How To End A War: Lessons from Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Juan Manuel Santos
- Jun 15
- 2 min read
I know a few of you here would have received the Fix the News newsletter last week but I had to share this interview with Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos. Wonderfully inspiring.
3 quotes that particularly made me Think Again:
When asked about what it took to build peace in his country:
Every peace process comes down to one question: where do you draw the line between peace and justice? How much justice is a society, a country, willing to sacrifice for peace? Wherever you draw it, you will always have people demanding more justice and people demanding more peace.
On the distinction between peace making and peace building.
Peacemaking (disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration) was incredibly fast (9months) but then came the process of peacebuilding, the real reconciliation, which may take generations. (…) And it has been difficult. That phase of peacebuilding is the most difficult, but you have to persevere. You have to keep going and show people why it matters. And this is what we are going through in Colombia: former combatants and former military men working together, their sons now working together on common projects, building that empathy between two factions that have been killing each other for so long. It’s difficult, but it’s possible.
On the importance of bridging the gaps across the political lines
I quote Mandela often: the most powerful weapon in the world is to sit down and talk. But not to impose your view. Sit down to learn from those who think differently, to understand why they think the way they do. That is how you begin to find common ground, to make the minimum agreements needed to move forward in peace. Colombia needs this. The whole world does right now.
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