Crisis States Programme, London School of Economics and Political Science, September 2004 Full document.

Funded by: Department for International Development, UK

id21 Research Highlight: 15 June 2005

Further Information:
Angelika Rettberg
Departamento de Ciencia Política
Universidad de los Andes
Bogotá
Colombia

Contact the contributor: rettberg@uniandes.edu.co

Universidad de los Andes, Colombia

Crisis States Research Centre
London School of Economics
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
UK

Tel: +44 (0)20 7849 4631
Fax: +44 (0)20 7955 6844
Contact the contributor: csp@lse.ac.uk

Crisis States Programme, London School of Economics, UK

Other related links:
'Mercenaries and private security companies: two sides of the same coin?'

'Violence in Colombia and Guatemala: the voices of the urban poor'

'New challenges to global peace'

'Making business work for development: rethinking corporate social responsibility'

'Peacebuilding: more than a buzzword?'

'The road to peace? Tackling violence in Colombia'

Colombia Advocacy and Peacebuilding Resources from the Catholic Relief Service