18 Facts About Plan Colombia

Plan Colombia was a United States foreign aid, military aid, and diplomatic initiative aimed at combating Colombian drug cartels and left-wing insurgent groups in Colombia.

The new program is called "Peace Plan Colombia" and seeks to provide Plan Colombia with aid after the implementation of the Peace Agreement in 2017 with the FARC.

Original version of Plan Colombia was officially unveiled by President Andres Pastrana in 1999.

In light of this, Pastrana considered that the Plan Colombia had been unfairly labeled as "militarist" by national and international critics that focused only on the US contribution.

Under President George W Bush, aid to Colombia earmarked for military aid vs humanitarian aid became more balanced.

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Plan Colombia has numerous supporters in the United States Congress.

Plan Colombia is based on a drug-focused analysis of the roots of the conflict and the human rights crisis which completely ignores the Colombian state's own historical and current responsibility.

The Plan proposes a principally military strategy to tackle illicit drug cultivation and trafficking through substantial military assistance to the Colombian armed forces and police.

Furthermore, it is apparent that Plan Colombia is not the result of a genuine process of consultation either with the national and international non-governmental organizations which are expected to implement the projects nor with the beneficiaries of the humanitarian, human rights or social development projects.

Supporters of the Plan Colombia assert that the number and scale of abuses directly attributable to the government's forces have been slowly but increasingly reduced.

Aerial eradication began as a part of Plan Colombia backed by the United States government as a strategy to eliminate drug crops in Colombia in the 1980s.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime presented research on coca cultivation in Plan Colombia which showed this crop's high degree of mobility and its increases of cultivation in ten provinces.

Plan Colombia rejected the proposal and the Clinton administration waived the provision in light of continued criticism.

Military aid packages that were both part of, and separate from, Plan Colombia have successfully driven the FARC out of most of their former territory and targeted the leaders of the insurgency, killing over two dozen of them.

The Center for International Policy stated that "even if we accept the U S government's argument that the high 2005 estimate owes to measurement in new areas, it is impossible to claim that Plan Colombia has brought a 50 percent reduction in coca-growing in six years.

Either Plan Colombia has returned to [the 2002] level of cultivation, or the 'reductions' reported in 2002 and 2003 were false due to poor measurement.

The UNODC press release stated that during 2005 the "area under coca cultivation in Plan Colombia rose by 6, 000 hectares to 86, 000 after four consecutive years of decline despite the continued efforts of the Government to eradicate coca crops".

Plan Colombia used to be the world capital of kidnappings, but the number of victims is down from 2, 882 in 2002 to 376 in 2008.