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The global war on drugs has for decades been used as a pretext for invasion and hegemonic control, often escalating violence and conflict. This is demonstrated most recently by the USA’s invasion of Venezuela and capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife following allegations of drug trafficking. Conversely, yet much less known, recent years have also witnessed innovative peaceful solutions to deal with organized crime and drugs in the region of Latin America. In Colombia, criminalized economies have been dealt with, not only though repression and criminal justice, but also through peace negotiations and transitional justice. Norway, which has long prided itself with a global role in peace mediation, has played a crucial support role in these efforts.
The assumption of international policy, underpinning UN Sustainable Development Goal 16.4, is that we need to ‘combat all organized crime’ to ensure peace, security, and development. However, empirical research from contexts of armed conflict and high levels of violence around the world has demonstrated that this assumption is flawed: combating organized crime often increases violence and armed conflict instead of reducing it; while criminalized economies do not always lead to violence but can also have developmental, stabilizing and pacifying effects. These findings are crucial for designing crime control policies that result in peace instead of violence.
Consecutive Colombian peace processes dealt with organized crime as a key official negotiation issue. The most prominent was the 2012-2016 peace process with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP), where the FARC and the Colombian government discussed both the rebels’ and the state’s involvement in crime and criminalized economies. Initially, the ‘narco-terrorist’ label was applied to the FARC-EP, which had governed coca-producing territories, and this label almost led to a breakdown of the peace process. With crucial help from Norwegian mediators, this crisis was overcome, partially through inventing the crime category of delitos conexos – that is, crimes committed for the purpose of armed rebellion and not self-enrichment, for which amnesties can be granted. Drug crimes were integrated into the comprehensive transitional justice system created by the peace agreement, based on truth telling, restoration and forgiveness instead of retribution.
However, the global fight against drugs directly undermined the peace agreement. In 2017, the USA issued extradition orders for drug offences against leadership figures in the FARC’s peace delegation, despite non-extradition guarantees. This led to Ivan Marquez, Jesus Santrich, and others’ defection from the peace agreement and creation of the new armed group, Segunda Marquetalia. The armed conflict in Colombia did not end with the 2016 peace agreement, but was recycled into new forms and armed groups; violence again rising.
The new Total Peace processes (2022-ongoing) between the current Colombian government and more than nine different armed groups, some of which are denominated ‘organized crime groups’, have not managed to put an end to the armed conflict. Yet in December 2025, a partial peace agreement was concluded between the Colombian government and Colombia’s largest armed group, Ejercito Gaitanista de Colombia (EGC), denominated as an organized crime group. These peace talks were held in Doha, Qatar, with crucial facilitation from Norway as one of the guarantor countries.
To Conclude, this blog post has aimed to bring attention to innovative ways to deal with criminalized economies, in which crime control has the primary purpose of creating peace. Such alternative peace efforts stand in stark contrast to the global war on drugs, which has largely been repressive and violence-inducing, and which has undermined Colombian peace processes. Experiences from Colombia show us that the persistence of the global drug prohibition regime results in a growth of armed groups’ income and power which enables them to challenge the state’s sovereignty, contributing to the recycling of armed conflict – but also that innovative alternative ways to deal with drugs and crime can contribute to peace instead of violence.
About the author
Eva Magdalena Stambøl is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo. This blogpost is based on six months of fieldwork in Colombia as part of my research project ‘Criminalized Peace: Are transnational crime-fighting and peace processes compatible?’, funded by the Research Council of Norway.
