Colombia Makes Reintegration of ex-FARC Rebels into Society a Top Priority
Colombia Makes Reintegration of ex-FARC Rebels into Society a Top Priority
At an AS/COA forum, the Director of the Colombian Agency for Reintegration (ACR) Alejandro Eder presented an overview of the government’s priorities for Colombia's undergoing peace process.
Devising a way to reintegrate battle-hardened members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to join civil society is a top priority for the government, which is engaged in ongoing peace talks with the rebel group in Havana, according to Alejandro Eder, director of the Bogotá-based Colombian Agency for Reintegration (ACR).
The ACR is a government agency that is part of the Ministry of Defense.
Since 2002, the ACR has helped more than 57,000 men and women demobilize from guerilla organizations and integrate into civilian society, Eder said. About 35,000 of those former guerillas were from illegal right-wing paramilitary organizations, and 22,000 from the FARC and other leftist guerrilla groups. More than 1,000 people voluntarily left the FARC in 2013, and about 300 deserted its rival, the National Liberation Army (ELN), according to Eder.
“A lot of people in the media ask me if Colombia is ready for when the ex-combatants arrive,” Eder said. “The short answer to that is that they’ve already arrived. Many of them have already reintegrated. We have over a decade of experience doing this.”
Many ex-guerrillas were child soldiers: Eder
In recent years, the ACR has overseen the demobilization of more than 18,000 former FARC members and between 3,000 and 4,000 fighters from ELN. Integrating them into civil society is a challenging process, because many of the former combatants are not well-educated, and almost all of them had psychological trauma, Eder said.
“Of the 1,400 people who demobilized last year, 45 percent came out completely illiterate, 30 percent were functionally illiterate — meaning they could read and write their names, and that’s about it — and 90 percent had some sort of psychological trauma,” Eder said. “Of those, 20 percent required clinical psychiatric attention to attend to that trauma....”
