Abstract:

Much before the current peace agreement in Colombia was signed in November 2016, Universidad Nacional de Colombia had been supporting different attempts for peacemaking in the country. In this specific occasion, the university supported the organization of, and debriefing about, various regional dialogues in Colombia, which constituted an important input for the negotiations between the parties in La Havana, Cuba. By mid 2018, the first female rector of the university, the largest State university in the country, proposed to create a network, which could serve as a strategy to articulate and enhance its institutional capacity to contribute to peacebuilding with the communities in the territories where its nine campuses are located. Being the first university network of this sort, the Ethical, Culture, Creation, Science, Technology, and Innovation for Peace Network of Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Red Paz UNAL, in its acronym in Spanish) was brought about.

One of the specific objectives of Red Paz UNAL has been to generate local, regional, and national coordination mechanisms within the university, and between it and government institutions, guilds, social organizations, and the community in general. This paper gives an account of an on-going process aimed at supporting the reincorporation of a group of former guerrilla members, their families, and associated communities. This reincorporation process takes place in a territory near the border with Venezuela, which is currently affected by clashes between the National Liberation Army (ELN) with Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP) dissidents, and between these and the Colombian army forces. Though this process has been supported by the university through different teaching, research, and community-engagement initiatives since the signing of the peace agreement, new challenging circumstances have forced the university to explore new ways to meet the exacerbated needs of these ex-combatants and their communities.

Based on the analysis of five audio-visual and written documents dated from 2017 to 2021 with suggestions, reflections, perspectives, and concerns about the role of higher education provided by different social actors in the on-going peacebuilding process, it was possible to develop a list of 10 courses of action. In December 2021, in an event organized by the Verification Mechanism of the United Nations and the university to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the signing of the peace agreement, a group of former guerrilla members who were invited to be acknowledged by its leadership of a series of associative initiatives in the territory, was asked to discuss and prioritize, from the 10 courses of action identified, those that they considered the most urgent and important for them. Results regarding new university practices in the creation of partnerships to keep on supporting the reincorporation of former guerrilla members and related communities, as well as new challenges for higher education to have the expected social impact in such an endeavour are presented.

Keywords:

Higher education, peace education, peacebuilding, educational practices, praxis.