Violence transformation during the post conflict period in Cauca, Colombia

Cauca was one of the most affected departments37 of Colombia by the internal armed conflict with the now-defunct FARC38 guerrilla group and by its violent actions. It was also one of the first departments that achieved a rapid improvement in security indicators, even well before the bilateral ceasefire in August 2016. Such improvements, however, were quickly reversed in terms of conflict-related violence and negatively affected other security indicators: since the end of 2017 there has been a continuous acceleration in such indicators, with a rising impact on indigenous peoples, black communities, political activists, leaders of community organizations and human rights defenders. In this chapter we describe the evolution of post-conflict security in the department of Cauca. After presenting its recent evolution, we make risk-related observations arising from the growing insecurity threats and we advance some explanatory hypotheses for these violence dynamics.