THE announcement that Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s president, had won the 2016 Nobel peace prize came just as his effort to end the country’s long-standing conflict faced an unexpected test. In a referendum five days earlier, voters had rejected—by a margin of just 0.4 percentage points—the peace accord he had signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s strongest leftist guerrilla group. The surprise result caught both sides off guard, leaving them scrambling to salvage the agreement.
Mr Santos and the FARC quickly hammered out a revised deal. On November 24th the president and the guerrillas’ leader, Rodrigo “Timochenko” Londoño, signed it in a sombre ceremony at a small theatre in Bogotá. Congress ratified the new terms six days later. On December 6th the FARC’s nearly 6,000 troops began moving from their jungle camps to demobilisation zones, where they will disarm and prepare for life as civilians (although some of the designated areas were not yet equipped to receive them). So when Mr Santos takes the stage in Oslo to receive the peace prize on December 10th, he will be feted for officially...Continue reading
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