prompt_front: You are given two reports by the government agency.



Question: Write a one-page summary of the report 1.



Report 2: Justice Management Division (JMD) JMD provides the Federal Bureau of Prisons senior management with guidance as it relates to Department of Justice (DOJ) policy for all matters pertaining to organization, management, and administration, including the use of human capital flexibilities such as retention incentives  BOP is responsible for incarcerating all federal offenders sentenced to prison  To carry out its mission, BOP, under the oversight of DOJ’s JMD, manages the human resource operations of its institutions, including the use of retention incentives  BOP administers, monitors, and oversees retention incentives through its Central Office, regional offices, and institutions  Central Office  The Central Office serves as BOP’s headquarters and provides oversight of BOP operations and program areas  Within the Central Office is BOP’s Human Resource Management Division (HRMD) which is responsible for developing, implementing and administering human resource policies and programs, including the use of retention incentives that meet OPM and DOJ requirements  In addition, the Central Office’s Program Review Division (PRD) is responsible for assessing BOP programs, including human resources, to ensure that they are managed and operated effectively  Regional offices  BOP has six regional offices that cover the Mid- Atlantic, North Central, Northeast, South Central, Southeast, and Western regions of the United States  These offices, each led by a regional director, oversee the operations of the 122 federal institutions within their respective geographic regions of the country  According to BOP officials, regional office staff also provide local level oversight of institutions’ human capital programs, such as retention incentives, among other things  Institutions  BOP institutions are managed by a warden and other officials, including an executive assistant and associate warden who generally provide overall direction and, in part, administer the institution’s human capital policies, including policies on retention incentives  Correctional services staff represent the largest segment of each institution’s workforce and are responsible for the correctional treatment, custody, and supervision of inmates  Non-correctional services staff include, among others, those employees assigned to non-correctional services management, facility operations, and the health services unit  Workers in health services and psychology services are responsible for providing inmates with medical, dental, and mental health services and include, for example, dentists, pharmacists, physicians, nurses, psychologists, and drug treatment specialists  The Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990 first authorized OPM to allow federal agencies to give incentives, including retention incentives, to employees  The Federal Workforce Flexibility Act of 2004 provided federal agencies increased flexibilities regarding these incentives  For example, individual retention incentives that were capped at 25 percent of an employee’s basic pay rate could be increased up to 50 percent in cases of critical agency need with OPM’s approval  Generally, under OPM regulations, an agency is authorized to pay a retention incentive to employees  This happens when the agency determines that the unusually high or unique qualifications of the employee or a special need of the agency for the employee’s services makes it essential to retain the employee and that the employee would be likely to leave federal service in the absence of an incentive  In addition, OPM requires agencies to develop plans for using retention incentives outlining, in part, the required documentation for justifying the retention incentive and any criteria for determining the amount of incentive and the length of the service period  Generally, agencies must require that employees sign a written service agreement that outlines the terms of the service such as the employee’s agreement to remain a certain length of time with the agency  Additionally, according to OPM regulations, to qualify for a retention incentive, each employee must have a performance rating of at least “fully successful” or an agency’s equivalent performance rating  BOP funds the majority of its retention incentives through its Salaries and Expenses appropriation account which represented almost 93 percent of BOP’s budget in FY 2016  According to BOP officials, BOP’s Central Office allocates funding from the Salaries and Expenses account to the regional offices  These regional offices then determine how to allocate their budget among various salary and expense activities, including retention incentives  HRMD delegates retention incentive determinations to each institution  In accordance with OPM requirements and BOP’s October 2016 Program Statement on Compensation, the wardens make retention incentive requests based on documented evidence that the employee possesses unusually high or unique qualifications or meets a special need of the agency and has a performance rating of at least “successful or its equivalent ” These incentives are calculated as a percentage of the employee’s basic pay and are disbursed in installments to the employee each pay period  In addition to retention incentives, BOP has authority to provide other compensation-based human capital flexibilities to employees, in certain circumstances  The following summarizes some of the compensation- based human capital flexibilities that BOP uses in addition to retention incentives, to retain and recruit staff: Recruitment and relocation incentives  BOP pays recruitment incentives to new hires and relocation incentives to current employees who elect to move to a different geographic area, when a position is likely to be difficult to fill in the absence of an incentive  Student loan repayments  Using this authority, BOP may repay federally-insured student loans to attract job candidates or retain current employees  Special salary rates  With OPM approval, BOP may establish higher rates of pay for an occupation or group of occupations nationwide or in a local area when it finds the government’s recruitment or retention efforts are, or would likely become, significantly handicapped without those higher rates  Physicians and dental comparability allowances  Comparability allowances may be paid to certain eligible physicians or dental professionals who enter into service agreements  These allowances are paid only to categories of physicians and dentists for which the agency is experiencing recruitment and retention problems and are fixed at the minimum amounts necessary to deal with such problems  BOP retention incentive expenditures generally increased from $10 7 million in fiscal year 2012 to $14 0 million in fiscal year 2016  Additionally, as illustrated in table 1, the number of employees who received retention incentives increased each year from 2,024 employees in fiscal year 2012 to 2,460 employees in fiscal year 2016  In general, BOP employees who received retention incentives received the incentive for more than one year  For example, from fiscal year 2012 through fiscal year 2016, a total of 3,382 BOP employees received retention incentive payments  Of those, 82 percent (2,766 of 3,382) received retention incentive payments for at least 2 years and 39 percent received retention incentives all 5 years, as shown in figure 1  From fiscal years 2012 through 2016, BOP spent more than 97 percent of its total retention incentive expenditures on employees at four California institutions and for medical professionals nationwide  BOP’s total retention incentive expenditures for the four California institutions and medical professionals nationwide in fiscal year 2016 are provided in figure 2  Four California Institutions  The California institutions—United States Penitentiary (USP) Atwater, Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Herlong, FCI Mendota, and Federal Correctional Complex (FCC) Victorville—constituted the largest portion of BOP’s total retention incentive expenditures, and the level of their expenditures remained relatively steady from fiscal year 2012 through 2016  BOP provides group retention incentives for staff at the General Schedule (GS) grades level 12 and below and those in the Federal Wage System at three institutions—USP Atwater, FCI Herlong, and FCC Victorville  BOP also provides individual retention incentives to its employees at GS grades level 12 and below and in the Federal Wage System at FCI Mendota  As shown in figure 3, our analysis of BOP data found that from fiscal years 2012 through 2016, these four California institutions had the largest percentage of retention incentive expenditures across institutions as well as the largest percentage of employees who received retention incentives  Additionally, the four California institutions’ retention incentive expenditures remained relatively steady—around $8 1 to $8 2 million during the 5-year period—even though the overall number of employees who received the incentives generally increased  BOP officials told us that these California institutions’ retention incentive expenditures remained relatively steady in spite of an overall increase in the number of employees receiving incentives, in part, because in fiscal year 2013 BOP reduced the retention incentive rate—the percentage of an employee’s basic pay that determines the employee’s retention incentive— by 3 percent at the four California institutions  BOP officials reported using retention incentives primarily at these four institutions to supplement correctional officers’ salaries and compensate for the gap between BOP’s and other institutions’ salaries  Specifically, officials told us that these four California institutions were consistently understaffed as a result of their lower salaries in comparison to salaries offered at California state and local prisons and at other BOP institutions in California metropolitan areas  The Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average salary for correctional officers in California in 2016 was $70,020  For the same year, the annual average salary for BOP correctional officers at these four institutions was $50,859  To bring these four California institutions’ salaries in line with those offered by state, local, and other BOP institutions in California metropolitan areas, BOP officials told us that they first use recruitment incentives to attract and hire staff and then provide retention incentives to employees with a performance rating of at least “successful ” Medical Professionals  From fiscal years 2012 through 2016, BOP retention incentive expenditures for medical professionals increased by an average of approximately 21 percent per year  Our analysis showed that most recently—for fiscal years 2015 and 2016—BOP retention incentive expenditures for medical professionals accounted for the largest portion of BOP’s total retention incentive expenditures across the various occupation groups and was primarily responsible for the overall increase in BOP’s total retention incentive expenditures from fiscal year 2012 through fiscal year 2016  For example, in fiscal year 2016, BOP spent approximately 42 percent of total retention incentives expenditures for medical professionals ($5 8 million), 27 percent on correctional officers ($3 8 million), and the remaining 31 percent on employees in other occupations  In total, BOP retention incentive expenditures for medical professionals increased from approximately $2 7 million in fiscal year 2012 to $5 8 million in fiscal year 2016, as shown in figure 4  The increase accounted for 92 percent of BOP’s total increase in retention incentive expenditures during the five-year period  In comparison, BOP’s retention incentive expenditures for correctional officers and all other occupations remained relatively steady from fiscal year 2012 through fiscal year 2016, increasing by an average of approximately 1 percent per year  According to our analysis, the increase in retention incentive expenditures for medical professionals during the five years is partially explained by the increase in the number of institutions providing retention incentives to medical professionals  Specifically, from fiscal years 2012 through 2016, the number of institutions providing retention incentives to medical professionals increased from 53 institutions with 341 employees in medical occupations receiving retention incentives to 84 institutions providing retention incentives to a total of 646 employees in medical occupations  According to BOP officials, BOP primarily uses retention incentives for medical professionals in an effort to retain these employees by supplementing BOP salaries which are generally lower than salaries offered to medical professionals in the private sector  Officials told us that BOP has designated medical professional positions as hard-to-fill and, therefore, BOP retaining these professionals in a correctional setting requires the use of a variety of incentives, including retention incentives, in order to increase pay  BOP has a number of internal controls in place to ensure that retention incentive applications meet BOP and other requirements  BOP officials told us that these controls are part of a multilayered application and review process that begins at the institution and culminates at BOP’s Central Office  Our review of a random sample of 40 application packet case files for retention incentives awarded from fiscal year 2014 through fiscal year 2016 found that they all generally incorporated the internal controls described by officials  The key controls in this process include: Application review at the institution and regional levels  According to BOP officials, the retention incentive application process begins with an institution’s human resources office, whose staff complete a retention incentive application on behalf of an employee  The institution’s human resources office verifies that the information in the application justifies a retention incentive and that funds are available to pay the incentive  Although it is not required, BOP officials said that they use a retention incentive application checklist to help institutions ensure that retention incentive applications are complete  The institution’s human resources office then submits the completed application packet, which includes supporting documentation, to the warden for review  Next, the application packet is forwarded to the respective BOP regional director who also reviews it for accuracy and completeness  The regional director then adds an approval statement and forwards the packet to the Central Office for final review and approval  Of the 40 randomly selected application packet case files that we reviewed, 36 included a retention incentive checklist used by the institutions and all contained information to justify the retention incentive as well as a statement of the regional director’s approval  Central Office’s final application approval  BOP policy requires that all retention incentive applications undergo two levels of review in BOP’s Central Office: first by the Human Resource Management Division’s (HRMD) Staffing and Employee Relations Section (SERS) and next by HRMD’s Personnel Director, for final review and approval  According to BOP officials, during the review process there is ongoing communication between the various entities to ensure that applications are complete and accurate; for example, if SERS finds an error in the application or requests additional information, SERS returns the application to the regional or institutional level for correction and re-review  All of the 40 BOP application packet case files that we reviewed included approvals by HRMD’s Personnel Director or an authorized official, as required by BOP policy  Annual review and re-certification to continue retention incentives  According to BOP policy, on an annual basis, institutions’ human resources offices are required to review employees’ retention incentives to determine whether the incentive is still warranted  Payment of a retention incentive may be recertified and continued as long as the conditions giving rise to the original determination to pay the incentive still exist and funds are available  For each retention incentive, an institution’s human resources office must determine whether to continue, adjust, or terminate the incentive within one year of the initial or most recent approval  If the human resources office decides to continue the retention incentive, the institution’s warden must again submit a retention incentive application  Applications to continue the retention incentive proceed through the same review and approval process as initial applications  Of the 40 application files that we reviewed, 29 were continuations and 8 were initial requests for a retention incentive  According to BOP officials, after the initial approval of a retention incentive, an institution’s human resources office has primary responsibility for the monitoring of retention incentive payments  According to officials, institutions use a variety of internal controls to monitor the expiration, continuation, or termination of retention incentives, for example: Monitoring expiration dates  BOP officials stated that institutions’ human resources offices monitor retention incentives in order to identify incentives that are approaching their expiration date and need to be terminated or renewed  For example, according to BOP officials from USP Atwater, FCC Butner and FCI Phoenix, staff from their institutions’ human resources offices may generate a retention incentive activity report and cross reference this report with their locally generated tracking sheets  This process helps identify retention incentives approaching their expiration dates so that the human resources offices can submit a request for continuation before the incentive expires  Using automated reminders to prompt file review  BOP officials stated that institutions use automated reminders to alert human resources staff to check the records of retention incentive recipients for human resources-related events such as promotions or relocations that could affect the continuation of a retention incentive  Following a checklist of steps for relocation processes  BOP officials told us that in April 2016 they instituted a checklist that outlines steps that an institution’s human resources staff must take when employees relocate to a different institution  Based on our review of this checklist, one step on the sheet prompts human resources staff to review the employee’s retention incentive  According to BOP policy, when an employee receiving a retention incentive transfers to another location, the human resources office where the employee was receiving the retention incentive is responsible for submitting a request to terminate the incentive  The termination must be effective the last day of the pay period that the employee occupies the position  Submitting forgiveness waivers  BOP officials told us that institutions submit forgiveness waivers if a request to continue a retention incentive is not submitted and approved prior to the retention incentive expiring  BOP officials said that a forgiveness waiver is considered an acknowledgement of an administrative error and is a late submission of a retention incentive renewal that was still warranted  The waiver is not a request to forgive an overpayment since the employee was still considered to be eligible for the retention incentive  Of the 40 retention incentive applications that we reviewed, 5 applications included forgiveness waivers to excuse the tardiness of the filing and request continuations of the retention incentive  According to BOP officials, BOP conducts periodic audits and reviews of its human capital activities and related internal controls, to ensure that retention incentives are being used appropriately  The following offices conduct various audits and reviews involving BOP’s retention incentives: BOP’s Program Review Division (PRD) audits regional and institutional human resources functions  PRD audits BOP’s regional and institutional human resources offices to ensure that they are in compliance with BOP policies and procedures  According to BOP officials, as part of the audit process, PRD audits retention incentives to ensure that they have the proper approvals and are justified  PRD audits each institution’s human resources office at least every three years  During these audits, PRD generates retention incentive activity reports (the same reports that institutions run when monitoring for expiration dates), to check the accuracy of retention incentive programs under review  Following each audit, PRD issues a final report with findings to the institution and to the staff operating the program area under audit
Report 2:  NASA’s telescope and other science projects will always have inherent technical, design, and integration risks because they are complex, specialized, and often push the state of the art in space technology  But too often, our reports find that management and oversight problems—which can include poor planning, optimistic cost estimating, funding gaps, lax oversight, and poor contractor performance, among other issues—are the real drivers behind cost and schedule growth  To its credit, NASA has taken significant steps, partly in response to our past recommendations, to reduce acquisition risk from both a technical and management standpoint, including actions to enhance cost and schedule estimating, provide adequate levels of reserves to projects, establish better processes and metrics to monitor projects, and expand the use of earned value management to better monitor contractor performance  For example, in November 2012, we found that NASA employee skill sets available to analyze and implement earned value management vary widely from center to center, and we recommended that NASA conduct an earned value management skills gap analysis to identify areas requiring augmented capability across the agency, and, based on the results of the assessment, develop a workforce training plan to address any deficiencies  NASA concurred with this recommendation and developed an earned value management training plan in 2014 based on the results of an earned value management skills gap analysis that was conducted in 2013  Moreover, in recent years, we have found that many of the projects within the agency’s major project portfolio have improved their cost and schedule performance  Nevertheless, the extent to which NASA has adopted some of the following lessons learned within its portfolio of major projects is mixed, and NASA has an opportunity to strengthen its program management of major acquisitions, including its space telescopes, by doing so  Manage Cost and Schedule Performance for Large Projects to Limit Implications for Entire Portfolio  In 2013, following JWST’s cost increases and schedule growth, we found that though cost and schedule growth can occur on any project, increases associated with NASA’s most costly and complex missions can have cascading effects on the rest of the portfolio  For example, we found that the JWST cost growth would have reverberating effects on the portfolio for years to come and required the agency to identify $1 4 billion in additional resources over fiscal years 2012 through 2017, according to Science Mission Directorate officials  NASA identified approximately half of this required funding from the four science divisions within the Science Mission Directorate account  The majority of the cuts were related to future high priority missions, missions in the operations and sustainment phase, and research and analysis  In essence, NASA had to mortgage future high priority missions and research to address JWST’s additional resource needs  Similarly, the National Academy of Sciences has concluded in the past that it is important for NASA to have a clearly articulated and consistently applied method for prioritizing why and how its scarce fiscal resources are apportioned with respect to the science program in general and on a more granular level among component scientific disciplines  The academy noted that failure to do so could result in a loss of capacity, capability, and human resources in a number of scientific disciplines and technological areas that may take a generation or more to reconstitute once eliminated  NASA’s establishment of the WFIRST Independent External Technical/Management/Cost Review that I previously discussed is a step in the right direction to help ensure the Astrophysics Division incorporates this lesson learned  Establish Adequate Cost and Schedule Reserves to Address Risks  Twice in the history of the JWST program, independent reviewers found that the program’s planned cost reserves were inadequate  First, in April 2006, an Independent Review Team confirmed that the project’s technical content was complete and sound, but expressed concern over the project’s reserve funding, reporting that it was too low and phased in too late in the development lifecycle  The review team reported that for a project as complex as JWST, 25 to 30 percent total reserve funding was appropriate  The team cautioned that low reserve funding compromised the project’s ability to resolve issues, address risk areas, and accommodate unknown problems  As I previously mentioned, following additional cost increases and schedule threats, NASA commissioned the Independent Comprehensive Review Panel  In 2010, the panel again concluded JWST was executing well from a technical standpoint, but that the baseline cost estimate did not reflect the most probable cost with adequate reserves in each year of project execution, resulting in an unexecutable project  NASA heeded these lessons when it established a new baseline for JWST in 2011  For example, the revised schedule included more reserves than required by the procedural requirements issued by the NASA center responsible for managing JWST  We have found, however, that NASA has not applied this lesson learned to all of its large projects— most notably with its human spaceflight projects, including the Space Launch System, Orion Crew Capsule, and associated ground systems— and similar outcomes to the JWST project have started to emerge with these projects  We previously reported that all three of these programs were operating with limited cost reserves, which limited each program’s ability to address risks and unforeseen technical challenges  For example, we found in July 2016 that the Orion program planned to maintain very low levels of annual cost reserves until 2018  The lack of available cost reserves in the near term led to the program deferring work to address technical issues to stay within budget, and put the program’s future cost reserves at risk of being overwhelmed by deferred work  In April 2017, we also found that all three programs faced development challenges in completing work, and each had little to no schedule reserve remaining to the launch date—meaning they would have to complete all remaining work with minimal delay during the most challenging stage of development  We found that it was unlikely that the programs would achieve the planned launch readiness date and recommended that NASA reassess the date  NASA agreed with this recommendation and stated that it would establish a new launch readiness date  In November 2017, NASA announced that a review of the possible manufacturing and production schedule risks indicated a launch date of June 2020—a delay of 19 months—but the agency will manage to a December 2019 launch date because, according to NASA, they have put in mitigation strategies for those risks  We will follow-up on those mitigation strategies as part of future work on the human space exploration programs  Regularly and Consistently Update Project JCLs to Provide Realistic Estimates to Decision Makers  In 2009, NASA began requiring that programs and projects with estimated life-cycle costs greater than $250 million develop a JCL prior to project confirmation  This was a positive step for NASA to help ensure that cost and schedule estimates are realistic and projects are thoroughly planning for anticipated risks  This is because a JCL assigns a confidence level, or likelihood, of a project meeting its cost and schedule estimates  Our cost estimating best practices recommend that cost estimates should be updated to reflect changes to a program or be kept current as a program moves through milestones  As new risks emerge on a project, an updated cost and schedule risk analysis can provide realistic estimates to decision-makers, including the Congress  This is especially true for NASA’s largest projects as updated estimates may require the Congress to consider a variety of actions  However, there is no requirement for NASA projects to update their JCLs, and our prior work has found that projects—including JWST—do not regularly update cost risk analyses to take into account newly emerged risks  Our ongoing work indicates that of the 16 major projects currently in NASA’s portfolio that have developed JCL estimates, only 2 have reported updating their JCLs (other than required due to a rebaseline)  For example, the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport Project (InSight), a Mars lander, updated its JCL after the project missed its committed launch date  As a result, the project was able to provide additional information to decision makers about the probability that it will meet its revised cost and schedule estimates  As a project reaches the later stages of development, especially integration and testing, the types of risks the project will face may change  An updated project JCL would provide both project and agency management with data on relevant risks that can guide the project decisions  For example, in December 2012, we recommended the JWST project update its JCL  NASA concurred with this recommendation; however, we recently closed the recommendation because NASA had not taken steps to implement it and the amount of time remaining before launch would not have allowed the benefit of implementing the recommendation to be realized  An updated JCL may have portended the current schedule delays, which could have been proactively addressed by the project  Enhance Oversight of Contractors to Improve Project Outcomes  In December 2012, we found that the JWST project had taken steps to enhance communications with and oversight of its contractors  According to project officials, the increased communication allowed them to better identify and manage project risks by having more visibility into contractors’ activities  The project reported that a great deal of communication existed across the project prior to the Independent Comprehensive Review Panel; however, additional improvements were made  For example, the project increased its presence at contractor facilities as necessary to provide assistance; this included assigning two engineers on a recurring basis at a Lockheed Martin facility to assist in solving problems with an instrument  The JWST project also assumed full responsibility for the mission system engineering functions from Northrop Grumman in March 2011  NASA and Northrop Grumman officials both said that NASA is better suited to perform these tasks  We continue to see instances in our ongoing work that highlight the importance of implementing this lesson learned from JWST  For example, we found in 2017 that the Space Network Ground Segment Sustainment project—a project that plans to develop and deliver a new ground system for one Space Network site that provides essential communications tracking services to NASA and non-NASA missions—exceeded its original cost baseline by at least $401 7 million and been delayed by 27 months  The project has attributed some of the cost overruns and schedule delays to the contractor’s incomplete understanding of its requirements, which led to poor contractor plans and late design changes  The project also took steps to assign a new NASA project manager, increase physical presence at the contractor facility, and have more staff focused on validation and verification activities  In summary, NASA continues to make progress developing its space telescopes to help understand the universe and our place in it  But much like other major projects that NASA is developing, there continues to be an opportunity for NASA to learn from JWST and other projects that have suffered from cost overruns and schedule delays  Key project management tools and prior GAO recommendations that I have highlighted here today, could help to better position these large, complex, and technically challenging efforts for a successful outcome  We look forward to continuing to work with NASA and this subcommittee in addressing these issues  Chairman Babin, Ranking Member Bera, and Members of the Subcommittee, this completes my prepared statement  I would be pleased to respond to any questions that you may have at this time  If you or your staff have any questions about this testimony, please contact Cristina T  Chaplain, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing Management at (202) 512-4841 or chaplainc@gao gov  Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this statement  GAO staff who made key contributions to this statement include Molly Traci, Assistant Director; Richard Cederholm, Assistant Director; Carrie Rogers; Lisa Fisher; Laura Greifner; Erin Kennedy; and Jose Ramos  This is a work of the U S  government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States  The published product may be reproduced and distributed in its entirety without further permission from GAO  However, because this work may contain copyrighted images or other material, permission from the copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to reproduce this material separately 

ground_truth: A key U.S. ally in the Latin American region, Colombia endured an internal armed conflict for half a century. Drug trafficking fueled the violence by funding both left-wing and right-wing armed groups. Some analysts feared Colombia would become a failed state in the late 1990s, but the Colombian government devised a new security strategy, known as Plan Colombia, to counter the insurgencies. Originally designed as a 6-year program, Plan Colombia ultimately became a 17-year U.S.-Colombian bilateral effort. The partnership focused initially on counternarcotics and later on counterterrorism; it then broadened to include sustainable development, human rights, trade, regional security, and many other areas of cooperation. Between FY2000 and FY2016, the U.S. Congress appropriated more than $10 billion to help fund Plan Colombia and its follow-on programs. For FY2018, Congress appropriated $391.3 million in foreign aid for Colombia, including assistance to promote peace and end the conflict. President Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) made concluding a peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)—the country's largest leftist guerrilla organization—his government's primary focus. Following four years of formal peace negotiations, Colombia's Congress ratified the FARC-government peace accord in November 2016. During a U.N.-monitored demobilization effort in 2017, approximately 11,000 FARC disarmed and demobilized. This figure included FARC who had been held in prison for crimes of rebellion and those making up FARC militias, who were accredited by the Colombian government as eligible to demobilize. On August 7, 2018, Iván Duque, a senator from the conservative Democratic Center party, was inaugurated to a four-year presidential term. Duque, who also worked at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC, and is Colombia's youngest president in a century, campaigned as a critic of the peace accord with the FARC. His party objected to specific measures concerning justice and political representation. Some observers maintain that his election has generated uncertainty for implementation of the accord. Shortly after taking office, Duque suspended peace talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN), the country's second-largest rebel group, which had begun under President Santos. Since the ratification of the peace accord, Colombia's long-term strategy has evolved from defeating insurgents to post-conflict stabilization. Many considered Plan Colombia and its successor strategies a remarkable advance, given the country's improvements in security and economic stability. Nevertheless, recent developments have called into question Colombia's progress. The FARC's demobilization has triggered open conflict among armed actors (including FARC dissidents and transnational criminal groups), which seek to control drug cultivation and trafficking, illegal mining, and other illicit businesses that the demobilized FARC abandoned. The ongoing lack of governance in remote rural areas recalls the conditions that originally gave rise to the FARC and other armed groups. Many observers continue to raise concerns about the country's human-rights conditions, sharp increases in coca cultivation and cocaine production, and problems stemming from the failing authoritarian government of neighboring Venezuela, which shares a nearly 1,400-mile border with Colombia. Venezuela's humanitarian crisis has set in motion an exodus of migrants, many of whom have sought temporary residence (or extended stays) in Colombia. Political upheaval has added yet more uncertainty after the United States and many other Western Hemisphere and European nations, including Colombia, called for a democratic transition in Venezuela and recognized the president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, as the country's interim president in January 2019. The U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement went into force in May 2012. The United States remains Colombia's top trade partner. After several years of annual growth exceeding 4%, one of the steadiest expansion rates in the region, Colombia grew by an estimated 2.7% in 2018. The FARC-government peace accord is projected to cost more than $40 billion to implement over 15 years, adding to the polarization over the controversial peace process. For additional background, see CRS In Focus IF10817, Colombia's 2018 Elections, CRS Report R44779, Colombia's Changing Approach to Drug Policy, CRS Report R42982, Colombia's Peace Process Through 2016, and CRS Report RL34470, The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement: Background and Issues.

prompt_front: You are given two reports by the government agency.



Question: Write a one-page summary of the report 2.

Report 1: Colombia, one of the oldest democracies in the Western Hemisphere and the third most populous Latin American country, has endured a multisided civil conflict for more than five decades until President Juan Ma nuel Santos declared the conflict over in August 2017 at the end of a U N -monitored disarmament  According to the National Center for Historical Memory 2013 report, presented to the Colombian government as part of the peace process to end the fighting, some 220,000 Colombians died in the armed conflict through 2012, 81% of them civilians  The report also provided statistics quantifying the scale of the conflict, which has taken a huge toll on Colombian society: more than 23,000 selective assassinations between 1981 and 2012; internal displacement of more than 5 million Colombians due to land seizure and violence; 27,000 kidnappings between 1970 and 2010; and 11,000 deaths or amputees from anti-personnel land mines laid primarily by Colombia's main insurgent guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)  To date, more than 8 million Colombians, or roughly 15% of the population, have registered as conflict victims  Although the violence has scarred Colombia, the country has achieved a significant turnaround  Once considered a likely candidate to become a failed state, Colombia, over the past two decades, has overcome much of the violence that had clouded its future  For example, between 2000 and 2016, Colombia saw a 94% decrease in kidnappings and a 53% reduction in homicides (below 25 per 100,000 in 2016)  Coupled with success in lowering violence, Colombia has opened its economy and promoted trade, investment, and growth  Colombia has become one of Latin America's most attractive locations for foreign direct investment  Yet, after steady growth over several years, Colombia's economy slowed to 3 1% growth in 2015 and declined to 1 7% in 2017  Many analysts identified Colombia's dependence on oil and other commodity exports as the primary cause  Between 2012 and 2016, the Colombian government held formal peace talks with the FARC, Colombia's largest guerrilla organization  Upon taking office for a second term in August 2014, President Santos declared peace, equality, and education as his top priorities, although achieving the peace agreement remained his major focus  In August 2016, the government and FARC negotiators announced they had concluded their talks and achieved a 300-page peace agreement  The accord was subsequently narrowly defeated in a popular referendum held in early October 2016, but was revised by the Santos government and agreed to by the FARC and then ratified by the Colombian Congress at the end of November 2016  The Colombian conflict predates the formal founding of the FARC in 1964, as the FARC had its beginnings in the peasant self-defense groups of the 1940s and 1950s  Colombian political life has long suffered from polarization and violence based on the significant disparities and inequalities suffered by landless peasants in the country's peripheral regions  In the late 19 th century and a large part of the 20 th century, the elite Liberal and Conservative parties dominated Colombian political life  Violence and competition between the parties erupted in a period of extreme violence in Colombia, known as La Violencia , set off in 1948 by the assassination of Liberal presidential candidate Jorge Gaitán  The violence continued for the next decade  After a brief military rule (1953-1958), the Liberal and Conservative parties agreed to a form of coalition governance, known as the National Front  Under the arrangement, the presidency of the country alternated between Conservatives and Liberals, each holding office in turn for four-year intervals  This form of government continued for 16 years (1958-1974)  The power-sharing formula did not resolve the tension between the two historic parties, and many leftist, Marxist-inspired insurgencies took root in Colombia, including the FARC, launched in 1964, and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN), which formed the following year  The FARC and ELN conducted kidnappings, committed serious human rights violations, and carried out a campaign of terrorist activities to pursue their goal of unseating the central government in Bogotá  Rightist paramilitary groups formed in the 1980s when wealthy ranchers and farmers, including drug traffickers, hired armed groups to protect them from the kidnapping and extortion plots of the FARC and ELN  In the 1990s, most of the paramilitary groups formed an umbrella organization, the United-Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC)  The AUC massacred and assassinated suspected supporters of the insurgents and directly engaged the FARC and ELN in military battles  The Colombian military has long been accused of close collaboration with the AUC, accusations ranging from ignoring their activities to actively supporting them  Over time, the AUC became increasingly engaged in drug trafficking, and other illicit businesses  In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the U S  government designated the FARC, ELN, and AUC as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs)  The AUC was formally dissolved in a collective demobilization between 2003 and 2006 after many of its leaders stepped down  However, former paramilitaries joined armed groups (called criminal bands, or Bacrim, by the Colombian government) who continued to participate in the lucrative drug trade and commit other crimes and human rights abuses  When the FARC demobilized in 2017, other illegally armed groups began aggressive efforts to take control of former FARC territory and its criminal enterprises as FARC forces withdrew  (For more, see " The Current Security Environment ," below ) The inability of Colombia's two dominant parties to address the root causes of violence in the country led to the election of an independent, Álvaro Uribe, in the presidential contest of 2002  Uribe, who served two terms, came to office with promises to take on the violent leftist guerrillas, address the paramilitary problem, and combat illegal drug trafficking  During the 1990s, Colombia had become the region's—and the world's—largest producer of cocaine  Peace negotiations with the FARC under the prior administration of President Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002) had ended in failure; the FARC used a large demilitarized zone located in the central Meta department (see map, Figure 1 ) to regroup and strengthen itself  The central Colombian government granted the FARC this demilitarized zone, a traditional practice in Colombian peace negotiations, but the FARC used it to launch terror attacks, conduct operations, and increase the cultivation of coca and its processing, while failing to negotiate seriously  Many analysts, noting the FARC's strength throughout the country, feared that the Colombian state might fail and some Colombian citizens thought the FARC might at some point successfully take power  The FARC was then reportedly at the apogee of its strength, numbering an estimated 16,000 to 20,000 fighters under arms  This turmoil opened the way for the aggressive strategy advocated by Uribe  At President Uribe's August 2002 inauguration, the FARC showered the event with mortar fire, signaling the group's displeasure at the election of a hardliner, who believed a military victory over the Marxist rebels was possible  In his first term (2002-2006), President Uribe sought to shore up and expand the country's military, seeking to reverse the armed forces' losses by aggressively combating the FARC  He entered into peace negotiations with the AUC  President Pastrana had refused to negotiate with the rightist AUC, but Uribe promoted the process and urged the country to back a controversial Justice and Peace Law that went into effect in July 2005 and provided a framework for the AUC demobilization  By mid-2006, some 31,000 AUC paramilitary forces had demobilized  The AUC demobilization, combined with the stepped-up counternarcotics efforts of the Uribe administration and increased military victories against the FARC's irregular forces, helped to bring down violence, although a high level of human rights violations still plagued the country  Uribe became widely popular for the effectiveness of his security policies, a strategy he called "Democratic Security " Uribe's popular support was evident when Colombian voters approved a referendum to amend their constitution in 2005 to permit Uribe to run for a second term  Following his reelection in 2006, President Uribe continued to aggressively combat the FARC  For Uribe, 2008 was a critical year  In March 2008, the Colombian military bombed the camp of FARC's second-in-command, Raul Reyes (located inside Ecuador a short distance from the border), killing him and 25 others  Also in March, another of FARC's ruling seven-member secretariat was murdered by his security guard  In May, the FARC announced that their supreme leader and founder, Manuel Marulanda, had died of a heart attack  The near-simultaneous deaths of three of the seven most important FARC leaders were a significant blow to the organization  In July 2008, the Colombian government dramatically rescued 15 long-time FARC hostages, including three U S  defense contractors who had been held captive since 2003 and Colombian senator and former presidential candidate Ingrid Bentancourt  The widely acclaimed, bloodless rescue further undermined FARC morale  Uribe's success and reputation, however, were marred by several scandals  They included the "parapolitics" scandal in 2006 that exposed links between illegal paramilitaries and politicians, especially prominent members of the national legislature  Subsequent scandals that came to light during Uribe's tenure included the "false positive" murders allegedly carried out by the military (primarily the Colombian Army) in which innocent civilians were executed and then dressed to look like guerilla fighters to increase the military's rebel body count  In 2009, the media revealed another scandal of illegal wiretapping and other surveillance by the government intelligence agency, the Department of Administrative Security (DAS), to discredit journalists, members of the judiciary, and political opponents of the Uribe government  (In early 2012, the tarnished national intelligence agency was replaced by Uribe's successor, Juan Manuel Santos ) Despite the controversies, President Uribe remained popular and his supporters urged him to run for a third term in 2010  Another referendum was proposed to alter the constitution to allow a third term; however, it was turned down by Colombia's Constitutional Court  Once it became clear that President Uribe was constitutionally ineligible to run again, Juan Manuel Santos of the pro-Uribe National Unity party (or Party of the U) quickly consolidated his preeminence in the 2010 presidential campaign  Santos, a centrist, who came from an elite family that once owned the country's largest newspaper, had served as Uribe's defense minister through 2009  In 2010, Santos campaigned on a continuation of the Uribe government's approach to security and its role encouraging free markets and economic opening, calling his reform policy "Democratic Prosperity " In the May 2010 presidential race, Santos took almost twice as many votes as his nearest competitor, Antanas Mockus of the centrist Green Party, but he did not win a majority  Santos won the June runoff with 69% of the vote  Santos's "national unity" ruling coalition formed during his campaign included the center-right National Unity and Conservative parties, the centrist Radical Change Party, and the center-left Liberal party  On August 7, 2010, President Santos said in his first inauguration speech that he planned to follow in the path of President Uribe, but that "the door to [peace] talks [with armed rebels] is not locked " The Santos government was determined to improve relations with Ecuador and Venezuela, which had become strained under Uribe  Santos sought to increase cooperation on cross-border coordination and counternarcotics  He attempted to reduce tensions with Venezuela that had become fraught under Uribe, who claimed that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez had long harbored FARC and ELN forces  During his first two years in office, President Santos reorganized the executive branch and built on the market opening strategies of the Uribe administration and secured a free-trade agreement with the United States, Colombia's largest trade partner, which went into effect in May 2012  To address U S  congressional concerns about labor relations in Colombia, including the issue of violence against labor union members, the United States and Colombia agreed to an "Action Plan Related to Labor Rights" (Labor Action Plan) in April 2011  Many of the steps prescribed by the plan were completed in 2011 while the U S  Congress was considering the free trade agreement  Significantly, the Santos government maintained a vigorous security strategy and struck hard at the FARC's top leadership  In September 2010, the Colombian military killed the FARC's top military commander, Victor Julio Suárez (known as "Mono Jojoy"), in a bombing raid  In November 2011, the FARC's supreme leader, Guillermo Leon Saenz (aka "Alfonso Cano") was assassinated  He was replaced by Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri (known as "Timoleón Jiménez" or "Timochenko"), the group's current leader  While continuing the security strategy, the Santos administration began to re-orient the Colombian government's stance toward the internal armed conflict through a series of reforms  The first legislative reform that moved this new vision along, signed by President Santos in June 2011, was the Victims' and Land Restitution Law (Victims' Law), to provide comprehensive reparations to an estimated (at the time) 4 million to 5 million victims of the conflict  Reparations under the Victims' Law included monetary compensation, psycho-social support and other aid for victims, and the return of millions of hectares of stolen land to those displaced  The law was intended to process an estimated 360,000 land restitution cases  The government's implementation of this complex law began in early 2012  Between 2011 and 2016, there were more than 100,000 applications for restitution and 5,000 properties, or about 5%, were resolved by judges  The Victims' Law, while not a land reform measure, tackled issues of land distribution including the restitution of stolen property to displaced victims  Given the centrality of land issues to the rural peasant-based FARC, passage of the Victims' Law was a strong indicator that the Santos government shared its interest in addressing land and agrarian concerns  In June 2012, another government initiative—the Peace Framework Law, also known as the Legal Framework for Peace—was approved by the Colombian Congress, which signaled that congressional support for a peace process was growing  In August 2012, President Santos announced he had opened exploratory peace talks with the FARC and was ready to launch formal talks  The countries of Norway, Cuba, Venezuela, and Chile each held an international support role, with Norway and Cuba serving as peace talk hosts and "guarantors " Following the formal start in Norway, the actual negotiations began a month later in mid-November 2012 in Cuba, where the FARC-government talks continued until their conclusion in August 2016  In the midst of extended peace negotiations, Colombia's 2014 national elections presented a unique juncture for the country  During the elections, the opposition Centro Democrático (CD) party gained 20 seats in the Senate and 19 in the less powerful Chamber of Representatives, and its leader, former President Uribe, became a popular senator  His presence in the Senate challenged the new ruling coalition that backed President Santos  During his second-term inaugural address in August 2014, President Santos declared three pillars—peace, equality, and education—as his focus, yet his top priority was to conclude the peace negotiations with the FARC  In February 2015, the Obama Administration provided support to the peace talks by naming Bernard Aronson, a former U S  assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs, as the U S  Special Envoy to the Colombian peace talks  Talks with the FARC concluded in August 2016  In early October, to the surprise of many, approval of the accord was narrowly defeated in a national plebiscite by less than a half percentage point of the votes cast, indicating a polarized electorate  Regardless, President Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2016, in part demonstrating strong international support for the peace agreement  In response to the voters' criticisms, the Santos government and the FARC crafted a modified agreement, which they signed on November 24, 2016  Rather than presenting this agreement to a plebiscite, President Santos sent it directly to the Colombian Congress, where it was ratified on November 30, 2016  Although both chambers of Colombia's Congress approved the agreement unanimously, members of the opposition CD party criticized various provisions in the accord that they deemed inadequate and boycotted the vote  The peace process was recognized as the most significant achievement of the Santos presidency and lauded outside of Colombia and throughout the region  Over the course of two terms, the President's approval ratings rose and fell rather significantly  His crowning achievement, the accord negotiated over 50 rounds of talks, covered five substantive topics: rural development and agricultural reform; political participation by the FARC; an end to the conflict, including demobilization, disarmament and reintegration; a solution to illegal drug trafficking; and justice for victims  A sixth topic provided for mechanisms to implement and monitor the peace agreement  Colombians elected a new congress in March 2018 and a new president in June 2018  Because no presidential candidate won more than 50% of the vote on May 27, 2018, as required for a victory in the first round, a second-round runoff was held June 17 between the rightist candidate Iván Duque and the leftist candidate Gustavo Petro (see results for presidential contest, Figure 3 )  Duque was carried to victory with almost 54% of the vote  Runner-up Petro, a former mayor of Bogotá, a former Colombian Senator, and once a member of the M-19 guerilla insurgency, nevertheless did better than any leftist candidate in a presidential race in the past century; he won 8 million votes and nearly 42% of the votes cast  Around 4 2% were protest votes, signifying Colombian voters who cast blank ballots  Through alliance building, Duque achieved a functional majority or a "unity" government, which involved the Conservative Party, Santos's prior National Unity or Party of the U, joining the CD, although compromise was required to keep the two centrist parties in sync with the more conservative CD  In the new Congress, two extra seats, for the presidential and vice presidential runners up, became automatic seats in the Colombian Senate and House, due to a constitutional change in 2015, allowing presidential runner up Gustavo Petro to return to the Senate  The CD party, which gained seats in both houses in the March vote, won the majority in the Colombian Senate (see Figure 2 for seat breakouts by party)  Duque, who was inaugurated on August 7, 2018, at the age of 42, was the youngest Colombian president elected in a century  He possessed limited experience in Colombian politics  Duque was partially educated in the United States and worked for at decade at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC  He was the handpicked candidate of former president Uribe, who vocally opposed many of Santos's policies  Disgruntled Colombians perceived Santos as an aloof president whose energy and political capital were expended accommodating an often-despised criminal group, the FARC  President Duque appeared to be technically oriented and interested in economic reform, presenting himself as a modernizer  During his campaign, Duque called for economic renewal and lower taxes, fighting crime, and building renewed confidence in the country's institutions through some reforms  On September 26, 2018, in a speech before the U N  General Assembly, the new president outlined his policy objectives   Duque called for increasing legality, entrepreneurship, and fairness by (1) promoting peace; (2) combating drug trafficking and recognizing it as a global menace, and (3) fighting corruption, which he characterized as a threat to democracy  He also maintained that the humanitarian crisis in neighboring Venezuela, resulting in more than 1 million migrants fleeing to Colombia, was an emergency that threatened to destabilize the region  Duque proposed a leadership role for Colombia in denouncing the authoritarian government of President Nicolás Maduro and containing his government's damage  By late November 2018, 1 2 million Venezuelans already present in Colombia were putting increasing pressure on the government's finances, generating a burden estimated at nearly 0 5% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP)  President Duque, along with his vice president, Marta Lucía Ramírez, who initially ran as the Conservative Party candidate in the first round, recommended that drug policy shift back to a stricter counterdrug approach rather than a model endorsed in the peace accord, which focuses on voluntary eradication and economic support to peasant farmers to transition away from illicit drug crops  Duque campaigned on returning to spraying coca crops with the herbicide glyphosate  This would reverse Colombia's decision in mid-2015 to end aerial spraying, which had been a central—albeit controversial—feature of U S -Colombian counter-drug cooperation for two decades  Colombians' concerns with corruption became particularly acute during the 2018 elections, as major scandals were revealed  Similar to many countries in the region, government officials, including Santos during his 2014 campaign for reelection and the opposition candidate during that campaign were accused of taking payoffs (bribes) from the Odebrecht firm, the Brazilian construction company that became embroiled in a region-wide corruption scandal  In December 2018, presidential runner up Gustavo Petro was accused of taking political contributions from Odebrecht in a video released by a CD senator, indicating that both the left and the right of the Colombian political spectrum has been tainted by corruption allegations  In June 2017, the U S  Drug Enforcement Administration arrested Colombia's top anti-corruption official, Gustavo Moreno  In mid-September 2017, the former chief justice of Colombia's Supreme Court was arrested for his alleged role in a corruption scandal that involved other justices accused of taking bribes from Colombian congressmen, some with ties to illegal paramilitary groups  The series of corruption charges made against members of Colombia's judicial branch, politicians, and other officials made the issue a prominent one in Colombian politics and was the focus of a left-centrist candidate's campaign in the presidential contest  In late August 2018, an anti-corruption referendum was defeated by narrowly missing a high vote threshold by less than a half percentage point, although the actual vote favored all seven proposed changes on the ballot  President Duque endorsed the referendum and maintains he will seek to curb many of the abuses identified in the referendum through legislation that his administration will propose  The Duque Administration's first budget for 2019 presented in late October 2018 was linked to an unpopular tax reform that would expand a value-added tax to cover basic food and agricultural commodities (some 36 items in the basic basket of goods, such as eggs and rice, previously exempted)  The 2019 budget totals $89 7 billion, providing the education, military and police, and health sectors with the biggest increases, and reducing funding for peace accord implementation  Duque's own Democratic Center party split with him on the value-added tax, which quickly sank his approval ratings from 53% in early September 2018 to a low of 27% in November 2018, among the lowest levels in the early part of a presidential mandate in recent Colombian history  Colombia's economy is the fourth largest in Latin America after Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina  The World Bank characterizes Colombia as an upper middle-income country, although its commodities-dependent economy has been hit by oil price declines and peso devaluation related to the erosion of fiscal revenue  Between 2010 and 2014, Colombia's economy grew at an average of more than 4%, but slowed to 3 1% GDP growth in 2015  In 2017, Colombia's GDP growth slowed further to 1 7%  Despite its relative economic stability, high poverty rates and inequality have contributed to social upheaval in Colombia for decades  The poverty rate in 2005 was slightly above 45%, but declined to below 27% in 2016  The issues of limited land ownership and high rural poverty rates remain a problem  According to a United Nations study published in 2011, 1 2% of the population owned 52% of the land, and data revealed in 2016 that about 49% of Colombians continued to work in the informal economy  Colombia is often described as a country bifurcated between metropolitan areas with a developed, middle-income economy, and some rural areas that are poor, conflict-ridden, and weakly governed  The fruits of the growing economy have not been shared equally with this ungoverned, largely rural periphery  Frequently these more remote areas are inhabited by ethnic minorities or other disadvantaged groups, such as Afro-Colombians, indigenous populations, or landless peasants and subsistence farmers, who are vulnerable to illicit economies due to few connections to the formal economy  The United States is Colombia's leading trade partner  Colombia accounts for a small percentage of U S  trade (approximately 1%), ranking 22 nd among U S  export markets and 27 th among foreign exporters to the United States in 2017  Colombia has secured free trade agreements with the European Union, Canada, and the United States, and with most nations in Latin America  Colombian officials have worked over the past decade to increase the attractiveness of investing in Colombia, and foreign direct investment (FDI) grew by 16% between 2015 and 2016  This investment increase came not only from the extractive industries, such as petroleum and mining, but also from such areas as agricultural products, transportation, and financial services  Promoting more equitable growth and ending the internal conflict were twin goals of the two-term Santos administration  Unemployment, which historically has been high at over 10%, fell below that double-digit mark during Santos's first term and remained at 9 2% in 2016 but rose slightly to an estimated 9 6% in 2018  Although Colombia is ranked highly for business-friendly practices and has a favorable regulatory environment that encourages trade across borders, it is still plagued by persistent corruption and an inability to effectively implement institutional reforms it has undertaken, particularly in regions where government presence is weak  According to the U S  State Department in its analysis of national investment climates, Colombia has demonstrated a political commitment to create jobs, develop sound capital markets, and achieve a legal and regulatory system that meets international norms for transparency and consistency  Despite its macroeconomic stability, several issues remain, such as a still-complicated tax system, a high corporate tax burden, and continuing piracy and counterfeiting issues  Colombia's rural-sector protestors formed strikes and blockades beginning in 2013 with demands for long-term and integrated-agricultural reform in a country with one of the most unequal patterns of land ownership  In October and November 2018, Colombian secondary and university students protested in high numbers during six large mobilizations, taking place over 60 days, to demand more funding for education  The four-year peace talks between the FARC and the Santos administration started in Norway and moved to Cuba where negotiators worked through a six-point agenda during more than 50 rounds of talks that produced agreements on six major topics  The final topic—verification to enact the programs outlined in the final accord—all parties knew would be the most challenging, especially with a polarized public and many Colombians skeptical of whether the FARC would be held accountable for its violence and crimes during the years of conflict  Some analysts have estimated that to implement the programs required by the commitments in the accord to ensure stable post-conflict development may require 15 years and cost from $30 billion to $45 billion  The country faces steep challenges to underwrite the post-accord peace programs in an era of declining revenues  While progress has been uneven, some programs (those related to drug trafficking) had external pressure to move forward quickly and some considered urgent received "fast track" treatment to expedite their regulation by Congress  The revised peace accord that was approved by the Colombian Congress in late 2016 was granted fast track implementation by the Colombian Constitutional Court in a ruling on December 13, 2016, particularly applied to the FARC's disarmament and demobilization  However, in May 2017, a new ruling by the high court determined that all legislation related to the implementation of the accord needed to be fully debated rather than passed in an expedited fashion, which some analysts maintain started to slow the process of implementing the accord significantly  The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame is responsible for monitoring and implementing the agreement  It issued two interim reports in November 2017 and August 2018  At the end of the last reporting period (June 2018), the Kroc Institute estimated that 63% of the 578 peace accord commitments have begun implementation  In relation to other peace accords it had studied, the Kroc Institute found that the implementation of Colombia's accord was on course as about average, although that progress took place prior to President Duque's election  The first provision undertaken was the demobilization of the FARC, monitored by a U N  mission that was approved by the U N  Security Council to verify implementation of the accords  U N  monitors also emptied large arm caches identified by FARC leaders, seizing the contents of more than 750 of the reported nearly 1,000 caches by the middle of 2017  With the final disarmament, President Santos declared the conflict over in mid-August 2017  The U S  State Department reported in its Country Reports on Terrorism 201 , that by September 25, 2017, the United Nations had verified the collection of 8,994 arms, 1 7 million rounds, and more than 40 tons of explosives  The report states that the Colombian government had accredited "roughly 11,000 ex-combatants for transition to civilian life " The FARC also revealed its hidden assets in September 2017, listing more than $330 million in mostly real estate investments  This announcement drew criticism from several analysts who note that the FARC assets are likely much greater  In July 2017, the U N  Security Council voted to expand its mandate and launch a second mission for three years to verify the reintegration of FARC guerrillas into civil society beginning September 20, 2017  One of Colombia's greatest challenges continues to be ensuring security for ex-combatants and demobilized FARC  The FARC's reintegration into civil society is a charged topic because the FARC's efforts in the 1980s to start a political party, known as the Patriotic Union, or the UP by its Spanish acronym, resulted in more than 3,000 party members being killed by rightwing paramilitaries and others  As of the end of 2018, reportedly 85 FARC members and their close relatives had been killed  In addition to unmet government guarantees of security, the FARC also has criticized the government for not adequately preparing for the group's demobilization  According to observers, the government failed to provide basic resources to FARC gathered throughout the country in specially designated zones for disarmament and demobilization (later renamed reintegration zones)  The demobilization areas or cantonments had been so little prepared in early 2017 that the FARC had in many cases to construct their own housing and locate food and other provisions  Reintegration of former combatants has proceeded slowly  The Constitutional Court's May 2017 ruling to restrict fast track, and controversy about the new court to try war crimes and other serious violations, the "Special Jurisdiction of Peace" led to further delays  Peace process advocates have cited limited attention to include ethnic Colombians, such as Afro-Colombian leaders and indigenous communities, into the accord's implementation, as required by the "ethnic chapter" of the peace accord  A U N  deputy human rights official warned in October 2017 that after a successful demobilization it would be dangerous not to reintegrate FARC former combatants by providing them realistic options for income and delaying effective reintegration could undermine peace going forward  Under the peace accord, Territorially Focused Development Programs (PDETs in Spanish) are a tool for planning and managing a broad rural development process, with the aim of transforming170 municipalities (covering 16 subregions) most affected by the armed conflict  PDETs target those municipalities in Colombia with the highest number of displacements and those that have experienced the most killings, massacres, and forced disappearances  These marginal areas generally have experienced chronic poverty, high inequality, the presence of illicit crops such as coca, and low levels of local government institutional performance  Violence and forced displacements in some of the PDET municipalities increased in the last half of 2018  Colombia's Constitutional Court determined in October 2017 that over the next three presidential terms (until 2030), Colombia must follow the peace accord commitments negotiated by the Santos administration and approved by the Colombian Congress in 2016  The Special Jurisdiction of Peace, set up to adjudicate the most heinous crimes of Colombia's decades-long armed conflict, began to hear cases in July 2018  However, Colombians remain skeptical of its capacity  A key challenge is the case of a FARC leader and lead negotiator in the peace process, Jesús Santrich, alleged to have committed drug trafficking crimes in 2017 after the accord was ratified, who has been jailed  Colombia has confronted a complex security environment of armed groups: two violent leftist insurgencies, the FARC and the ELN, and groups that succeeded the AUC following its demobilization during the Uribe administration  The FARC, whittled down by the government's military campaign against it, continued to conduct a campaign of terrorist activities during peace negotiations with the government through mid-2015, but it imposed successive temporary unilateral cease-fires that significantly reduced violence levels  In August 2016, the FARC and the government concluded negotiations on a peace accord that was subsequently approved by Congress with modifications in November 2016  Authorities and some analysts maintain that since the peace accord was ratified, 5% to 10% of the FARC have become dissidents who reject the peace settlement, although other estimates suggest a higher percentage  These armed individuals remain a threat  As agreed in the peace accord, the demobilized rebels transitioned to a political party that became known as the Common Alternative Revolutionary Force (retaining the acronym FARC) in September 2017  On November 1, 2017, the FARC announced their party's presidential ticket: current FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño (aka Timochenko) for president and Imelda Daza for vice president  The FARC Party ran several candidates in congressional races but failed to win any additional congressional race for which it competed in the March 2018 legislative elections, so the automatic seats in Congress were the only ones that it filled  The ELN, like the FARC, became deeply involved in the drug trade and used extortion, kidnapping, and other criminal activities to fund itself  The ELN, with diminished resources and reduced offensive capability, according to government estimates, declined to fewer than 2,000 fighters, although some analysts maintain in 2018 the forces grew as high as 3,400, including former FARC who were recruited to join the ELN as the larger rebel group demobilized  In 2015, ELN leadership began exploratory peace talks with the Santos government in Ecuador, although the ELN continued to attack oil and transportation infrastructures and conduct kidnappings and extortions, at least periodically  Formal talks with the ELN finally opened in February 2017 in Quito, Ecuador  After the talks moved to Cuba in May 2018, at the request of Ecuador's President Lenín Moreno, several negotiating sessions took place  The ELN's central leadership, including Nicolás Rodríguez Bautista (aka "Gabino"), arrived in Cuba to continue the talks  However, President Duque in September 2018 suspended the talks and recalled the government negotiating team  The ELN is far more regionally oriented, decentralized, and nonhierarchical in its decisionmaking than the FARC  Late in 2018, a Colombian political online magazine claimed a meeting had been held two months earlier between FARC dissident groups and the ELN in Venezuela in which the parties discussed how to increase their coordination  On January 17, 2019, a car bomb attack at a National Police academy in southern Bogotá shattered illusions that Colombia's long internal conflict with insurgents was coming to an end  The bombing, allegedly carried out by an experienced ELN bomb maker, killed 20 police cadets and the bomber and injured more than 65 others  The ELN took responsibility for the attack in a statement published on January 21  Large demonstrations took place in Bogotá protesting the return of violence to Colombia's capital city  The Duque government ended peace talks with the ELN, which had been ongoing sporadically since 2017  The Duque government then requested extradition of the ELN's delegation of negotiators to the peace talks in Cuba on terrorism charges  The Cuban government, which condemned the bombing, responded that the protocols for the peace talks required that the negotiators be returned to Colombia without arrest  The Duque government has persisted in requesting the negotiators to be extradited  The AUC, the loosely affiliated national umbrella organization of paramilitaries, officially disbanded a decade ago  The organization was removed from the State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organizations list in July 2014  More than 31,000 AUC members demobilized between 2003 and 2006, and many AUC leaders stepped down  However, as noted, many former AUC paramilitaries continued their illicit activities or re-armed and joined criminal groups—known as Bacrim   Many observers view the Bacrim as successors to the paramilitaries, and the Colombian government has characterized these groups as the biggest threat to Colombia's security since 2011  The Bacrim do not appear to be motivated by the dream of defeating the national government, but they seek territorial control and appear to provide rudimentary justice in ungoverned parts of the country  In 2013, the criminal group Los Urabeños, launched in 2006, emerged as the dominant Bacrim  Over its lifetime, the group has been referred to as the Gaitanistas, the Clan Úsuga, and most recently El Clan del Golfo, growing to about 3,000 members by 2015  The Urabeños organization is heavily involved in cocaine trafficking as well as arms trafficking, money laundering, extortion, gold mining, human trafficking, and prostitution  Early leaders of the group, such as founder Daniel Rendón Herrera (alias "Don Mario") and his brother Feddy Rendón Herrera were designated drug kingpins under the U S  Kingpin Act in 2009 and 2010, respectively  However, because these men had been part of the AUC peace process, they could not be extradited to the United States until they had served time and paid reparations  In June 2015, the Justice Department unsealed indictments against 17 alleged Urabeños members  The Colombian government's efforts to dismantle the Urabeños and interrupt its operations began to result in the capture of top leaders and gradually to disrupt its illicit activities  The Urabeños faced an intense enforcement campaign by the Colombian police and military, especially after the Urabeños reportedly advertised and paid rewards to its subcontracted assassins to murder Colombian police  In September 2017, the Urabeños top leader, Dairo Antonio Úsuga (alias "Otoniel"), requested terms of surrender from the Santos government after the arrest of his wife and the killing or arrest of siblings and co-leaders, but this offer was never formalized  Colombia captured a vast amount of cocaine, approximately 12 metric tons, linked to the the Urabeños in November 2017  Splinter groups of the large Colombian drug cartels of the 1980s and 1990s, such as the Medellin Cartel and Cali Cartel, have come and gone in Colombia, including the powerful transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) the Norte del Valle Cartel and Los Rastrajos  The U S  Drug Enforcement Administration's 2018 National Drug Threat Assessment maintains "large-scale Colombian TCOs" work closely with Mexican and Central American TCOs to export large quantities of cocaine out of Colombia every year  Traditionally, the FARC and ELN had cooperated with Bacrim and other Colombian crime groups in defense of drug trafficking and other illicit activities despite the groups' ideological differences  Venezuela is a major transit corridor for Colombian cocaine  According to the State Department's 2018 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report , Venezuela's porous western border with Colombia, current economic crisis, weak judicial system, sporadic international drug control cooperation, and a permissive and corrupt environment make it a preferred trafficking route for illicit drugs  A May 2018 report by Insight Crime identified more than 120 high-level Venezuelan officials who have engaged in criminal activity  The report analyzes how the Venezuelan military, particularly the National Guard, has been involved in the drug trade since 2002 and colluded with other illegally armed groups  Another Bacrim, Los Rastrojos, reportedly controls important gasoline smuggling routes between Venezuela and Colombia in 2018  Similarly, in the past year, ELN guerrillas reportedly have moved from seeking safe haven in Venezuela to taking control of illicit gold mining areas near Venezuela's border with Guyana  Both the ELN, which is still engaged in armed conflict with the Colombian government, and its rival, the Popular Liberation Army (EPL), reportedly recruit Venezuelans to cultivate coca in Colombia  Human trafficking and sexual exploitation of Venezuelan migrants throughout Colombia is prevalent  Dissident FARC guerrillas are using border areas and other remote areas in the countryside to regroup and could eventually seek to consolidate into a more unified organization or coordinate with other criminal groups sheltering in Venezuela  The State Department's 2017 terrorism report published in April 2018 maintained that the number of terrorist incidents in Colombia—carried out by the FARC and ELN—decreased significantly, by 40%, over the already much-diminished level of 2016  ELN aggression included high-impact attacks, such as launching mortars at police stations and bombing pipelines, although the report also states that ELN demobilizations and surrenders have increased  The humanitarian crisis in Venezuela has set in motion a mass exodus of desperate migrants, who have come temporarily (or for extended stays) to Colombia  Although Venezuela has experienced hyperinflation (the highest in the world), a rapid contraction of its economy, and severe shortages of food and medicine, as of November 2018 Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has refused most international humanitarian assistance  Based on estimates from the U N  High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as of November 2018, more than 3 million Venezuelans were living outside Venezuela; of these, an estimated 2 3 million left after 2015  As conditions in Venezuela have continued to deteriorate, increasing numbers of Venezuelans have left the country  Neighboring countries, particularly Colombia, are straining to absorb a migrant population that is often malnourished and in poor health  The spread of previously eradicated diseases, such as measles, is also a major regional concern  In January 2019, the Trump Administration announced backing for the president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, as interim president of Venezuela  The Trump Administration has called for Maduro's departure, and Colombia joined many other countries in Latin America and Europe to recognize Guaidó  U S  Secretary of State Michael Pompeo announced that the United States was prepared to provide $20 million in humanitarian assistance to the people of Venezuela  Colombia joined 11 countries in the Lima Group that declared on February 4, 2019, their desire to hasten a return to democracy in Venezuela by working with Guaidó for a peaceful transition without the use of force  Colombia's multisided internal conflict over the last half century generated a lengthy record of human rights abuses  Although it is widely recognized that Colombia's efforts to reduce violence, combat drug trafficking and terrorism, and strengthen the economy have met with success, many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and human rights groups continue to report significant human rights violations, including violence targeting noncombatants, that involves killings, torture, kidnappings, disappearances, forced displacements, forced recruitments, massacres, and sexual attacks  The Center for Historical Memory report issued to the Colombian government in July 2013 traces those responsible for human rights violations to the guerrillas (the FARC and ELN), the AUC paramilitaries and successor paramilitary groups, and the Colombian security forces  In analyzing nearly 2,000 massacres between 1980 and 2012 documented in the center's database, the report maintains that 58 9% were committed by paramilitaries, 17 3% by guerrillas, and 7 9% by public security forces  According to the U S  State Department's annual report on human rights covering 2017, Colombia's most serious human rights abuses centered on extrajudicial and unlawful killings; torture and detentions; rape and sexual crimes  In addition to the State Department, numerous sources report regularly on human rights conditions in Colombia  (See Appendix  ) Colombia continues to experience murders and threats of violence against journalists, human rights defenders, labor union members, social activists such as land rights leaders, and others  Crimes of violence against women, children, Afro-Colombian and indigenous leaders, and other vulnerable groups continue at high rates  In December 2018, the U N  special rapporteur on human rights defenders came out with strong criticism of heightened murders of human rights defenders, which he maintained were committed by hitmen paid no more than $100 per murder, according to reports he heard from activists and other community members whom he met with during a trip to Colombia  These ongoing issues reflect constraints of the Colombian judicial system to effectively prosecute crimes and overcome impunity  For many years, human rights organizations have raised concerns about extrajudicial executions committed by Colombian security forces, particularly the military  In 2008, it was revealed that several young men from the impoverished community of Soacha—who had been lured allegedly by military personnel from their homes to another part of the country with the promise of employment—had been executed  When discovered, the Soacha murder victims had been disguised as guerrilla fighters to inflate military claims of enemy body counts, resulting in the term false positives   Following an investigation into the Soacha murders, the military quickly fired 27 soldiers and officers, including three generals, and the army's commander resigned  The Colombian prosecutor general's criminal investigations of soldiers and officers who allegedly participated in the Soacha executions have proceeded quite slowly  Some 48 of the military members eventually charged with involvement in the Soacha cases were released due to the expiration of the statute of limitations  Whereas some soldiers have received long sentences, few sergeants or colonels have been successfully prosecuted  In 2009, the false positive phenomenon was investigated by the U N 's Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, who issued a report that concluded with no finding that such killings were a result of an official government policy  However, the Special Rapporteur did find, "the sheer number of cases, their geographic spread, and the diversity of military units implicated, indicate that these killings were carried out in a more or less systematic fashion by significant elements within the military " The majority of the cases took place between 2004 and 2008, when U S  assistance to Colombia peaked  In recent years, the number of new alleged false positive cases declined steeply, but human rights NGOs still reported a few cases in 2012 through 2015  To address the military's human rights violations, the Santos administration proposed a change to policy that did not prevail  This reform was a constitutional change to expand the jurisdiction of military courts and, it was approved by the Colombian Congress in late December 2012 by a wide margin despite controversy  Human rights groups criticized the legislation's shift in the jurisdiction over serious human rights crimes allegedly committed by Colombia's public security forces from the civilian to the military justice system  In its review of the constitutional amendment, the Colombian Constitutional Court struck down the law over procedural issues in October 2013  Human Rights Watch in a 2015 report on the false positive cases noted that prosecutors in the Human Rights Unit of the Prosecutor General's Office conducted investigations into more than 3,000 false positive homicide cases allegedly committed by army personnel that resulted in about 800 convictions, mostly of lower-ranking soldiers  Only a few of those convictions involved former commanders of battalions or other tactical units, and none of the investigations of 16 active and retired army generals had produced charges  In 2016, the prosecutions against generals accused of responsibility for false positives continued, although a few were closed and 12 remained under investigation at year's end  Additionally, in October 2016, the Colombian prosecutor general indicted Santiago Uribe, the brother of former President Uribe, on charges of murder and association to commit crimes for his alleged role in the paramilitary group "The 12 Apostols" in the 1990s  The State Department human rights report covering 2017, maintains that during the year through July, four new cases involving "aggravated homicide" committed by security forces and 11 new convictions were reached for "simple homicide" by security force members  Although estimates diverge, the number of human rights defenders murdered in 2016 totaled 80 and another 51 in the first half of 2017, according to Somos Defensores ("We are Defenders"), a Colombian NGO that tracks violence against defenders and is cited by the State Department  Some groups, such as the Colombian think tank, Indepaz, say the numbers are higher, up to 117 murders in 2016  In the two years since the approval of the 2016 peace accord, social leaders, ethnic community leaders, and human rights defenders have suffered from continued high levels of violence  Human rights organizations cite the murders of more than 100 activists in 2017 and in 2018  Of the 109 human rights and civil society activists killed in 2018 through November, some were leaders of efforts to implement the 2016 peace accord  For instance, 13 social leaders were assassinated in the southwest department of Cauca in the first six months of the year, a department in Colombia with the fourth largest area devoted to coca cultivation in the country and host to several peace accord programs associated with rural development, including voluntary eradication of drug crops  Few, if any, of those accused of making threats and ordering or carrying out assassinations have been prosecuted  According to these activists, perpetrators still have little to fear of legal consequences  Since early 2012, violence against land rights activists has risen sharply with the start of implementation of the Victims' Law that authorized the return of stolen land  A September 2013 report by Human Rights Watch pointing to the rise in violence against land activists and claimants maintained that the environment had turned so threatening that claimants who had received land judgments were too frightened to return, and the government had received more than 500 serious threats against claimants in less than 18 months  According to Human Rights Watch, many of the threats and killings have been conducted by paramilitary-influenced Bacrim, although they may be operating at the behest of third-party "landowners," who are trying to protect their land from seizure  For more than a decade, the Colombian government tried to suppress violence against groups facing extraordinary risk through the National Protection Unit (UPN) programs  Colombia's UPN provides protection measures, such as body guards and protective gear, to individuals in at-risk groups, including human rights defenders, journalists, trade unionists, and others  However, according to international and Colombian human rights groups, the UPN has been plagued by corruption issues and has inadequately supported the prosecution of those responsible for attacks  According to the State Department's Report on Human Rights Practices covering 2017, the UPN protected roughly 6,067 at-risk individuals, including 575 human rights activists, with a budget of $150 million  Journalists, a group that has traditionally received protection measures from the UPN, continue to operate in a dangerous environment in Colombia  According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 47 journalists have been killed in work-related circumstances since 1992  Three Ecuadorian journalists were killed by a FARC dissident group close to the border of Ecuador in 2018, leading to the end of the Colombian government's peace talks with the ELN in Ecuador and their subsequent move to Cuba  To help monitor and verify that human rights were respected throughout implementation of the peace accord, the government formally renewed the mandate of the U N 's High Commissioner of Human Rights in 2016 for three years  The issue of violence against the labor movement in Colombia has sparked controversy and debate for years  Many human rights groups and labor advocates have maintained that Colombia's poor record on protecting its trade union members and leaders from violence is one reason to avoid closer trade relations with Colombia  The U S -Colombia Free Trade Agreement (also known as the U S -Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement) could not be enacted without addressing the deep concern of many Members of Congress that Colombia must enforce basic labor standards and especially measures to mitigate the alleged violence against trade union members and bring perpetrators of such violence to justice  In April 2011, the United States and Colombia agreed to an "Action Plan Related to Labor Rights" (the Labor Action Plan, LAP), which contained 37 measures that Colombia would implement to address violence, impunity, and workers' rights protection  Before the U S -Colombia Free Trade Agreement entered into force in April 2012, the U S  Trade Representative determined that Colombia had met all the important milestones in the LAP to date  Despite the programs launched and measures taken to implement the LAP, human rights and labor organizations claim that violence targeting labor union members continues  (Some analysts continue to debate whether labor activists are being targeted because of their union activities or for other reasons ) The Colombian government has acknowledged that violence and threats continue, but points to success in reducing violence generally and the number of homicides of labor unionists specifically  Violence levels in general are high in Colombia, but have steadily been decreasing  According to the data reported by the U N  Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its annual homicide report, rates have decreased dramatically since 2002, when the homicide rate was at 68 9 per 100,000  The Colombian Ministry of Defense reported in 2016 that the homicide rate had declined to 24 4 per 100,000  In this context of an overall steady decline in homicides, the number of labor union killings has also declined  For many years, the government and the leading NGO source that tabulates these crimes did not agree on the number of labor union murders because they used different methodologies  Both sources recorded a decline, but the government generally saw a steeper decline  According to the Colombian labor rights NGO and think tank, the National Labor School ( Escuela Nacional Sindical , ENS), there has been a significant decline from 191 labor union murders in 2001 to 20 reported in 2012  In 2017, through the month of August the ENS reported 14 labor murders  Of the cases covering homicides between January 2011 and August 2017, 162 homicide cases in which victims were labor union members, were 409 convictions, 31 for cases after 2011 and 378 for cases before 2011  In addition, labor advocates note that tracking homicides does not capture the climate of intimidation that Colombian labor unions face  In addition to lethal attacks, trade union members encounter increased death threats, arbitrary detention, and other types of harassment  Measures to strengthen the judicial system to combat impunity for such crimes are also part of the Labor Action Plan  Nevertheless, many analysts maintain there remains a large backlog of cases yet to be investigated involving violent crimes against union members  The internal conflict has been the major cause of a massive displacement of the civilian population that has many societal consequences, including implications for Colombia's poverty levels and stability  Colombia has one of the largest populations of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the world  Most estimates place the total at more than 7 million IDPs, or more than 10% of Colombia's estimated population of 49 million  This number of Colombians, forcibly displaced and impoverished as a result of the armed conflict, continues to grow and has been described by many observers as a humanitarian crisis  Indigenous and Afro-Colombian people make up an estimated 15%-22% of the Colombian population  They are, however, disproportionately represented among those displaced  The leading Colombian NGO that monitors displacement, Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), reports that 36% of the victims of forced displacement nationwide in 2012 came from the country's Pacific region where Afro-Colombian and indigenous people predominate  The Pacific region has marginal economic development as a result of weak central government presence and societal discrimination  (Some 84% of the land in the Pacific region is subject to collective-title rights granted to Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities  ) Illegal armed groups are active in usurping land in this region, which is valued for its proximity to a major port and drug trafficking routes, and the Afro- and indigenous communities are also caught in the middle of skirmishes between illegal groups and Colombian security forces  IDPs suffer stigma and poverty and are often subject to abuse and exploitation  In addition to the disproportionate representation of Colombia's ethnic communities among the displaced, other vulnerable populations, including women and children, have been disproportionally affected  Women, who make up more than half of the displaced population in Colombia, can become targets for sexual harassment, violence, and human trafficking  Displacement is driven by a number of factors, most frequently in more remote regions of the country where armed groups compete and seek to control territory or where they confront Colombian security forces  Violence that uproots people includes threatened or actual child recruitment or other forced recruitment by illegal armed groups, as well as physical, psychological, and sexual violence  Other contributing factors reported by NGOs include counternarcotics measures such as aerial spraying, illegal mining, and large-scale economic projects in rural areas  Inter-urban displacement is a growing phenomenon in cities such as Buenaventura and Medellin, which often results from violence and threats by organized crime groups  The Victims' Law of 2011, which began to be implemented in 2012, is the major piece of legislation to redress Colombian displacement victims with the return of their stolen land  The historic law provides restitution of land to those IDPs who were displaced since January 1, 1991  The law aims to return land to as many as 360,000 families (impacting up to 1 5 million people) who had their land stolen  The government notes that some 50% of the land to be restituted has the presence of land mines and that the presence of illegally armed groups in areas where victims have presented their applications for land restitution has slowed implementation of the law  Between 2011 and 2016, 100,000 applications for land restitution were filed and approximately 5,000 properties (roughly 5% of applications) were successfully returned following judgements on the cases  With the international support from U S  Agency for International Development (USAID) and other donors, a Victims Unit was established to coordinate the range of services for victims, including financial compensation and psychosocial services, provided by a host of government agencies  The 2011 Victims' Law is considered a model and particularly the implementation of a Victims' registry, which was supported by USAID  Through its Victims Unit, the Colombian government had provided financial reparations to over 800,000 victims and psychosocial support to 700,000 as of October 2018  The Global Report on Internal Displacement from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) reported, however, displacement inside Colombia continued with more than 171,000 internally displaced in 2016  As the political crisis in Venezuela has grown, a wave of refugees and migrants have come across the border into Colombia reversing an earlier trend  Venezuelans were fleeing political instability and economic turmoil in Colombia's once-wealthy neighboring nation  Venezuela's economic crisis worsened throughout 2018, prompting a sharp increase in migrants seeking to escape into Colombia  In response to the growing flood of Venezuelans, former President Santos initially announced that he would impose stricter migratory controls and deploy thousands of new security personnel along the frontier  Nevertheless, he acknowledged that Venezuela had once served as a vital escape valve for Colombian refugees fleeing their half century internal conflict, for which he was grateful  Colombia shares long borders with neighboring countries, and some of these border areas have been described as porous to illegal armed groups that threaten regional security  Colombia has a 1,370-mile border with Venezuela, approximately 1,000-mile borders with both Peru and Brazil, and shorter borders with Ecuador and Panama  Much of the territory is remote and rugged and suffers from inconsistent state presence  Although all of Colombia's borders have been problematic and subject to spillover effects from Colombia's armed conflict, the most affected are Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama  Over the years, Colombia's relations with Venezuela and Ecuador have been strained by Colombia's counterinsurgency operations, including cross-border military activity  The FARC and ELN insurgents have been present in shared-border regions and in some cases the insurgent groups used the neighboring countries to rest, resupply, and shelter  Former President Uribe accused the former Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez of harboring the FARC and ELN and maintained that he had evidence of FARC financing the 2006 political campaign of Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa  Relations between Ecuador and Colombia remained tense following the Colombian military bombardment of a FARC camp inside Ecuador in March 2008  Ecuador severed diplomatic relations with Colombia for 33 months  Also in 2008, Ecuador filed a suit against Colombia in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), claiming damages to Ecuadorian residents affected by spray drift from Colombia's aerial eradication of drug crops  In September 2013, Colombia reached an out-of-court settlement awarding Ecuador $15 million  Once in office, President Santos reestablished diplomatic ties with both countries and in his first term (2010-2014) cooperation greatly increased between Colombia and Venezuela on border and security issues and with Ecuador's Correa  However, concerns about Venezuelan links to the FARC and the continued use of Venezuela by the FARC and ELN as a safe haven to make incursions into Colombia remained an irritant in Colombian-Venezuelan relations  Nevertheless, the Venezuelan and Colombian governments committed to jointly combat narcotics trafficking and illegal armed group activities along the porous Venezuelan-Colombian border and Venezuela remained a supporting government of the FARC-government peace talks (along with Chile, Norway, and Cuba) through 2016, even after former President Chávez died in office in March 2013  Ecuador's government hosted exploratory talks between the ELN and the Santos government beginning in 2015, which became formal talks hosted in Quito in February 2017, although Ecuador's president requested that the talks move to Cuba in May 2018, due to a spate of border violence that could have been related to the ELN  For many years, the region in Panama that borders Colombia, the Darien, was host to a permanent presence of FARC soldiers who used the remote area for rest and resupply as well to transit drugs north  By 2015, according to the State Department, the FARC was no longer maintaining a permanent militarized presence in Panamanian territory, in part due to effective approaches taken by Panama's National Border Service in coordination with Colombia  Nevertheless, the remote Darien region still faces challenges from smaller drug trafficking organizations and criminal groups such as Bacrim and experiences problems with human smuggling with counterterrorism implications  When Colombia hosted the Sixth Summit of the Americas in April 2012, President Obama and President Santos announced a new joint endeavor, the Action Plan on Regional Security Cooperation  This joint effort, built on ongoing security cooperation, addresses hemispheric challenges, such as combating transnational organized crime, bolstering counternarcotics, strengthening institutions, and fostering resilient communities  The Action Plan focuses on capacity building for security personnel in Central America and the Caribbean by Colombian security forces (both Colombian military and police)  To implement the plan, Colombia undertook several hundred activities in cooperation with Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, and between 2013 and 2017 trained almost 17,000 individuals (see Figure 4 )  The Colombian government notes that this program grew dramatically from 34 executed activities in 2013 to 441 activities planned for 2018  Colombia has increasingly trained military and police from other countries both under this partnership and other arrangements, including countries across the globe  According to the Colombian Ministry of Defense, around 80% of those trained were from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean  U S  and Colombian officials maintain that the broader effort is designed to export Colombian expertise in combating crime and terrorism while promoting the rule of law and greater bilateral and multilateral law enforcement cooperation  Critics of the effort to "export Colombian security successes" maintain that human rights concerns have not been adequately addressed  Some observers question the portion of these activities that are funded by the U S  government and want to see more transparency  In one analysis of the training, a majority of the training was provided by Colombian National Police rather than the Colombian Army, in such areas as ground, air, maritime, and river interdiction; police testimony; explosives; intelligence operations; psychological operations; and Comando JUNGLA, Colombia's elite counternarcotics police program  Other analysts praise the Colombian training and maintain that U S  assistance provided in this way has helped to improve, professionalize, and expand the Colombian military, making it the region's second largest  As that highly trained military shifts from combating the insurgency and the Colombian National Police take the dominant role in guaranteeing domestic security, Colombia may play a greater role in regional security and even in coalition efforts internationally  In September 2017, President Trump announced that he had considered designating Colombia in noncompliance with U S  counternarcotics requirements, but noted that he had not proceeded with the step in part because of Colombian training efforts to assist others in the region with combating narcotics and related crime  Colombia is a key U S  ally in the region  With diplomatic relations that began in the 19 th century following Colombia's independence from Spain, the countries have enjoyed close and strong ties  Because of Colombia's prominence in the production of illegal drugs, the United States and Colombia forged a close partnership over the past 16 years  Focused initially on counternarcotics, and later counterterrorism, a program called Plan Colombia laid the foundation for a strategic partnership that has broadened to include sustainable development, human rights, trade, regional security, and many other areas of cooperation  Between FY2000 and FY2016, the U S  Congress appropriated more than $10 billion in assistance from U S  State Department and Department of Defense (DOD) accounts to carry out Plan Colombia and its follow-on strategies  During this time, Colombia made notable progress combating drug trafficking and terrorist activities and reestablishing government control over much of its territory  Its economic and social policies have reduced the poverty rate and its security policies have lowered the homicide rate  Counternarcotics policy has been the defining issue in U S -Colombian relations since the 1980s because of Colombia's preeminence as a source country for illicit drugs  Peru and Bolivia were the main global producers of cocaine in the 1980s and early 1990s  However, successful efforts there in reducing supply pushed cocaine production from those countries to Colombia, which soon surpassed both its Andean neighbors  The FARC and other armed groups in the country financed themselves primarily through narcotics trafficking, and that lucrative illicit trade provided the gasoline for the decades-long internal armed conflict at least since the 1990s  Colombia emerged to dominate the cocaine trade by the late 1990s  National concern about the crack cocaine epidemic and extensive drug use in the United States led to greater concern with Colombia as a source  As Colombia became the largest producer of coca leaf and the largest exporter of finished cocaine, heroin produced from Colombian-grown poppies was supplying a growing proportion of the U S  market  Alarm over the volumes of heroin and cocaine being exported to the United States was a driving force behind U S  support for Plan Colombia at its inception  The evolution of Plan Colombia took place under changing leadership and changing conditions in both the United States and Colombia  Plan Colombia was followed by successor strategies such as the National Consolidation Plan, described below, and U S -Colombia policy has reached a new phase anticipating post-conflict Colombia  Announced in 1999, Plan Colombia originally was a six-year strategy to end the country's decades-long armed conflict, eliminate drug trafficking, and promote development  The counternarcotics and security strategy was developed by the government of President Andrés Pastrana in consultation with U S  officials  Colombia and its allies in the United States realized that for the nation to gain control of drug trafficking required a stronger security presence, the rebuilding of institutions, and extending state presence where it was weak or nonexistent  Initially, the U S  policy focus was on programs to reduce the production of illicit drugs  U S  support to Plan Colombia consisted of training and equipping counternarcotics battalions in the Colombian Army and specialized units of the Colombian National Police, drug eradication programs, alternative development, and other supply reduction programs  The original 1999 plan had a goal to reduce "the cultivation, processing, and distribution of narcotics by 50%" over the plan's six-year timeframe  The means to achieve this ambitious goal were a special focus on eradication and alternative development; strengthening, equipping, and professionalizing the Colombian Armed Forces and the police; strengthening the judiciary; and fighting corruption  Other objectives were to protect citizens from violence, promote human rights, bolster the economy, and improve governance  U S  officials expressed their support for the program by emphasizing its counterdrug elements (including interdiction)  The focus on counternarcotics was the basis for building bipartisan support to fund the program in the U S  Congress because some Members of Congress were leery of involvement in fighting a counterinsurgency, which they likened to the "slippery slope" of the war in Vietnam  President George W  Bush came to office in 2001 and oversaw some changes to Plan Colombia  The primary vehicle for providing U S  support to Plan Colombia was the Andean Counterdrug Initiative, which was included in foreign operations appropriations  The Bush Administration requested new flexibility so that U S -provided assistance would back a "unified campaign against narcotics trafficking, terrorist activities, and other threats to [Colombia's] national security" due to the breakdown of peace talks between the FARC and the Pastrana government in February 2002  Congress granted this request for a unified campaign to fight drug trafficking and terrorist organizations as Members of Congress came to realize how deeply intertwined the activities of Colombia's terrorist groups were with the illicit drug trade that funded them  However, Congress prohibited U S  personnel from directly participating in combat missions  Congress placed a legislative cap on the number of U S  military and civilian contractor personnel who could be stationed in Colombia, although the cap was adjusted to meet needs over time  The current limit (first specified in the FY2015 National Defense Authorization Act, as amended) caps total military personnel at 800 and civilian contractors at 600, although numbers deployed have been far below the 1,400-person cap for years and now total fewer than 200  President Uribe (2002-2010) embraced Plan Colombia with an aggressive strategy toward the insurgent forces that prioritized citizen security  His Democratic Security Policy, implemented first in a military campaign called Plan Patriota, relied on the military to push FARC forces away from the major cities to remote rural areas and the borderlands  Like his predecessor, President Pastrana, Uribe continued to expand the Colombian military and police  He enhanced the intelligence capacity, professionalization, and coordination of the forces, in part with training provided by U S  forces  His strategy resulted in expanded state control over national territory and a significant reduction in kidnappings, terrorist attacks, and homicides  In 2007, the Uribe administration announced a shift to a "Policy of Consolidation of Democratic Security " The new doctrine was based on a "whole-of-government" approach to consolidate state presence in marginal areas that were historically neglected—vulnerable to drug crop cultivation, violence, and control by illegal armed groups  Called a strategic leap forward by then-Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, in 2009 the new strategy came to be called the National Consolidation Plan (see below)  Colombian support for Plan Colombia and for the nation's security program grew under Uribe's leadership  President Uribe levied a "wealth tax" to fund Colombia's security efforts, taxing the wealthiest taxpayers to fund growing defense and security expenditures  Overall U S  expenditures on Plan Colombia were only a modest portion of what Colombians spent on their own security  By one 2009 estimate, U S  expenditures were not more than 10% of what Colombians invested in their total security costs  In 2000, Colombia devoted less than 2% of its GDP to military and police expenditures and in 2010 that investment had grown to more than 4% of GDP  One assessment notes "in the end there is no substitute for host country dedication and funding" to turn around a security crisis such as Colombia faced at the beginning of the millennium  In 2008, congressional support for Plan Colombia and its successor programs also shifted  Some Members of Congress believed that the balance of programming was too heavily weighted toward security  Prior to 2008, the emphasis had been on "hard side" security assistance (to the military and police) compared with "soft side" traditional development and rule of law programs  Members debated if the roughly 75%/25% mix should be realigned  Since FY2008, Congress has reduced the proportion of assistance for security-related programs and increased the proportion for economic and social aid  As Colombia's security situation improved and Colombia's economy recovered, the United States also began turning over to Colombians operational and financial responsibility for efforts formerly funded by the U S  government  The Colombian government "nationalized" the training, equipping, and support for Colombian military programs, such as the counterdrug brigade, Colombian Army aviation, and the air bridge denial program  U S  funding overall began to decline  The nationalization efforts were not intended to end U S  assistance, but rather to gradually reduce it to pre-Plan Colombia levels, adjusted for inflation  A key goal of Plan Colombia was to reduce the supply of illegal drugs produced and exported by Colombia but the goals became broader over time  Bipartisan support for the policy existed through three U S  Administrations—President Bill Clinton, President George W  Bush, and President Barack Obama  Plan Colombia came to be viewed by some analysts as one of the most enduring and effective U S  policy initiatives in the Western Hemisphere  Some have lauded the strategy as a model  In 2009, William Brownfield, then-U S  Ambassador to Colombia, described Plan Colombia as "the most successful nation-building exercise that the United States has associated itself with perhaps in the last 25-30 years " Other observers, however, were critical of the policy as it unfolded  Many in the NGO and human rights community maintained the strategy, with its emphasis on militarization and security, was inadequate for solving Colombia's persistent, underlying problems of rural violence, poverty, neglect and institutional weakness  Nevertheless, it appears that improvements in security conditions have been accompanied by substantial economic growth and a reduction in poverty levels over time  The National Consolidation Plan first launched during the Uribe Administration, (renamed the National Plan for Consolidation and Territorial Reconstruction), was designed to coordinate government efforts in regions where marginalization, drug trafficking, and violence converge  The whole-of-government consolidation was to integrate security, development, and counternarcotics to achieve a permanent state presence in vulnerable areas  Once security forces took control of a contested area, government agencies in housing, education, and development would regularize the presence of the state and reintegrate the municipalities of these marginalized zones into Colombia  The plan had been restructured several times by the Santos government  The United States supported the Colombian government's consolidation strategy through an inter-agency program called the Colombia Strategic Development Initiative (CSDI)  CSDI provided U S  assistance to "fill gaps" in Colombian government programming  At the U S  Embassy in Colombia, CSDI coordinated efforts of the U S  Agency for International Development (USAID), the State Department's Narcotics Affairs Section, the U S  Military Group, and the Department of Justice to assist Colombia in carrying out the consolidation plan by expanding state presence and promoting economic opportunities in priority zones  It combined traditional counternarcotics assistance for eradication, interdiction, alternative development, and capacity building for the police, military, and justice sector institutions with other economic and social development initiatives  As the peace agreement between the FARC and the government moved forward into implementation, the focus of U S  assistance to Colombia has shifted again  With a foundation of the work done to advance consolidation, U S  assistance has begun to aid in post-conflict planning and support Colombia's transition to peace by building up democratic institutions, protecting human rights and racial and ethnic minorities, and promoting economic opportunity  USAID's country cooperation strategy for 2014-2018 anticipated the Colombian government reaching a negotiated agreement with the FARC, but remained flexible if an agreement was not signed  It recognized early implementation efforts, especially in the first 24 months after signature, would be critical to demonstrate or model effective practices  In the next five years, it envisioned Colombia evolving from aid recipient to provider of technical assistance to neighbors in the region  Consolidating state authority and presence in the rural areas with weak institutions remains a significant challenge following the FARC's disarmament in the summer of 2017  Reintegration of the FARC and possibly other insurgent forces, such as the ELN, will be expensive and delicate  In particular, critics of the consolidation efforts of the Colombian government maintain that the Santos administration often lacked the commitment to hand off targeted areas from the military to civilian-led development and achieve locally led democratic governance  Consolidation efforts suffered from low political support, disorganization at the top levels of government, and failure to administer national budgets effectively in more remote areas, among other challenges  In August 2018, shortly after President Duque took office, USAID announced a framework of priorities for U S  economic development assistance to Colombia  Some of these priorities include promoting and supporting a whole-of-government strategy to include the dismantling of organized crime; increasing the effectiveness of Colombia's security and criminal justice institutions; promoting enhanced prosperity and job creation through trade; improving the investment climate for U S  companies; and advancing Colombia's capacity to strengthen governance and transition to sustainable peace, including reconciliation among victims, ex-combatants, and other citizens  The U S  Congress initially approved legislation in support of Plan Colombia in 2000, as part of the Military Construction Appropriations Act of 2001 ( P L  106-246 )  Plan Colombia was never authorized by Congress, but it was funded annually through appropriations  From FY2000 through FY2016, U S  funding for Plan Colombia and its follow-on strategies exceeded $10 billion in State Department and Defense Department programs  From FY2000 to FY2009, the United States provided foreign operations assistance to Colombia through the Andean Counterdrug Program (ACP) account, formerly known as the Andean Counterdrug Initiative, and other aid accounts  In FY2008, Congress continued to fund eradication and interdiction programs through the ACP account, but funded alternative development and institution building programs through the Economic Support Fund (ESF) account  In the FY2010 request, the Obama Administration shifted ACP funds into the International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) account  Since FY2008, U S  assistance has gradually declined because of tighter foreign aid budgets and nationalized Plan Colombia-related programs  In FY2014, in line with other foreign assistance reductions, funds appropriated to Colombia from State Department accounts declined to slightly below $325 million  In FY2015, Congress appropriated $300 million for bilateral assistance to Colombia in foreign operation  The FY2016 Omnibus Appropriations bill ( P L  114-113 ) provided Colombia from U S  State Department and U S  Agency for International Development accounts, slightly under $300 million, nearly identical to that appropriated in FY2015 (without P L  480, the Food for Peace account, the total for FY2016 was $293 million as shown in Table 1 )  In FY2017, Congress funded a program the Obama Administration had proposed called "Peace Colombia" to re-balance U S  assistance to support the peace process and implementation of the accord  In May 2017, Congress approved a FY2017 omnibus appropriations measure, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017 ( P L  115-31 ), which funded the various programs of Peace Colombia at $391 3 million  In the FY2017 legislation, Congress appropriated the following: The ESF account increased to $187 million (from $134 million in FY2016) to build government presence, encourage crop substitution to replace drug crops, and provide other assistance to conflict victims, including Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities  However, only $180 million was subsequently allocated  INCLE funding increased to $143 million with a focus on manual eradication of coca crops, support for the Colombian National Police, and judicial reform efforts  INCLE funding also included $10 million for Colombian forces' training to counterparts in other countries  $38 5 million in Foreign Military Financing (FMF); and $21 million in Nonproliferation, Anti-Terrorism, Demining, and Related Programs (NADR), which was a relatively large increase from under $4 million in FY2016 to focus on the demining effort  How the Trump Administration will engage with the issues of supporting post-conflict stability in Colombia has not been clearly defined by either the State Department or other executive departments  For example, the Trump Administration's proposed foreign aid budget for FY2018 would have reduced assistance to Colombia to $251 million  However, the FY2018 omnibus appropriations measure, approved by Congress in March 2018 ( P L  115-114 ), again included $391 3 million to support Colombia's transition to peace  The Trump Administration's FY2019 budget request for Colombia is $265 million, approximately a 32% reduction from the $391 3 million appropriated by Congress in FY2018  However, the House and Senate appropriations bills, H R  6385 and S  3108 , again would support the funding level of $391 3 million  The FY2019 Administration request would reduce post-conflict recovery programs and place greater emphasis on counternarcotics and security  Below, Table 1 provides account data from the annual international affairs congressional budget justification documents  The information about DOD-funded programs was provided to the Congressional Research Service by DOD analysts in December 2015 and October 2017 (and has not been updated)  The breakout of DOD assistance to Colombia is shown in Table 2     Colombia also has received additional U S  humanitarian funding to help it cope with more than 1 million Venezuelan migrants  As of September 30, 2018, U S  government humanitarian funding for the Venezuela response totaled approximately $96 5 million for both FY2017 and FY2018 combined, of which $54 8 million was for Colombia  (Humanitarian funding is drawn primarily from the global humanitarian accounts in annual Department of State/Foreign Operations appropriations acts ) In addition, the U S  Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort is on an 11-week medical support mission deployed through the end of 2018 to work with government partners, in part to assist with arrivals from Venezuela  In Colombia, the U S  response aims to help the Venezuelan arrivals as well as the local Colombian communities that are hosting them  In addition to humanitarian assistance, the United States is providing $37 million in bilateral assistance to support medium- and longer-term efforts by Colombia  Some Members of Congress have been deeply concerned about human rights violations in Colombia—especially those perpetrated by any recipients or potential recipients of U S  assistance  In Colombia's multisided, 50-year conflict, the FARC and ELN, the paramilitaries and their successors, and Colombia's security forces have all committed serious violations  Colombians have endured generations of noncombatant killings, massacres, kidnappings, forced displacements, forced disappearances, land mine casualties, and acts of violence that violate international humanitarian law  The extent of the crimes and the backlog of human rights cases to be prosecuted have overwhelmed the Colombian judiciary, which some describe as "inefficient" and overburdened  The United Nations and many human rights groups maintain that although some prosecutions have gone forward, most remain unresolved and the backlog of cases has been reduced slowly  In addition to the problem of impunity for such serious crimes, continued violations remain an issue  Since 2002, Congress has required in the annual foreign operations appropriations legislation that the Secretary of State certify annually to Congress that the Colombian military is severing ties to paramilitaries and that the government is investigating complaints of human rights abuses and meeting other human rights statutory criteria  (The certification criteria have evolved over time  ) For several years, certification was required before 30% of funds to the Colombian military could be released  The FY2014 appropriations legislation requires that 25% of funding under the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program be held back pending certification by the Secretary of State  Some human rights groups have criticized the regular certification of Colombia, maintaining that evidence they have presented to the State Department has contradicted U S  findings  However, even some critics have acknowledged the human rights conditions on military assistance to Colombia to be "a flawed but useful tool" because the certification process requires that the U S  government regularly consult with Colombian and international human rights groups  Critics acknowledge that over time, conditionality can improve human rights compliance  Additional tools for monitoring human rights compliance by Colombian security forces receiving U S  assistance are the so-called "Leahy Law" restrictions, which Congress first passed in the late 1990s prior to the outset of Plan Colombia  First introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy, these provisions deny U S  assistance to a foreign country's security forces if the U S  Secretary of State has credible information that such units have committed "a gross violation of human rights " The provisions apply to security assistance provided by the State Department and DOD  The Leahy Law under the State Department is authorized by the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) of 1961, as amended, and is codified at 22 U S C  2378d (§520M of the FAA)  The DOD Leahy provisions, which for years applied just to DOD training, now include a broader range of assistance, as modified in the FY2014 appropriations legislation  The provision related to the Leahy Laws for DOD assistance is codified at 10 U S C  362, and prohibits "any training, equipment, or other assistance," to a foreign security force unit if there is credible information that the unit has committed a gross violation of human rights  Both the State Department and DOD Leahy provisions require the State Department to review and clear—or vet—foreign security forces to determine if any individual or unit is credibly believed to be guilty of a gross human rights violation  Leahy vetting is typically conducted by U S  embassies and State Department headquarters  Reportedly on an annual basis about 1% of foreign security forces are disqualified from receiving assistance under the Leahy provisions, although many more are affected by administrative issues and are denied assistance until those conditions are resolved  Tainted security force units that are denied assistance may be remediated or cleared, but the procedures for remediation differ slightly between the DOD and State (or FAA) provisions  Because of the large amount of security assistance provided to Colombian forces (including the military and police), the State Department reportedly vets more candidates for assistance in Colombia than in any other country  In the late 1990s, poor human rights conditions in Colombia were a driving concern for developing the Leahy Law provisions  The U S  Embassy in Bogotá, with nearly two decades of experience in its vetting operations, has been cited as a source of best practices for other embassies seeking to bring their operations into compliance or enhance their performance  State Department officials have cited Colombia as a model operation that has helped Colombia to improve its human rights compliance  However, some human rights organizations are critical of the Leahy vetting process in Colombia, and cite the prevalence of extrajudicial executions allegedly committed by Colombian military units as evidence that these restrictions on U S  assistance have failed to remove human rights violators from the Colombian military  A human rights nongovernmental organization, Fellowship of Reconciliation, has published reports alleging an association between false positive killings and Colombian military units vetted by the State Department to receive U S  assistance  However, some have questioned the group's methodology  Some human rights organizations contend that the U S  government has tolerated abusive behavior by Colombian security forces without taking action or withholding assistance  Measured exclusively in counternarcotics terms, Plan Colombia has been a mixed success  Colombia remains the dominant producer of cocaine and in the DEA's National Drug Threat Assessment for 2017 continued to be the source for 95% of cocaine seized in the United States  Enforcement, eradication, and improved security squeezed production in Colombia, so that in 2012, Peru reemerged as the global leader in cocaine production, surpassing Colombia, for a year or so  In the early 2000s, given Colombia's predominance as the source of cocaine destined for U S  markets and its status as the second-largest producer of heroin consumed in the United States, eradication of coca bush and opium poppy (from which heroin is derived) was an urgent priority and became the preferred tool for controlling the production of these drugs  Another critical component of the drug supply reduction effort was alternative development programs funded by the U S  Agency for International Development (USAID) to assist illicit crop cultivators with transitioning to licit crop production and livelihoods  Analysts have long debated how effective Plan Colombia and its follow-on strategies were in combating illegal drugs  Although Plan Colombia failed to meet its goal of reducing the cultivation, processing, and distribution of illicit drugs by 50% in its original six-year time frame, Colombia has sustained significant reductions in coca cultivation in recent years  According to U S  estimates, cultivation of coca declined from 167,000 hectares in 2007 to 78,000 hectares in 2012  (Poppy cultivation declined by more than 90% between 2000 and 2009 ) According to U S  government estimates, Colombia's potential production of pure cocaine fell to 170 metric tons in 2012, the lowest level in two decades  However, it started to rise slightly in 2013, and more dramatically in 2014 through 2016  In those years, cultivation of coca and production of cocaine grew significantly in part due to ending the aerial eradication of coca crops  In 2015, following a U N  agency determination that the herbicide used to spray coca crops was probably carcinogenic, Colombia's minister of health determined that aerial eradication of coca was not consistent with requirements of Colombia's Constitutional Court  In 2016, as noted above, the U S  DEA reported that 95% of cocaine seized in the United States originated in Colombia  According to U S  Office of National Drug Control Policy, Colombia in 2017 cultivated an unprecedented 209,000 hectares of coca, from which cocaine is derived, capable of generating 921 metric tons of cocaine  The United Nations estimates for 2017, which typically differ in quantity but follow the same trends as U S  estimates, maintained that Colombia's potential production of cocaine reached nearly 1,370 metric tons, 31% above its 2016 estimate  Even with Colombia's economic stability and improving security, cocaine exports (primarily to the U S  market) remain a major concern for U S  lawmakers  However, in drug interdiction, Colombia has set records for many years and is considered a strong and reliable U S  partner  The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime ( Table 4 ), shows Colombia cultivating 146,000 hectares of coca in 2016, a 52% increase over 2015 and another increase to 171,000 hectares, a 17% increase, in 2017  Although cocaine seizures were quite high in both years, the interdiction of cocaine was insufficient to counter the large increases in production  Both manual eradication and aerial eradication were central components of Plan Colombia to reduce coca and poppy cultivation  Manual eradication is conducted by teams, usually security personnel, who uproot and kill the plant  Aerial eradication involves spraying the plants from aircraft with an herbicide mixture to destroy the drug crop, but it may not kill the plants  In the context of Colombia's continuing internal conflict, manual eradication was far more dangerous than aerial spraying  U S  and Colombian policymakers recognized the dangers of manual eradication and, therefore, employed large-scale aerial spray campaigns to reduce coca crop yields, especially from large coca plantations  Colombia is the only country globally that aerially sprayed its illicit crops, and the practice has been controversial for health and environmental reasons, resulting in a Colombian decision to end aerial eradication in 2015  Since 2002, as a condition of fully funding the spraying program, Congress has regularly directed the State Department, after study and consultation with the U S  Environmental Protection Agency and other relevant agencies, to certify that the spraying did not "pose unreasonable risks or adverse effects to humans or the environment " This certification requirement was included most years in the annual foreign operations appropriations legislation  Some analysts have also raised questions about the monetary and collateral costs of aerial eradication compared with other drug supply control strategies, its effectiveness, and its limited effect on the U S  retail price of cocaine  U S  State Department officials attribute Colombia's decline in coca cultivation after 2007 and prior to 2013 to the persistent aerial eradication of drug crops in tandem with manual eradication where viable  Between 2009 and 2013, Colombia aerially sprayed roughly 100,000 hectares annually  In 2013, however, eradication efforts declined  Colombia aerially eradicated roughly 47,000 hectares  It manually eradicated 22,120 hectares, short of the goal of 38,500 hectares  This reduction had a number of causes: the U S -supported spray program was suspended in October 2013 after two U S  contract pilots were shot down, rural protests in Colombia hindered manual and aerial eradication efforts, and security challenges limited manual eradicators working in border areas  In late 2013, Ecuador won an out-of-court settlement in a case filed in 2008 before the International Court of Justice in The Hague for the negative effects of spray drift over its border with Colombia  In negotiations with the FARC, the government and the FARC provisionally agreed in May 2014 that voluntary manual eradication would be prioritized over forced eradication  Aerial eradication remained a viable tool in the government's drug control strategy, according to the agreement, but would be permitted only if voluntary and manual eradication could not be conducted safely  In April 2015, the Santos administration determined that glyphosate, a broad-spectrum, nonselective herbicide used commercially, but in Colombia sprayed on coca plants to eradicate them, was "probably carcinogenic" to humans in a review published by a World Health Organization (WHO) affiliate  In October 2015, the government ended spraying operations and began to implement a new public health approach toward illicit drugs, one that proponents suggested would reduce human rights violations  On the supply side, Colombia's new drug policy gives significant attention to expanding alternative development and licit crop substitution while intensifying interdiction efforts  The State Department in its 2015 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), however, warned that illicit cultivation was expanding in areas long off-limits to aerial spraying, including national parks, a buffer zone with Ecuador where aerial eradication has been restricted, and in indigenous or protected Afro-Colombian territories  Colombian interdiction practices are deemed some of the most effective in the world  The Colombian government reported seizing more than 207 metric tons (mt) of cocaine base in 2014 and that seizure total doubled by 2017 with capture of 442 mt of cocaine  According to the U S  State Department's 2018 INCSR , Colombia also seized 197 mt of marijuana, 348 kilograms of heroin, and destroyed more than 3,400 cocaine base and hydrochloride labs  USAID funds and runs alternative development programs in Colombia to assist communities with transitioning from a dependency on illicit crops to licit employment and livelihoods  Alternative development was once focused narrowly on crop substitution and assistance with infrastructure and marketing  Since the Colombian government's shift to a consolidation strategy, USAID has supported "consolidation and livelihoods" programming in 40 of the 58 strategically located, conflict-affected municipalities targeted by the government's National Consolidation Plan  To facilitate economic development, USAID funds initiatives that assist farmers and others with shifting from coca growing to licit economic opportunities  These programs are designed to strengthen small farmer producer organizations, improve their productivity, and connect them to markets  Some observers maintain that poor and unsustainable outcomes from alternative development programs while the Colombian conflict was still under way resulted from ongoing insecurity and lack of timeliness or sequencing of program elements  The renewed commitment to alternative development and crop substitution in the 2016 peace accord with the FARC may be similarly challenged  Formal implementation of the peace accord on drug eradication and crop substitution began in late May 2017 with collective agreements committing communities to replace their coca crops with licit crops  In some regions, the program is extended to families who cultivate coca and also to producers of legal crops and landless harvesters  The Colombian government also committed to a combined approach of both voluntary and forced manual eradication  The government's goal set for 2017 was eradicating 100,000 hectares of coca, 50,000 through forced manual eradication and 50,000 through "crop substitution" accords reached with coca farming households who would voluntary eradicate  At the U S -Colombia High Level Dialogue held in Bogotá in March 2018, a renewed commitment to the enduring partnership between the United States and Colombia was announced  A major outcome was a U S -Colombia pledge to reduce illegal narcotics trafficking through expanded counternarcotics cooperation  The new goal set was to reduce Colombia's estimated cocaine production and coca cultivation to 50% of current levels by 2023  In addition, a memorandum of understanding was signed to combat the illegal gold mining that funds transnational criminal organizations  Although President Duque appears determined to pursue a more aggressive approach to drug policy, he has not clearly stated how his approach to counternarcotics will differ from that of his predecessor  The government may restart aerial eradication, a strategy that ended in 2015 due to the Colombian Health Ministry's concerns over cancer-causing potential of the herbicide glyphosate, but no precise plans for restarting the program have been announced in the Duque Administration's first three months in office  Experimentation with delivering glyphosate by drones (rather than planes) began in June 2018 under the Santos Administration and is continuing under the Duque government  On October 1, 2018, President Duque authorized police to confiscate and destroy any quantity of drugs found on persons in possession of them, resulting in the seizure of more than 7 metric tons of drugs in less than two weeks  This enforcement measure may violate a 1994 Colombian Constitutional Court ruling, however, in which Colombians may carry small doses of drugs for personal use, including marijuana, hashish, and cocaine  Several court challenges have been filed that seek to nullify the Duque decree on constitutional grounds of protected personal use  Drug trafficking continues to trigger conflict over land in Colombia while affecting the most vulnerable groups, including Afro-Colombian, peasant, and indigenous populations  Some analysts warn that national and international pressure for drug eradication could also lead to increased human rights violations, including health consequences by reviving aerial spraying of drug crops and government actions to forcibly break up demonstrations by coca producers who resist eradication  Some analysts have advocated that investments to lower drug supply need to go beyond eradication, which has not been a lasting approach to reducing drug crop cultivation  For instance, the government could provide economic and education opportunities to at-risk youth to enhance their role in peace building and to prevent their recruitment into the drug trade and other illegal activity  Economic relations between Colombia and the United States have deepened  The U S -Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) entered into force in May 2012  By 2020, it will phase out all tariffs and other barriers to bilateral trade between Colombia and the United States, its largest trade partner  Since the U S -Colombia FTA went into force, the stock of U S  investment in Colombia surpassed $7 billion in 2014 but dropped to $6 2 billion in 2016 (on a historical cost basis), concentrated mostly in mining and manufacturing  According to the U S  Department of Commerce, U S  exports to Colombia exceeded $26 8 billion in 2016 and Colombia was the 22 nd -largest market for U S  exports; however, U S  imports from Colombia declined between 2015 and 2016  Major U S  exports to Colombia include oil (noncrude oil products including gasoline), machinery, cereals, organic chemicals, and plastic  Because 65% of U S  imports from Colombia are crude oil imports, much of the decline in value was caused by the sharp fall in oil prices that began in 2014  Major U S  imports beside crude oil, include gold, coffee, cut flowers, and fruits  Congressional interest in Colombia now extends far beyond security and counternarcotics and has grown in the area of bilateral trade following implementation of the U S -Colombia FTA, (also known at the U S -Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement)  Colombia is a founding member of the Pacific Alliance, along with Chile, Mexico, and Peru, and has sought to deepen trade integration and cross-border investment with its partners in the alliance while reducing trade barriers  The Pacific Alliance aims to go further by creating a common stock market, allowing for the eventual free movement of businesses and persons, and serving as an export platform to the Asia-Pacific region  Colombia's leadership role in the Pacific Alliance and Colombia's accession to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in May 2018, following a review of the country's macroeconomic policies and changes, are major new developments  The accession to the OECD was approved by Colombia's lower house in October 2018 and the Senate in November 2018, but it remained under final review by Colombia's Constitutional Court in early February 2019  The Santos administration pushed to meet the criteria required for OECD membership because it maintained that such recognition signified Colombia's attainment of world-class development standards and policies  Colombia has made progress on trade issues such as copyright, pharmaceuticals, fuel and trucking regulations, and labor concerns (including subcontracting methods and progress on resolving cases of violence against union activists)  Congress remains interested in Colombia's future because the country has become one of the United States' closest allies  With 17 years of investment in Colombia's security and stability, some maintain that there has already been a strong return on U S  investment  Plan Colombia and its successor strategies broadened from counternarcotics to include humanitarian concerns, efforts to bolster democratic development and human rights protections, and trade and investment to spark growth  The record expansion of Colombia's coca crop and increasing cocaine exports to the United States, however, may significantly hinder the effort to consolidate peace in Colombia and could potentially increase corruption and extortion  A significant portion of the Colombian public remains skeptical of the peace process and the FARC's role in Colombia's democracy  Other Colombians maintain that support for peace programs in Colombia is important not only to benefit former FARC or other demobilized combatants but also to fulfill promises the government made in the peace accords to the country's 8 6 million victims of the five-decade conflict  As President Duque concluded his first 100 days in office, his government faced overlapping challenges: (1) an upsurge in illicit drug crops, which had set records in 2016 and 2017; (2) implementation of provisions of the peace accord negotiated by former president Santos but marred by slow implementation, attacks on land and human rights activists, and projected budgetary shortfalls; (3) renewed violent competition among criminal groups in rural areas, some of which reportedly are sheltering in Venezuela; and (4) Venezuela's humanitarian crisis, which resulted in a surge of migrants fleeing to or through Colombia  The annual level of foreign assistance provided by the U S  Congress for Colombia began to decline in FY2008 and then gradually increased in FY2017 and FY2018 to support peace and implementation of the FARC-government peace accord  Some Members of Congress may want to build on cooperation with Colombian partners to continue to train Central Americans and other third-country nationals in counternarcotics and security, including programs in citizen security, crime prevention and monitoring, military and police capacity building, and hostage negotiation and cybersecurity  Congress may continue to closely monitor Colombia's domestic security situation  It also may continue to oversee issues such as drug trafficking; Colombia's effort to combat other illegal armed groups such as Bacrim; the status of human rights protections; and the expansion of health, economic, environmental, energy, and educational cooperation  Congress may seek to foster Colombian leadership in the region to counter growing political instability in Venezuela  The U S  Congress has been interested in expanding investment and trade opportunities both bilaterally with Colombia and within regional groupings, such as the Pacific Alliance  Some analysts contend that U S -Colombian trade improvements rest on the strength of the overall relationship between Colombia and the United States  


Report 2:  Institutions respond to the report with corrective actions that the institution will take to address the findings  When the institution has resolved all corrective actions from the audit, the audit is closed  Additionally, each quarter, PRD provides HRMD with a report that summarizes its quarterly audit findings  According to BOP officials, HRMD uses these reports to identify any agency-wide trends that need to be addressed  Our review of BOP data showed that between fiscal years 2012 and 2016, PRD conducted nearly 200 audits  For example, in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016, PRD audited five institutions’ and regional offices’ human resource management functions  During these audits, PRD identified nine deficiencies, one of which pertained to retention incentives  Specifically, it found that one audited institution did not terminate an employee’s retention incentive after the employee had relocated to another institution  To correct the deficiency, the institution cancelled the retention incentive which discontinued future disbursements  According to BOP officials, a bill was generated to recoup the overpayment from the employee  BOP institutions conduct annual operation reviews of internal functions, such as human resources  BOP officials told us that each institution conducts annual operational reviews of various internal functions, such as human resources  According to BOP’s Program Review Guidelines for Human Resource Servicing Offices, during these reviews, institutions are required to review supporting documentation for staff currently receiving an incentive to determine if the incentives are still warranted  If the initial request for the retention incentive was made over the preceding 12 months, institutions are also required to ensure that it was approved  According to BOP officials, the results of these reviews are reported to PRD through the Central Office  DOJ’s Justice Management Division (JMD) audits BOP’s human resources programs  According to BOP officials, JMD conducts audits of component-level human resources programs to determine whether BOP’s systems are compliant with DOJ policy and aligned with DOJ’s Human Capital Strategic Plan  JMD’s most recent audit of BOP’s human resources programs that included a review of BOP’s retention incentives occurred in September 2010 at BOP’s Human Resource Service Center in Grand Prairie, Texas  JMD found that in some cases BOP granted retention incentives prior to the signing of service agreements  JMD also found that BOP lacked documentation to authorize a group retention incentive for employees at its Victorville, California institution  BOP’s written response to the findings stated that JMD incorrectly applied the service agreement requirement, as service agreements were not warranted in the specific case that it identified  Additionally, BOP stated that the documents JMD identified as missing from the case files in question were kept in separate files and not required to be part of the retention incentive application  JMD agreed with BOP’s responses and in January 2013, JMD closed out the audit’s findings noting that these responses satisfied all required corrective actions  While BOP takes a number of steps to determine current workforce needs and how to fill those needs, BOP does not strategically plan for how retention incentives can be used to meet long-term human capital goals  BOP officials stated that planning for human capital needs is conducted at institutions during quarterly workforce utilization meetings or manpower salary meetings  During these meetings, executive staff at the institution discuss the current state of the institution’s workforce  According to the BOP officials, while considering attrition, hiring, and turnover rates, the executive staff decide strategies they will employ to attract and retain employees for their current needs  While officials we spoke with at four institutions have discussed retention incentives at their workforce utilization meetings, details about the content of these discussions ranged  According to these officials and our review of meeting minutes from the four institutions, discussions about retention incentives respond to each institution’s short-term staffing situation rather than address future staffing needs based on an overall strategic human capital plan  For example: USP Atwater officials told us that they review the current turnover rate, budget, projected vacancies, and use of retention incentives at annual budget development meetings  Meeting minutes reflected the following on retention incentives: “retention … still necessary to retain staff and hard-to-fill positions ” FCC Butner is a medical facility that offers retention incentives to all medical officers (all types of doctors) and nurses (practitioners, registered, etc ) at the institution  According to Butner officials, during workforce utilization meetings, Butner officials discuss recruitment and staffing trends for the institution and plans for how to address any staffing challenges  Meeting minutes we reviewed did not indicate specific discussions about the use of retention incentives  FCC Pollock executive staff discuss current institutional salary expenditures and projections and the status of vacant positions at workforce utilization meetings  While meeting minutes we reviewed indicated discussions about projected expenditures for incentive awards, the minutes did not differentiate between retention incentive awards, and other incentive awards such as recruitment or relocation incentive awards  FCI Phoenix officials stated that in their workforce utilization meetings, executive staff discuss salary projections and vacancy statuses  Meeting minutes we reviewed did not indicate specific discussions about the use of retention incentives  BOP decisions about retention incentives are currently not tied to any strategic human capital plan for how to use human capital flexibilities— such as retention incentives—to address their ongoing challenge of retaining staff in hard-to-fill positions  According to officials, retention incentives are awarded on an as-needed basis, determined by an institution’s warden, if funds are available  According to key principles for effective strategic human capital planning, such planning is an important component of an agency’s effort to develop long-term strategies for acquiring, developing, and retaining staff needed for an agency to achieve its goals  Specifically, senior leaders should be involved in developing, communicating, and implementing strategic human capital plans  Within an agency’s strategic human capital plan, the human capital policies, practices, and programs—for example, an agency’s retention incentive program—should clearly link to the human capital and program goals of the organization  By not having a strategic human capital plan that clearly establishes strategies that will be used to achieve specific human capital goals, BOP cannot ensure that its institutions are strategically managing their workforces in a manner that meets the agency’s human capital needs  In August 2017, BOP officials told us that they began drafting a strategic human capital operating plan that will include strategic objectives, action plans, performance objectives and measures, and evaluation/reporting requirements  Officials stated that the plan will also include planning regarding the use of human capital flexibilities, such as retention incentives  BOP officials told us that they anticipate that the strategic human capital operating plan will be a supplement to their workforce utilization meetings and that an agency-wide plan will provide a set of strategies for all institutions to consider  However, BOP could not provide documentation of the project beginning or whether it would include a strategic approach specific to retention incentives  Including retention incentives in BOP’s strategic human capital operating plan would create a roadmap for the agency and the institutions to use to move from being reactive in their current workforce needs—for example, awarding retention incentives on an ad hoc basis when funds are available—to being strategic in how retention incentives are used and to ensure that these and other flexibilities help the agency achieve its long-term workforce goals  From fiscal year 2012 through fiscal year 2016, BOP spent more than $59 million on retention incentives but has not established any measures to evaluate their effectiveness  According to officials, BOP has not evaluated the effectiveness of its use of retention incentives because BOP officials consider a retention incentive successful if an employee does not leave the agency  However, BOP also uses other human capital flexibilities along with retention incentives to help retain staff  For example, BOP uses physician and dental comparability allowances—additional pay to a physician or dentist who enters into an agreement for a specified period of service—to help retain these medical personnel  According to officials, it would otherwise be difficult to compete with private sector salaries without the use of all available incentives  However, BOP has not studied whether or how retention incentives have contributed to employees’ retention in relation to other incentives such as physician and dental comparability allowances  According to our work on strategic human capital management and OPM’s guidance, it is crucial for organizations to evaluate the success of their human capital strategies, such as the use of retention incentives  In measuring the performance of these strategies and their contribution to key programmatic results, agencies can make adjustments, if necessary  For example, agencies can use evaluation results to make targeted investments in certain human capital strategies—such as the use of retention incentives—creating a cycle of strategic workforce management, where evaluation informs planning, planning dictates strategies, and strategies are evaluated for effectiveness  While BOP uses retention incentives to address critical skills gaps—such as with medical professionals—evaluating the effectiveness of retention incentives would help BOP determine whether and how retention incentives, as well as other human capital flexibilities, contribute to an employee’s continued employment at BOP or if adjustments to BOP retention strategies must be made for improved results  BOP officials agreed that evaluating the effectiveness of retention incentives would help them be more strategic about their human capital needs and spending on incentives  By including and implementing such an evaluation in its upcoming strategic human capital operating plan, BOP could better determine if it is making maximum use of its funds to retain the necessary qualified personnel or if changes must be made to most effectively retain its staff  As the largest employer within DOJ with some staff working in remote locations and undesirable conditions, BOP relies on a number of available flexibilities, including retention incentives, to help retain its employees  However, BOP currently lacks a strategic approach for using and evaluating retention incentives to address human capital goals  Given BOP’s ongoing staffing challenges, for example, retaining staff in hard-to- fill medical positions, developing a plan that includes a thoughtful blueprint for using retention incentives could help BOP better anticipate and address staffing needs  Moreover, evaluating its use of retention incentives could help BOP determine whether these incentives are effective or whether adjustments are needed to better retain its employees  By using evaluation results to inform planning, and planning to inform how retention incentives are used, BOP would be better positioned to achieve its long-term human capital goals and address its critical staffing needs  We are making two recommendations to BOP: 1  The Director of BOP should include in the forthcoming strategic human capital operating plan, 1) human capital goals and 2) strategies on how human capital flexibilities—including retention incentives—will be used to meet these goals  (Recommendation 1) 2  The Director of BOP should evaluate the effectiveness of BOP’s use of retention incentives to help determine whether the incentives have helped BOP achieve its human capital goals or if adjustments in retention incentives are needed  (Recommendation 2) We requested comments on a draft of this report from DOJ  In an email received November 15, 2017, the DOJ liaison stated that DOJ concurred with our recommendations  The Department did not provide official written comments to include in our report, but did provide written technical comments, which we incorporated as appropriate  As agreed with your office, unless you publicly announce the contents of this report earlier, we plan no further distribution until 30 days from the report date  At that time, we will send copies of this report to the Attorney General and the Director of BOP  In addition, the report is available at no charge on the GAO website at http://www gao gov  If you or your staff have any questions about this report, please contact me at (202) 512-9627 or maurerd@gao gov  Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report  GAO staff who made key contributions to this report are listed in Appendix III  This report examines (1) how BOP has used its authority to pay retention incentives; (2) what internal controls are in place for the use of retention incentives; and (3) the extent to which BOP plans for and evaluates the use of retention incentives  To determine how BOP has used its authority to pay retention incentives, we reviewed BOP’s July 2012 report on its use of recruitment, relocation, and retention (3R) incentives  We then obtained underlying retention incentive expenditure data from DOJ’s Justice Management Division because it serves as the focal point for performance and financial information for all Department of Justice components and employees, including BOP  In particular, we obtained employee-level retention incentive payroll data for fiscal years 2012 through 2016  We selected this time period because it includes the most recent five complete fiscal years for which data were available and because we believe five years is sufficient time to identify trends in BOP’s retention incentive expenditures  We analyzed and aggregated the employee-level data by institution, occupation, and employee grade level  To identify trends, we compared per fiscal year expenditures across the various categories of occupations and locations across the five years  Additionally, we categorized institutions by BOP region, institutions that use group retention incentives, and institutions that use individual retention incentives  We also categorized occupations as medical professionals, correctional officers, and all other occupations and compared aggregate retention incentive expenditures for the different groups  Using information from BOP’s website and testimonial evidence from BOP officials on its health care system, for the purposes of this report, we defined medical professionals as BOP employees in occupations that provide medical, dental, and mental health care services and who do not solely provide these services in an administrative function  For the purposes of our analyses, medical professionals are dentists, dental assistants and hygienists, diagnostic radiological technologists, health aid and technicians, medical doctors (including psychiatrists), medical technologists, nurses, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, physician assistants, and practical nurses and psychologists  To assess the employee-level retention incentive payroll data’s reliability, we obtained and analyzed documentation on systems’ capabilities and data control, interviewed data users and managers responsible for maintaining data, conducted checks for completeness and logical consistency, and compared the employee-level data to aggregated institution-level retention incentive expenditure data from BOP’s Financial Management Information System  We found the employee-level data to be sufficiently reliable for the purpose of this report  Additionally for this objective, we reviewed documents such as the DOJ’s Financial Management Information System Sub-Object Classification Code Guide and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Handbook of Occupational Groups and Families to respectively identify the system codes used to track retention incentives expenditures and to identify the names for each occupational series code in the datasets  We also interviewed BOP Human Resource Management headquarters officials to obtain information on the primary purposes for BOP’s use of retention incentives and their views on identified retention incentive expenditures trends  We also interviewed U S  Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Public Health Service (PHS) officials to better understand how BOP and PHS manage costs, including retention incentive expenditures, for PHS staff assigned to BOP  BOP partners with PHS to acquire medical staff to provide medical care for BOP’s inmate population  BOP reimburses PHS for the costs of compensation and benefits—including retention incentive payments, if applicable—for PHS staff assigned to BOP  PHS has final approval authority for retention incentives paid to PHS staff assigned to BOP facilities  Furthermore, we obtained aggregated retention incentive expenditure data from PHS on the total amount of funds BOP reimbursed PHS for fiscal years 2012 through 2016  For the reliability of PHS’s data, we reviewed the system’s data fields to check that the appropriate fields were used to provide data and interviewed data users and managers to discuss how expenditures are recorded and maintained  We found the PHS data to be sufficiently reliable for the purpose of this report  To identify and describe the internal controls that BOP has in place related to retention incentives, we obtained and analyzed documentation regarding BOP requirements and guidance for the use of retention incentives  We also interviewed officials from BOP’s Central Office who are responsible for the administration, management, and oversight of BOP’s human capital management systems, including retention incentives  We focused on the management and administrative controls used by BOP to review, approve, re-certify, and monitor retention incentives  Additionally, we interviewed the warden and human capital officers at 4 of the 122 institutions to obtain illustrative examples regarding the internal controls in place at these institutions to ensure the proper disbursement of retention incentives  We interviewed BOP officials at Federal Correctional Complex Pollock in Pollock, LA; Federal Correctional Complex Butner in Butner, NC; United States Penitentiary, Atwater in Atwater, CA and Federal Correctional Institution Phoenix, in Phoenix, AZ  These institutions were selected to ensure variation in the number and types of employees receiving retention incentives, BOP region, and security-level  Although the information we obtained from the interviews with officials at these four institutions cannot be generalized to other BOP institutions, these interviews provided important insights and perspectives about the use of retention incentives at BOP institutions  We also reviewed a non-generalizable random sample of 40 retention incentive application packet case files to determine the extent to which these files contained documentation on the internal control activities in place to monitor the application, approval, and funds disbursement processes of BOP’s retention incentive program  To identify our sample, we used employee-level expenditure data to randomly select 40 application files from the universe of BOP employees who received retention incentives from fiscal years 2014 through 2016  Each application file was reviewed by two GAO analysts who each assessed the extent to which each application contained the appropriate justification, approval signatures, and other documentation such as an application checklist and whether the application was an initial or continuation application  To determine the extent to which BOP plans for and evaluates the use of retention incentives, we interviewed BOP officials regarding their experiences with retention incentives, how they use retention incentives to strategically manage their workforce needs, how the agency evaluates the effectiveness of retention incentives, and how retention incentives contribute to BOP’s broader human capital goals  We then compared these efforts to our work on strategic human capital planning, specifically in terms of planning for and evaluating the use of human capital flexibilities  Additionally, we interviewed the warden and human capital officers at four BOP institutions mentioned above to obtain illustrative examples of how workforce planning occurs at these institutions  We also reviewed the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General Report 16-02 “Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Medical Staffing Challenges” (March 2016) and our past work to better understand the challenges that BOP faces in retaining medical professionals and other staff  Table 2 provides the Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) fiscal year 2016 retention incentive expenditures by various occupations and groups of occupations, such as medical professionals, correctional officers, and other occupations  A range of occupations are reflected in the table primarily as a result of four California institutions—United States Penitentiary (USP) Atwater, Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Herlong, FCI Mendota, and Federal Correctional Complex Victorville—providing retention incentives to all employees at General Schedule grades level 12 and below and those in the Federal Wage System  In addition to the contact named above, Dawn Locke (Assistant Director) and Meghan Squires (Analyst-in-Charge) managed the work  Also, David Alexander, Renee Caputo, Willie Commons III, Jamarla Edwards, Robert Goldenkoff, Chelsa Gurkin, Eric Hauswirth, Janice Latimer, Lerone Reid, Rachel Stoiko, and Adam Vogt made significant contributions to this report 

ground_truth: BOP is the largest employer within DOJ and is responsible for the care and custody of an inmate population of about 186,000. BOP has faced challenges retaining staff at correctional facilities, although it has used retention incentives, along with other human capital flexibilities. GAO was asked to review BOP's use of retention incentives. This report addresses: (1) how BOP used its authority to pay retention incentives; (2) internal controls BOP has in place for the use of retention incentives; and (3) the extent to which BOP plans for and evaluates the use of retention incentives. GAO obtained employee-level retention incentive expenditure data from DOJ's Justice Management Division for fiscal years 2012 through 2016. GAO also reviewed agency documentation, such as policy statements and 40 randomly selected retention incentive application packet case files from fiscal years 2014 through 2016. GAO also interviewed officials from BOP's Central Office and four correctional facilities that use retention incentives, selected to reflect variation in the number and types of employees receiving retention incentives, BOP regions, and BOP institution security levels. From fiscal years 2012 to 2016, the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Federal Bureau of Prisons' (BOP) total retention incentive expenditures generally increased from $10.7 to $14.0 million and the number of employees receiving retention incentives increased from 2,024 to 2,460. During those five years, BOP spent more than 97 percent of its total retention incentive expenditures on employees at four BOP institutions in California and for medical professionals nationwide. Further, total retention incentive expenditures for medical professionals increased by an average of 21 percent per year (see figure). According to BOP officials, BOP uses retention incentives, for example, to supplement BOP's medical professionals' salaries which are generally lower than private sector salaries. BOP has a variety of internal controls in place throughout the retention incentive process that help ensure retention incentive applications and approvals meet requirements. For example, each application goes through multiple levels of review to verify its accuracy and completeness. BOP takes steps to determine workforce needs and how to fill those needs, but has not strategically planned for and evaluated its use of retention incentives. According to BOP, planning for human capital needs is conducted at institutions during quarterly meetings, but discussions about these incentives respond to short-term staffing situations rather than proactively addressing future staffing needs. Including human capital goals and strategies in BOP's human capital plan would create a roadmap so the agency could move from being reactive to its current workforce needs to being strategic in trying to achieve its long-term workforce goals. Additionally BOP has not evaluated the effectiveness of its use of retention incentives in retaining staff. As a result, BOP does not know whether retention incentives have contributed to employees' retention in relation to other incentives used by BOP. Consistent with key principles for strategic human capital planning, planning for and evaluating the use of retention incentives could help BOP better determine if these incentives are an efficient and effective means by which to retain staff. GAO recommends that BOP (1) include human capital goals and how retention incentives will be used to achieve these goals in its human capital plan; and (2) evaluate the use of retention incentives. BOP concurred with GAO's recommendations.