ABSTRACT

This chapter addresses the destruction and creation of social links, analysing the role DDR programmes and ex-combatants’ NGOs may play in the process of social reintegration. For the reincorporation of the ex-combatant product of the demobilisation of guerrilla groups that took place during the 1990s in Colombia, the government programmes and the ex-combatants’ NGO’s interacted in the implementation of broader development policies. However, during Uribe’s DDR, the NGO formed by the paramilitary leaders was instead instrumentalised for the continuation of the hierarchy and power of drug-traffickers. Later on, and in the absence of strong organisations formed by the ex-combatants, the Colombian Agency for Reintegration introduced the concept of the psychosocial as the founding dimension around which all the other elements were organised. Currently, the Colombian Agency for Reincorporation and Normalisation maintains this approach but has also added work with NGOs of former FARC combatants. Reintegration programmes may go beyond the mere breaking-up of the military structure or illegal armed groups, this through the creation of a bureaucracy that contributes to the forming of links between the ex-combatants and the communities and between both and the state.