Fund for cooperation with the Colombian society, FOS, 2014-2020

During its 10 years of existance, the fund has supported a total of 93 colombian civil society organizations in their efforts to build the conditions for a stable and lasting peace in Colombia, respect for universally recognized human rights and the active and meningful participation of the victims of conflict and other vulnerable populations, in some of the most conflict-affected regions of the country. This period of time has been a particularly important period in the history of peacebuilding efforts in Colombia. Peace-negotiations between the national government and colombia's largest guerilla group, the FARC-EP, were initiated and eventually led to a historic peace agreement between these parties in 2016, and dialogues were well under way with the second largest group, the ELN, when they collapsed in 2019 as a result of a particularly vicious act of violence commited by the ELN. Colombian civil society has played an absolutely crucial part in all these efforts, not only by influencing, scrutinizing and supporting the implementation of the commitments made by the warring parties, but also by building momentum for dialogue and negotiation and by bringing decision makers to the negotiating-table, as well as by keeping the hope of a negotiated peace alive even when the formal negotiations suffered backlashes or failures, and by continuing laying the ground for future efforts to prosper where previous attempts did not.  The organizations and projects supported by the fund represent a wide variety of apparently very diverse and unconnected initiatives carried out in different regions all over the country. However, when considered together and in context, they are all important pieces of a larger picture of peacebuilding in Colombia. Naturally, some of the initiatives supported have been more successfull than others in terms of the level of achievement of the specific results and outcomes of the particular project, or its direct, decisive and visible contribution at crucial moments of the peace process. Nonetheless, all the projects supported where carefully assessed and selected based on their potential strategic importance for the peace process, as well as other criteria, and all of them concluded with a satisfactory level of achievement of the expected results - although admittedly not always with the intended impact or outcome, due to external risks and factors beyond the control of the implementing partner. More importantly though, through all the projects supported, the fund has provided support for initiatives that have channeled, facilitated and strenghtened the efforts of over 200 000 colombians all over the country, committed to the cause of a just and sustainable peace in Colombia, thereby making a very significant contribution to creating and sustaining the momentum for peace, as well as civil society engagement in the peace-process, with a clear emphasis on connecting local, regional and national efforts, the empowerment of vicitims and human rights defenders and on democratic participation of historically discriminated or marginalized groups.          

The outcome objectives of the Fund are the following:1. Civil society has contributed to enhance the peace process on local, regional and national level.2. Civil society has contributed to the empowerment of victims and human rights defenders.3. Civil society has contributed to strengthened democracy on local, regional and national level in relation to peace building.