Peacebuilding in Colombia: From the Lens of Community and Policy

In this book, Joan C. Lopez and Beth Fisher-Yoshida offer an alternative narrative of youth and peacebuilding, to the popular one about youth, violence, and peacemaking.

Using testimonies of current and past youth community leaders in Colombia, Lopez and Fisher-Yoshida tell a story of hope, creativity, and unrelenting resilience. They bring attention to the ways peaceful responses to violent conflicts are formed in communities and how these have the potential to inform processes of peacebuilding in areas with similar social and historical characteristics. Focused on action-oriented initiatives, the book concludes by proposing ways in which social change can continue to happen and how we might be able to foster it. Lopez and Fisher-Yoshida specifically explore ways in which we can continue to support efforts and create new initiatives for other youth. Some of these ideas include doing more capacity building, fostering more networking and knowledge transfers, identifying ways of increasing social entrepreneurship, and building more effective youth leaders.

Peacebuilding in Colombia fills an important gap in the literature on the characteristics of peacebuilding. It is a must read for academics, students and practitioners interested in the study and practice of peacebuilding in violent and post violent contexts.

Joan C. Lopez is Program Manager of the Youth, Peace, and Security Program at the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4), housed at Columbia University's Earth Institute at the Climate School. His work is situated on the border where processes led by community leaders meet with the production of spaces of peace in areas where violent conflicts are rampant. He focuses on understanding the ways community leaders organize to make sense of violent conflicts, and on how they construct practices and technologies to respond peacefully to the dynamics of such conflicts. In addition to his work at AC4, he teaches in the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Master's program at Columbia University, as well as in the cultural anthropology program at City College, CUNY.

Beth Fisher-Yoshida is Professor of Professional Practice and program director of the MS in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, at Columbia University, where she teaches classes in negotiation, conflict resolution, and conflict systems analysis. Dr. Fisher-Yoshida is also Co-Executive Director of the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity (AC4) and Director of the Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) program, both housed in the Earth Institute at Columbia University. In her role at YPS, she has been working to develop systemic approaches to building more effective communities through youth leadership in Medellín, Colombia. Dr. Fisher-Yoshida has authored many chapters, articles, books, reflecting her research and practice in negotiation and participatory action research (PAR).