Embrace Dialogue Academia Seminar 7: A New Cycle of War in Colombia?

Dialogues bridging academic research with policy implications for contemporary peacebuilding challenges in Colombia

This series of Embrace Dialogue Academia Seminars, co-hosted by Embrace Dialogue and Merton College brings together presentations of finished academic research with discussions to draw out the implications of this work for the current challenges of peacebuilding in Colombia.

In this seminar, Professor Francisco Gutiérrez presented his latest book, A New Cycle of War in Colombia?, with comments from Professor Jenny Pearce.

Presenter: Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín, Institute of Political Studies and International Relations, National University of Colombia

Discussant: Professor Jenny Pearce, Research Professor at the LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre

Convener: Dr Gwen Burnyeat, Junior Research Fellow in Anthropology at Merton College and member of Embrace Dialogue.

The signing of the Peace Agreement with the FARC marked a turning point in the inertia of Colombia’s counterinsurgent warfare, but its implementation is on the rocks. Acts of violence and associated phenomena are on the rise, and although its patterns are still unclear, the media is beginning to name this new political reality, ‘the new violence’. Are we in a period of transition? Are we seeing a third phase of the Colombian conflict? In this seminar, Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín presented his book, ¿Un nuevo ciclo de guerra en Colombia? (Debate, 2020), which suggests answers to these questions, emphasising the danger the country faces if the Peace Agreement remains unfulfilled, while maintaining hope in the possibility of preserving the gains made.