Beginning with the secret phase (2010-2012), the Colombian government and the FARC-EP had agreed that the conversations should go beyond a discussion about ending the armed conflict and should help solve the issues they understood as the underlying factors that had prolonged the armed conflict for over five decades. Among the subjects that were agreed to under this perspective, a rural reform was proposed to help heal the rifts between countryside and city—while also decreasing rural poverty—through a structural transformation of the countryside that would promote adequate land use and access and would drive the formalization and restitution of lands in qualifying cases. This was added to other measures that facilitate the provision of goods and services for the rural world, guarantee the well-being of communities in these environments, and contribute to food security at a national level.
Among the mechanisms agreed to within this rural reform, there are the Development Programs with a Territorial Focus (PDET, according to its Spanish initials), instruments for participatory land use planning that prioritize and focus on implementing the rural development agreements (and others) in 170 Colombian municipalities most affected by the armed conflict, poverty, weak institutionalism and illicit crops. In these municipalities, delegates from the community would participate in a process (with an ethnic and gender perspective) for identifying the initiatives that could accelerate state intervention and transform the conditions in said territories, according to a fifteen-year plan. Participation would involve a discussion of eight thematic central concepts, including issues of coexistence, truth, safety and reconciliation, and these discussions would happen at the smallest rural administrative division (i.e. veredas), at the municipal level and at the sub-regional level. Said discussions would inform the development and implementation of an Action Plan for Regional Transformation (PATR, according to its Spanish initials) for each of the 16 sub-regions where the 170 prioritized municipalities are located.
In this section, you can find some analyses and reflections on the path that the design and implementation of the PDET took, highlighting the concepts, innovative elements and challenges that are involved in developing this kind of component within a peace process and that face development in communities and territories affected by decades of armed conflict.
