Andes

Colombia’s new government has to improve security policy to tackle the guerrilla tactics of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) as well as their broadened participation in drug trafficking and newly forged alliances with other illegal armed groups.

Colombia’s efforts to resolve its half-century armed conflict and growing tensions with neighbours will be shaped by the decision on whether to change the constitution to enable President Álvaro Uribe to seek a second re-election in May 2010.

President Hugo Chávez’s victory in the 15 February 2009 referendum, permitting indefinite re-election of all elected officials, marked an acceleration of his “Bolivarian revolution” and “socialism of the 21st century”.

Over seven years, the government of President Álvaro Uribe has produced important security gains, but these have been accompanied by serious human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law (IHL).

Latin America’s oldest guerrilla organisation, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), is under severe stress.

The more than 155,000 victims of Colombia’s conflict registered to date with the attorney general’s Justice and Peace Unit (JPU) – mostly those who suffered from the paramilitaries – are mainly onlookers to, not actors in, a lagging transitional justice process.

President Hugo Chávez faces mounting difficulties at home and abroad. The defeat of constitutional reforms in a December 2007 referendum, a year after re-election, was his worst setback since winning the presidency in 1998.

President Evo Morales’s efforts to consolidate sweeping reforms on the basis of a controversial new constitution have steered Bolivia into a cul-de-sac.

Almost six years of intense security operations against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) by the administration of President Álvaro Uribe are beginning to produce tangible results.

A three-year peace process between the government of Alvaro Uribe and the left-wing National Liberation Army (ELN) is at a standstill, with concern rising that it is doomed by mutual recalcitrance.