As a result of Colombia’s 2016 Peace Agreement with one of the longest-standing guerrilla groups in the world, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the government launched the Programs for Development with a Territorial Focus (PDETs) to address the country’s most conflict-affected and institutionally fragile regions. With a 15-year budget of 25 billion USD, these programs target 170 municipalities grouped into 16 subregions (map 1). They aim to reduce violence, alleviate humanitarian issues, solve structural matters that have made the conflict persist, and promote development. These objectives align with what is known internationally as the Humanitarian–Development–Peace (H–D–P) Triple Nexus. This article summarizes a recent study that evaluates to what extent the PDETs have advanced those goals, drawing on both quantitative indicators and people’s perceptions in the territories (Rettberg & Dupont 2025).
Map 1. PDET subregions and municipalities (Rettberg & Dupont 2025)
Internationally, the Triple Nexus emerged after the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals and the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit as a policy approach to address complex crises holistically. Colombia has had a rich and diverse range of research on the relationship between armed conflict, peacebuilding, institutional presence, development, humanitarian assistance, and security (Rettberg 2012; Betancur and Rettberg 2023). Since the 1980s, successive governments have launched initiatives that fused state building, security, and development, from the National Rehabilitation Plan from 1982 to 1986, Plan Colombia from 1998 to 2002, to the Democratic Security Consolidation Policy from 2006 to 2010 (González 2003; Romero 2021). The PDETs build on this history but emphasize participatory planning (Figure 1). Over 32,000 locally proposed initiatives were compiled into Action Plans for Regional Transformation (PATR), designed to ensure community ownership. While praised as an innovative model, questions remain about whether implementation has lived up to this promise.
Figure 1. Implementation Framework of the PDETs (Rettberg & Dupont 2025)
Investment, Security, and Perceptions
Findings from public investment records show that while funding for PDET municipalities steadily increased—peaking in 2021—it has largely prioritized infrastructure over community-identified needs such as education and economic reactivation. The top sectors include transportation (27%), mining and energy (13%), and rural development. Although private investment has also risen, with more businesses forming in PDET areas, the COVID-19 Pandemic and bureaucratic barriers have hindered long-term growth. More concerningly, the security situation remains fragile. Homicide rates in PDET regions have declined slightly but not as quickly as the national average, and forced displacement has increased. Social leader assassinations grew significantly, by over 40% in PDET areas from 2019 to 2021, and the regions continued to host 80% of the country’s illicit coca cultivation.
Despite ongoing challenges, citizen perceptions from the UNDP’s Escuchar a la Paz survey—conducted in 2019 and 2021 across 72 PDET municipalities—show a rise in overall satisfaction with the Peace Agreement, increasing from 36% in 2019 to 48% in 2021 (Weintraub et al. 2021). However, perceptions of security declined during that time, and positive evaluations of local development projects also fell. Our statistical analysis using logistic regression models shows that satisfaction is significantly associated with perceived improvements in security and the arrival of public goods, as well as lower levels of victimization risk. Notably, while investment initially (2019) did not correlate with satisfaction, by 2021, it had become a significant factor, suggesting that perceptions may catch up to reality as projects are implemented.
Subnational differences were also particularly significant. For instance, over 50% of residents in Macarena–Guaviare reported improved public goods, while only 12% did in the Middle Pacific and Alto Patía–Norte del Cauca regions. Regions with increased violence, like Catatumbo and the Pacific border, also saw declines in satisfaction. These disparities point to uneven state capacity, varying levels of administrative support, and corruption. Civil society organizations and the Office of the Inspector General of Colombia (Procuraduría General de la Nación), among others, have flagged irregularities in PDET contracting processes and the misuse of funds. Moreover, while the PDETs were designed to foster community ownership, implementation often failed to align with community-generated priorities. Legal limits on budget flexibility, political interference, and technical capacity gaps diluted participation. As others have noted, such gaps between planning and delivery can erode local trust (Mac Ginty & Richmond 2013; Ramírez 2021).
Implications
Our research confirms the interdependence of humanitarian relief, development, and peace in Colombia’s most vulnerable regions. The Triple Nexus is not just a theoretical model, it also plays out in practice. People who feel safer and see tangible improvements in their communities are more likely to support the peace process. Yet the promise of territorial peace remains unevenly fulfilled. The experience of the PDETs underscores the importance of adaptive localization (Koff & Masujima in press), ensuring not only participation but meaningful influence of communities over project design and delivery. Without such alignment, satisfaction will remain limited, and peace itself fragile.
A deeper understanding of subnational dynamics and political variation across PDET regions is also needed. More comparative research is needed to illuminate the barriers and opportunities for peacebuilding from below and the specificities of each case. As Colombia continues its long path toward reconciliation, the lessons of the PDETs, both their promise and their limits, offer critical insights for policymakers, practitioners, and citizens alike who remain committed to building peace through development, security, and well-being.
Keywords: Colombia, Programs for Development with a Territorial Focus, PDET, Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus, humanitarian, peace, Triple Nexus, development, peace, conflict, conflict resolution
Angelika Rettberg
Angelika Rettberg is a professor at the Political Science Department and the Dean of School of Social Sciences at Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá – Colombia). She is also an Associate Researcher at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and a Global Fellow at the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO). In 2018 she served as a negotiator for the Colombian government in the peace talks with the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN). Her research has focused on several aspects of the political economy of armed conflict and peacebuilding, such as the relationship between legal resources, armed conflict, and criminality in several Colombian regions, the dynamics of transitional justice, and business behavior in contexts of armed conflict and peacebuilding. She serves as co-editor-in-chief of World Development journal.
Federico Dupont Bernal
Federico Dupont Bernal is a PhD student in the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. His research has focused on the Colombian armed conflict, peacebuilding, economic anthropology, and sports gambling. He is also a Graduate Researcher at The Health, Ethnography, and Race through Sports Lab. Prior to his doctoral studies, he worked as a research assistant at Universidad de los Andes (Colombia) and as a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Swisspeace.
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