How Far Can De la Espriella Really Go in Dismantling Total Peace and the FARC Peace Accord?
Colombian President Abelardo De la Espriella has begun turning one of his central campaign promises into government policy: dismantling the Total Peace strategy pursued by his predecessor, Gustavo Petro, restoring a security approach centered more heavily on state authority and law enforcement, and sharply restricting negotiation channels with armed and criminal organizations. Yet behind that political shift lies a decisive legal distinction. Ending negotiations opened under Petro and abandoning Total Peace as the government’s preferred strategy falls largely within presidential authority. Dismantling the 2016 Final Peace Agreement with the FARC is another matter. That accord generated constitutional reforms, laws, institutions, judicial decisions, rights for victims, and obligations for former combatants that a president cannot simply erase by executive order.
De la Espriella made that change of direction particularly clear on August 26, when he ordered Colombia to move forward with the extradition to the United States of five people whose transfers had previously been authorized but suspended because of their participation in peace processes under the Petro administration. The president said his government had reviewed their cases and found no verifiable contribution to peace. “Peace dialogues cannot become refuges from justice, nor can the word peace be used as a safe-conduct pass to maintain privileges while serious judicial requests remain pending,” he said, adding that anyone seeking a transition toward legality would have to demonstrate it through “concrete and verifiable actions”, he publicly said.
The decision formed part of a broader rejection of Petro’s approach. De la Espriella said the same day that “the so-called Total Peace failed resoundingly in its fundamental purpose” and promised instead a policy based on security, legality, and state authority. Those willing to abandon violence, he said, would find a state prepared to act “within the Constitution and the law,” while those persisting in organized crime would face “the full legitimate force of the State.”
The central question, then, is how much of Colombia’s peace framework a president can actually dismantle. De la Espriella has broad room to abandon negotiations, change security priorities, strengthen extradition cooperation, and redirect government agencies. His authority becomes much narrower when those decisions collide with laws passed by Congress, constitutional amendments, judicially protected institutions, and obligations derived from the 2016 Final Agreement.
Total Peace can be dismantled much more quickly
For an international audience, the first essential distinction is between Total Peace and the FARC peace accord. Total Peace was the umbrella strategy developed during Petro’s administration beginning in 2022. It sought simultaneous negotiations or dialogue mechanisms with actors including the ELN, FARC dissident factions, and criminal organizations. The Final Peace Agreement with the FARC, by contrast, was signed on November 24, 2016, after four years of negotiations and led to the disarmament of the country’s largest guerrilla organization at the time, its transition into legal politics, and the creation of a broad transitional justice and victims’ rights system.
That difference matters because the Colombian president has considerable constitutional and statutory authority over whether the executive enters or continues peace negotiations. Article 189 of the Constitution makes the president commander in chief of the Armed Forces and gives the executive responsibility for preserving public order. The presidency can therefore decide that a negotiating process no longer serves the national interest, withdraw government representatives, change the conditions for talks, or replace political dialogue with prosecution, capture, extradition, and military pressure.
De la Espriella’s first weeks in office show that he intends to use those powers assertively. Announcing new military leadership on August 20, he rejected what he described as peace obtained by negotiating with criminals while weakening the state and said the administration would enforce the Constitution and the law through the legitimate power of the security forces. Extradition has become one of the clearest symbols of that doctrine. By August 26, De la Espriella said he had signed more than 30 extraditions in only 16 days in office. “The message for criminals is clear, there will be no refuge, privileges or leniency,” he said. The five extraditions connected to former peace processes are significant because they show how the executive can reverse discretionary benefits linked to negotiations when it concludes that the required conditions have not been met.
But even Total Peace cannot be erased entirely with a presidential signature. Its legal architecture was reinforced by Law 2272 of 2022, which amended Colombia’s public-order legislation and established peace as a state policy while creating mechanisms for dialogue, negotiation, and submission to justice. A president can choose not to use many of those mechanisms, but the executive cannot repeal a law on its own. Eliminating or substantially rewriting those provisions requires Congress.
De la Espriella can therefore dismantle Total Peace operationally much faster than he can remove every legal trace of it. His government can stop opening negotiating tables, refuse to suspend extraditions, replace peace officials, redirect resources, and favor submission to justice over political negotiation. That gives him enough executive authority to make Petro’s model largely unrecognizable even before Congress changes its legal foundations.
The FARC Peace Accord has much stronger legal protection
The limits become far greater when De la Espriella moves from dismantling Petro’s Total Peace strategy to trying to undo the 2016 FARC agreement. Unlike a government program, the final agreement produced an extensive legal framework designed so that its survival would not depend entirely on the political preferences of each president. Some measures were adopted through ordinary legislation, others through statutory laws, and several key components entered Colombia’s constitutional order.
Article 22 of Colombia’s Constitution establishes that peace is both a right and a mandatory duty. The stronger safeguard came through Legislative Act 02 of 2017, which established that state institutions and authorities must comply in good faith with the Final Agreement and that implementing measures should remain coherent with its commitments and objectives. The Constitutional Court upheld that framework in its C-630 ruling of 2017, emphasizing that implementation became a state obligation extending beyond the executive branch.
Its duration is particularly important. Legislative Act 02 established that these constitutional obligations would remain in force through the end of the three full presidential terms following the signing of the agreement. Because the accord was signed in 2016, that safeguard encompasses the De la Espriella administration and extends through 2030.
That does not mean every provision of the Final Agreement automatically became part of Colombia’s Constitution. The Court stressed that many commitments required legislation or other legal measures to become enforceable. What the framework does require is that authorities make good-faith efforts to implement the accord and not simply behave as though the state’s commitments have disappeared. This is where De la Espriella faces his largest legal obstacles. His administration may oppose the design of transitional justice, the pace of rural reform, benefits granted to former combatants, or institutions created after 2016. It can propose reforms and seek congressional support. But the president cannot abolish by administrative decision institutions with constitutional foundations or erase rights created by law.
The Special Jurisdiction for Peace, or JEP, is the clearest example. Created as part of the transitional justice system, it investigates and adjudicates some of the gravest crimes committed during Colombia’s armed conflict. Its jurisdiction includes former FARC members, members of the security forces, and others who entered the system under legally established conditions. The JEP is not an agency subordinated to the presidency. Fundamentally restructuring or eliminating its constitutional pillars would require congressional action, a constitutional amendment process, and potentially Constitutional Court review.
Extradition also illustrates the difference between Total Peace and the 2016 settlement. The five transfers ordered in August involve people whose benefits were connected to later negotiations under Petro’s strategy. They should not be interpreted as evidence that the government can automatically extradite former FARC members protected by the transitional system for conduct covered by legal guarantees created under the peace accord. Different rules apply, and the executive must operate within them.
The real battle may be over implementation rather than repeal
The most consequential question may therefore not be whether De la Espriella can legally erase the FARC agreement—the answer is largely no—but how much he can weaken, redirect, or slow its implementation without formally repealing it. Governments control ministries and administrative agencies, propose national budgets, appoint officials, determine policy priorities, and introduce legislation. Those tools can significantly affect how quickly, or reluctantly, a complex peace agreement is implemented.
The Constitutional Court does not require every administration to use identical policies. Governments retain room to determine how they fulfill their responsibilities. But the Court has also said that good-faith implementation requires public institutions to make genuine efforts toward the agreement’s objectives and remain coherent with its principles. (Corte Constitucional) That creates a decisive boundary: De la Espriella can change the method, but policies designed to obstruct implementation altogether could face constitutional challenges.
The same tension could emerge through budgets and institutional restructuring. A government may prioritize military spending and place less emphasis on negotiations, but programs created to satisfy statutory or constitutional obligations cannot necessarily be neutralized simply by depriving them of resources. Key battles over the FARC accord may therefore unfold in Congress, constitutional litigation, and budget debates.
Security policy is clearly becoming the administration’s principal alternative to Petro’s negotiation-focused model. De la Espriella said on August 23 that more than 12 tons of cocaine had been seized and hundreds of drug-processing facilities destroyed during his first weeks in office. “Every kilo seized, every laboratory destroyed, every drug trafficker captured and every asset occupied means less money to finance terrorism, criminal gangs and the death of our young people,” he said.
Yet military pressure alone cannot resolve the structural conditions that have historically sustained armed violence in Colombia: weak state presence, illicit economies, land inequality, rural isolation, and limited access to public services. Troops can recover territory and disrupt criminal networks, but durable state control also requires roads, schools, healthcare, justice, land formalization, economic opportunities, protection for community leaders, and viable alternatives to coca cultivation. That creates a potential contradiction for a government seeking stronger territorial authority while criticizing the FARC accord. Several of the agreement’s central components—including rural reform, development programs in conflict-affected regions, crop substitution, and guarantees for communities—were designed precisely to address conditions that allow illegal armed organizations to regenerate. A tougher security strategy may therefore still depend, at least indirectly, on implementing parts of the agreement the administration wants to reshape.
De la Espriella nevertheless has substantial power to transform Colombia’s approach to active armed groups. He can close executive-controlled negotiation channels, impose stricter conditions for dialogue, favor submission to justice, strengthen extradition cooperation, reorganize security institutions, and direct the Armed Forces toward a more aggressive strategy.
His power over the 2016 FARC agreement is considerably smaller. To repeal laws, he needs Congress. To change constitutional pillars, he needs a constitutional amendment process. He cannot direct the JEP as though it were part of the executive branch, disregard judicial decisions, or simply eliminate obligations already embedded in Colombia’s legal system. Most importantly, the constitutional good-faith safeguard protecting implementation of the Final Agreement remains in effect throughout his presidential term.
The clearest distinction is therefore this: De la Espriella can dismantle much of Petro’s method of seeking peace, but dismantling the institutional legacy of the 2016 FARC agreement is far more difficult. His first weeks in office show that he has enough executive authority to radically change how Colombia deals with active armed organizations. But authority over the peace accord itself is distributed among the presidency, Congress, the courts, transitional justice institutions, and other state bodies.
The real test of De la Espriella’s agenda will not be whether he can declare the end of Total Peace as politically and operationally, he largely can. The harder question is whether his administration can transform the deeper peace architecture without colliding with the Constitution it has repeatedly promised to enforce. In Colombia, that distinction may ultimately determine where a change of government ends and the binding commitments of the state begin.