Ms Tatiana Suarez

PhD Topic

Life After Insurgency: The Reincorporation of Excombatants in Colombia after the 2016 Peace Agreement My research explores the collective reincorporation process of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) after the 2016 Peace Agreement which ended a five-decade armed conflict. I draw on the idea that, rather than 'assimilation' or 're-entry' into society, the guerrilla group had a different aim when negotiating the peace agreement, which involved reconverting the different forms of capital accumulated during the war to advance their revolutionary project. My thesis thus argues that more than achieving sustainable livelihoods and peaceful coexistence – traditionally, the international peacebuilding approach to excombatant reincorporation – the FARC post-conflict project was based on maintaining the group’s cohesion and influence in order to consolidate their position as a democratic force. Based on fieldwork in one reincorporation area, I seek to examine how former guerrilla combatants have imagined, experienced and made sense of their collective reincorporation and various post-insurgency adaptation processes in the immediate aftermath of conflict. The thesis also aims to investigate how the insurgents’ ideology and revolutionary project as well as the FARC’s relations vis-à-vis local communities and state institutions have shaped their reincorporation experience since 2016.

Research interests

Human rights, International Relations, Politics, Social Sciences