| dc.description.abstract | When the Government of Colombia formally ratified a peace accord in November 2016 with the left-wing guerrilla group FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia)it promised an end to more than 50 years of conflictwhich claimed the lives of 220,000 and displaced nearly 8 million people (Guardian, 2016). The hope for peace in Colombiawas further strengthened by promising early signs of a similar agreement forming as the National Liberation Army (ELN) called a 102 day truce in October 2017 (Al Jazeera, 2017a). If Colombian peace is to be successful in the rebuilding of a stable and cohesive society, it will take concerted political efforts towards peacebuilding and governance on both the domestic and international levels. In light of this significant peace brokerage in a protracted civil conflict, the aim of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of the nascent Colombian peace agreement alongside the Northern Irish peace process on its 20th year anniversary, in order to identifysome of the key challenges faced and methods of peacebuilding which have proven successful in increasing social capital and structural stability. Over the last twenty years, Northern Ireland has been the focus of many international peacebuilding strategies and conflict research programmes, and as such offers opportunity for detailed comparative analysis against the conflict transformation journey which has only just started in Colombia. Protracted conflicts have a lasting impact on civil society creating division along ethnic or political lines, and this translates into low levels of support for state governance structures. Indeed, there is significant evidence to suggest that without government social integration interventions these divisions can become trans-generational conflicts. By using World Bank governance indicators to measure the changes in civil society after peace, acknowledging that positive performance against governance indicators correlates with a reduced capacity for conflict (Fearon, 2010), this paper identifiesthe challenges faced by post-conflict societies and proposes several effective frameworks for long-term development and peacebuilding. Several common themes emerge, including: the necessity of international stewardship during peace negotiation to lend legitimacy to the process, the need for development models focusing on conflict transformation, and lastly the use of spatial planning to combat development duality and as a long-term strategy towards social cohesion. | en_US |
