BAIS 353 - Building Peace in Colombia

Unit(s): 2

A historic peace accord between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia FARC-EP and the Colombian government was reached in November 2016, but has not yet fulfilled its promise of ‘stable and lasting peace’ nor prevented a wave of violence and death in the country. This skills course is designed to analyze the history of this conflict, to interrogate hypotheses for its future, and to workshop methods to build community-level peace processes that can be applicable in other contexts. It employs a participatory, collaborative and experiential methodology where students learn by doing. The course is run and designed by the Instituto de Estudios Interculturales in Cali, Colombia - one of the important actors in promoting the peace process, and engaging communities to implement the peace process. The major assignment for this course is a proposal addressing a peace process-driven problem that originates from a community in the Valle del Cauca region of Colombia. Working in teams and in a participatory fashion, student learn community-level peace building techniques.

College of Arts and Sciences