When Norms Collide: Business, Human Rights, and Economic Development in Colombia

Colombia faces the challenge of reconciling two competing norms—an accountability norm (specifically, for economic actors) and an economic development norm, so as to ensure the peace experiment sticks.

This fall will mark three years since the Colombian Peace Accord between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC guerrilla group was ceremoniously signed in Havana, Cuba. It was unique for a variety of reasons: it ended the world’s longest-running civil war, it was signed with the world’s oldest guerrilla group (the FARC), and—what few know—is that it is also the first peace process that explicitly includes economic actors in the truth and accountability mechanisms to help the country transition to peace.