Undermining the role of the public

By exposing themselves to increased media attention, the conflicting parties could have showed readiness to counter internal criticism and risk image loss (Höglund and Svensson 2006:376). It could have been a possibility for both parties to show their serious commitment to the peace negotiation and to show their efforts in reaching an agreement. According to my informants, this chance was not properly taken advantage of, and it seemed to have been a missed opportunity to reach out to the public with a tangible, concrete evidence that the peace negotiations were going forward.

Image loss – the risk of parties losing their image and prestige – can also be a tool to measure to what degree the parties have been willing to reduce mistrust between them. The pilot project required the Colombian government to recognize the FARC as an equal partner in the negotiations. This act exposed the Colombian government for internal criticism, as well as giving the FARC an important recognition. However, the most important form of image cost in the case of Colombia is the cost related to media exposure, a cost neither of the party seemed willing to take. I argue that such an expose would have been the most crucial when it comes to gaining the Colombian people’s support to the agreement – a much needed support of the peace agreement is to be successful. In an analysis of the pilot project conducted by the International

Crisis Group (2015) the report says “With it (the demining agreement) the Havana negotiations have finally arrived in Colombia”.

President Santos said in a speech to the Colombian people addressing the topic of the peace process with the FARC, that “Because we have been speaking amid war, but the Colombian people increasingly have trouble understanding how in Havana the conversations speak of peace while in Colombia the attacks and the deaths are ongoing. The deaths, destruction and pain that this absurd confrontation leave behind every day need to be stopped now”

(Presidencia, 2015).

However, it does not seem to have been enough for the Colombian people to hear another promise of progress in Havana, while the Colombians themselves were still caught in the crossfire. The point Santos make about the Colombian people’s difficulties to understand the ongoing conversations in Havana, turned out to be true. A lot of criticism towards the agreement, which several of my informants also touch upon, is that people had a feeling that it was all talk and no action, just people wasting money in Havana. This might be exactly why a concrete, tangible and visible project such as the pilot project would have been a useful tool to communicate to the public. Instead, the President came with new promises about renewed agreements of steps forwards in the peace talks.

“the Colombian people need deeds of peace to recover their trust in the process. And that is what happened today in Havana: a decision has been made, which gives us a new ray of hope to reach a final agreement” (Presidencia, 2015).

There were established a communication protocol for the project, but as most of my informants have highlighted, this was poorly used and were a missed opportunity to communicate the pilot project to the general public. Several informants stressed how pictures and reports of how army soldiers and FARC soldiers were laughing, eating, playing football and living together would have sent an important signal to Colombians, especially to Colombians in the big cities of Bogotá, Medellin, Cali and Cartagena.

A research team from Georgia State University (GSU) used a two-wave experimental survey, conducted in 2014 and 2015, to test whether and how trust in Colombia’s negotiating elites affected support for the peace process. They also checked whether levels of support for lenient

treatment of FARC members could be affected by contextualizing ex-combatants’ experiences within narratives that capture the main negotiating points. Their key findings include that public support for the peace process was predicated on trust in all the negotiating elites, and that increased public trust in any party to the negotiations increased public support for the peace process. This implied that the two parties needed to build trust in all players in the peace talks to gain public buy-in to the peace process (Carlin, McCoy, Subotic 2016).

“As the negotiators become more trusted by the public, support for the peace process grows (…) Moving trust in the positive direction requires Colombians to find Santos and the FARC more trustworthy, an assessment that requires word to match deed and the fulfilment of good faith. Therefore we expect any actions that increase the public’s confidence that the actors will carry out their agreements will be most likely to contribute to greater trust, and actions that imply a lack of sincerity or willingness will hurt trust. Demonstrated progress on the recent agreement to jointly demine conflict areas could be one example of building trust; conversely, the breakdown of the ceasefire may be expected to erode trust”

(Carlin, McCoy, Subotic 2016:23).

However, this trust from the public seem to have been lacking in the case of Colombia. Image loss through media exposure indicates a possibility to increase trust to the general public by portraying the pilot project and the positive initiatives with mine clearance. It becomes clear when seeing the massive effect it has had on local community regarding trust in the peace process versus the effect on the general public where trust in the peace talks seems absent.

6.3 Conditions for trust

One of the principles for the negotiations, that the “incidents on the ground shall not interfere with the talks” (Nylander, Sandberg, Tvedt 2018) seems to have had the opposite function as well, where you could almost argue that the talks in Havana shall not interfere with the life on ground. The missing communication of the pilot project to the public, seem to have prevented the pilot project from being able to function as a trust building tool between the negotiating parties and the Colombian people. Therefore, I argue that comprehensive

inclusion of all parties involved is necessary condition for mine clearance to build trust to the general public. This lack of inclusion of the general public seem to be the reason why the local community who were exposed to direct contact with the pilot project, perceive it as a

successful trust building exercise, while the general public that neither saw, heard or experienced the pilot project, did not.

In addition to inclusion, another condition requires that mine clearance serve as a relevant topic that the parties see useful and that concrete, tangible results comes out from it. For the local community in Santa Helena and El Orejón, the humanitarian disarmament was a concrete action that would change their social, economic and cultural possibilities in the area. For Colombians in the cities where landmines are not an issue, it might be difficult to see the direct benefits of such a project, and therefore also not realizing the commitment of the parties.

However, if the general public had been included in a more comprehensive way, even if the mine clearance did not directly concern them, it could have increased the trust by showing the relevance for the country as a whole.

There is also a need for visible improvements for people in a conflict torn community. Trust must be re-established, safety guaranteed and institutions strengthened. Mine clearance can be crucial in such a normalization process and help people return to their homes, release farmland for cultivation, and give children safe passage to school (Brende, 2016). The condition for this is that mine clearance produce such concrete results that the parties can benefit from.

Conclusion

“Creating trust and understanding between former enemies is a supremely difficult challenge. It is, however, an essential one to address in the process of building a lasting peace”

Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus

This chapter will sum up the main findings of this study, and explain what implications this has for the current theoretical framework. I will consider the theory used in this analysis and how my findings can contribute to theory-developing on this subject. Further, I will give an update on the ongoing situation in Colombia and recent research about the situation in the country, before I suggest further research that can be added to understand the issue of trust in ongoing negotiations and peace work. Finally, some concluding remarks regarding the implications of this study.

As I stated in the beginning of this study, theoretical assumptions suggest a positive relationship between confidence building measures and the focus on trust in peace negotiations that can result in successful negotiation outcomes. The need for trust in negotiations seem to be widely accepted, but a lack of empirical research is missing to show this theory in practice.

In particular, there is a need to look at measures of how trust can be built, as well as understanding the necessary conditions required for this to happen.

With this in mind, the research question for this study has been as following: “How, and under what conditions, can mine clearance contribute to trust building in peace negotiations?”

To be able to answer this question, a confidence building exercise conducted through the Colombian peace talks in 2015 and 2016 has been mapped and analysed based on my own empirical data and existing literature, using different approaches to measure trust. It has further been investigated based on academic literature of trust, negotiations, and third party.