This chapter summarizes how key stakeholders in Colombia, including FARC, academics and local NGOs perceived the international community's peacebuilding efforts in Colombia. Key local actors within Colombia maintained a critical view of the Duque administration's commitment to peace, pointing to its lack of substantive engagement as well as the negative role of the US Trump administration in the peace process. They also pointed to the structural violence caused by an extractive model of (il)legal development that contradicted territorial autonomy, traditional subsistence models and rights to land. The following pages look at how FARC, the academic community and some important civil-society actors challenged key official narratives in the peace process around international cooperation, essentially maintaining a commitment with the process, and defending a supportive role of the international community in it.

FARC is examined as the main actor in peace negotiations with the Colombian government during the period of study. The online magazine Razón Pública's section ‘Conflict, Drugs and Peace’ was accessed, and 31 articles written by academic community and expert commentators referring directly to the role of international community in the peace process were selected for the review. RazonPublica.com was chosen as a not-for-profit and non-partisan digital magazine, founded in 2008, which publishes short articles by academics and public intellectuals aimed at nonacademic audiences.

Reports produced by some reputed NGOs and think tanks, individually or in coalition, in which the role of the international community regarding the peace process was discussed directly during the period of study were reviewed as well. Somos Defensores, CINEP/PPP, Indepaz, and Dejusticia had important roles in monitoring the progress of the peace process (Palou, 2019) and a high visibility in Colombian public debates. Somos Defensores2 is a non-governmental programme of protection for human-rights defenders, created in 1999 and currently made up of a coalition including Indigenous tribes (MINGA), Benposta Nacion de Muchachos (Benposta Natión of Children) and the Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ). CINEP/PPP3 is a Jesuit programme of research and popular education created in 1972 for the strengthening of civilian fundamental human rights, sustainable development, and peace. It is also part of the Technical Secretariat of the International Verification Component of the Peace Agreement, along with CERAC (Resource Centre for the Analysis of Conflicts).