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



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



Report 2: 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
Report 2:  Central to estimating the magnitude of these distortions is determining who bears the economic burden, or incidence, of the tax  The economic incidence of a tax can differ from the statutory incidence (i e , who is obligated by law to pay the tax) depending on conditions in the affected market  Once the economic incidence of a tax is established, the exact distortions to consumers and producers can be determined as well as any other economic activity that is typically discouraged by a tax  The statutory incidence of the DST is borne by firms that provide covered services  For example, under the Spanish DST, companies that sell online advertising services, provide platforms for online marketplaces and intermediation services, and data transfer services—all to users with IP addresses within Spain's jurisdiction—will be subject to the DST (providing that they meet the threshold requirements)  The economic incidence of such a tax could vary depending on the structure and characteristics of those individual markets, as explained in more technical detail in the Appendix   Under one scenario, digital economy firms providing services subject to the DST are perfectly competitive, and the economic burden is borne by the consumers of the digital services in the form of higher prices over the long term  For example, Spain levies its DST on firms that place digital advertisements, based on the revenue earned from showing advertisements on the search results and web pages of users with Spanish IP addresses  In a perfectly competitive market, firms providing digital advertisements earn zero economic profit in that they could not earn a higher rate of return via alternative investments  When faced with the DST, these advertising firms can either (a) exit the industry and pursue higher returns in other industries that are not subject to tax or (b) pass along the tax in the form of higher prices to businesses that purchase the advertising services  The firms purchasing digital advertising could be Spanish companies, but they could also be foreign firms purchasing advertisements that are ultimately targeted to Spanish users  In this case, the imposition of a DST in a competitive market will increase the price of taxable services and lead to a decline in the quantity demanded  The exact magnitude of these changes will depend on the responsiveness, or "elasticity," of the companies purchasing the internet advertising to changes in price  Assuming that companies purchasing the advertising services are also operating in a perfectly competitive market, they are faced with the same options as the firms that sell internet advertising: exit the industry or pass the tax along to consumers of their goods  Higher prices could result in lower consumer demand for the advertised product  The magnitude of this reduced demand depends on the responsiveness of consumer demand to changes in price (i e , the price elasticity of demand)  Thus, a DST imposed on intermediary services can have ripple effects downstream within markets  Under perfect competition, the economic incidence of an upstream DST is ultimately borne by the final consumers of those advertised products  Under an alternative scenario, sellers of digital services (e g , Google, Facebook, Amazon) could be monopolies, or a small number of firms could have "market power" (the ability to influence the price for their services prevailing in the market), and at least part of the tax is borne by these firms in the form of reduced economic profits  Firms can derive market power from a number of factors  For example, lack of competition could enable one firm to have a significant effect on the prevailing rate of digital advertising services  Also, the presence of complements and substitutes could affect market power  In contrast to firms in perfectly competitive markets, firms that have market power are able to earn positive economic profits, also known as "supernormal profits," because they are able to set a price above their marginal cost of production  Some have argued that digital economy firms are more likely to generate supernormal profits because the marginal cost of scaling production of their business model is relatively low, if not costless  For example, the marginal cost for Facebook to display an advertisement to a user is basically zero  Others argue that some firms generate supernormal profits because they are operating in an oligopoly or near-monopoly  For example, most search results are conducted through Google, and Facebook has the most users among social media platforms  These arguments, though, may not provide clear indication of supernormal profits  A variation of the first argument could have been made during the rise of the retail catalog industry, where the marginal cost of producing a single magazine and mailing it to a consumer was relatively small  However, the presence of competing catalog retailers should have driven the prices of firms down close to their marginal costs (which encompass more than just the cost of printing one additional catalog)  The second argument could be seen to misidentify the structure of "two-sided markets" in which many digital economy firms provide services to individual users as well as businesses  For example, Google provides search engine results to individual users (at no cost) and sells advertising space on those search results to businesses  Even if Google dominates the search engine market, it still competes against other firms, such as Facebook, for digital advertising  Digital economy firms also compete with nondigital economy methods of providing advertising services (e g , television, print, and radio), which could constrain their ability to set prices well above their marginal cost of production  When faced with the DST, a monopolist or firms with market power bear at least some of the tax in the form of lower profit  This analysis is explained in more detail in the Appendix   How much of the tax is passed along to companies buying the advertising placement (and their customers) depends on the elasticities of supply and demand in those markets  Like the analysis in the competitive market, consumers in the affected industries reduce their demand in response to higher prices  The ultimate implication of the analyses above is that DSTs introduce distortions in various markets by reducing the financial return to capital in digital economy industries or by raising the cost of goods and services intermediated through digital platforms  Investment in affected markets would be expected to decrease  An example of the former would shift investment out of digital economy firms (e g , as retailers purchase more print, television, or radio advertisement instead of internet advertisement or increased sales via brick-and-mortar or catalog outlets instead of digital), while an example of the latter would involve a reduction in demand of the final goods  The exact magnitude of these changes will vary based on the responsiveness of supply and demand in those various markets  Distortions can also arise in different ways depending on how a particular country's DST is applied to different firms  These issues are described more in the " Differential Treatment of Firms " section below  The principle of vertical equity generally implies that taxpayers with a greater ability to pay the tax should generally pay a greater share of their household income in taxes compared to households with a lesser ability  A tax is "progressive" if higher income households pay a greater share of their income in tax than lower-income households, whereas the opposite is true in a regressive tax system  If the economic incidence of DSTs resemble that of an excise tax rather than a tax on corporate profits, as discussed in the " Economic Efficiency " section, this finding also has an impact on the vertical equity analysis of DSTs  A review of the economic literature shows that the majority of the corporate income tax is borne by capital (i e , the corporation's shareholders) with the residual being borne by labor, or workers  Capital, here in the form of stock ownership, tends to be disproportionately concentrated in higher-income households  In contrast, excise taxes are commonly borne by consumers in the form of higher prices  Excise taxes are often regressive, as lower-income households bear a higher share of their pre-tax income on consuming goods and services than higher-income households  The exact equity effects of DSTs could vary based on different abilities for intermediate firms to pass the tax along to consumers, the nature of the goods and services that they sell, and the responsiveness of consumers in those relative markets  For example, assume that Facebook charges higher prices for advertising on the social media platform to companies, and companies are able to pass those higher advertising costs in full to their customers in the form of higher prices  If one of those companies sells luxury cars and another sells consumer household goods, the DST has more progressive effects in the former case and more regressive effects in the latter  In the aggregate, though, there is little reason to assume that final consumers of goods and services sold through taxable activities in digitized business models are disproportionately higher-income  Thus, it can be expected that a DST affecting a broad range of goods and services is more likely to be regressive than not, especially when compared to a tax on corporate profits  DSTs create unequal economic treatment between similarly situated firms inside and outside of the digital economy  Firms outside of the digital economy can earn just as much global or local revenue as firms taxed under DSTs without being subject to an additional layer of tax on their revenue  Firms outside or inside the digital economy can also engage in profit shifting and "aggressive" transfer pricing to reduce their taxes owed in a country  DSTs, as they have been presented thus far, also create inequalities for firms of similar size based on certain exemptions and thresholds  For example, each of the specific European DST proposals use different or multiple thresholds based on total cross-border profits, revenue generated from covered business activities, "clicks" or interaction based from local users, etc  While proponents of these DSTs with minimum thresholds might have other policy goals in mind (e g , exempting smaller businesses from potentially costly tax compliance burdens), the exact levels at which these thresholds are drawn among larger MNCs are arbitrary from a policy perspective  Critics of DSTs would argue that the thresholds are drawn to exclude domestic MNCs or to target the taxes to a narrow set of foreign MNCs  Regardless of their rationale, these thresholds create concerns of inequitable treatment between different sectors  In the situation where the tax is fully passed along to consumers, digital firms either charge a higher price (reducing demand) or exit the industry  Where the MNCs subject to the statutory incidence of the tax bear at least a portion of the economic incidence of the DST, then they face a lower return to business investment in that country compared to firms not subject to the DST  Additionally, the UK DST's proposed exemption or "safe harbor" for "low profit" firms could create another layer of equity concerns  If the exemption is based on low profits as calculated by UK tax rules, then firms that are not subject to the UK corporate income tax (because they do not have a permanent establishment in the UK) will not be eligible for the exemption  In other words, if a firm must be subject to the UK corporate income tax to be eligible for exemption then, by definition, the exemption is not available to foreign MNCs  MNCs with similar amounts of global revenue would be subject to different effective tax rates on their worldwide consolidated earnings (across all related entities) based on whether they were subject to UK income taxes or not  An alternative exemption being considered by the UK, based on global consolidated profits, could have some administrative issues, as discussed in the next section of this report  DSTs present several administrative challenges to both the public and private sectors  With regard to the public sector, lawmakers and revenue-collecting agencies will have to clarify exactly what types of activities are subject to tax and which parties bear the statutory burden of paying tax  These decisions affect the costs of administering the tax or the gross revenue collected by the tax  With regard to the private sector, the decisions made by lawmakers and agencies could affect the costs of complying with DST regimes  Technology could present administrative challenges to the implementation of DST proposal  First, some digital economy platforms allow users to opt out of having their data tracked or resold to third parties  Without this information a digital service provider may be able to fulfill a user's desire for privacy, but the absence of the information limits the provider's ability to apply proper taxes based on the customer's jurisdiction  "Do not track" or internet browser plugins that make it more difficult for companies to track users' activities could affect the measurement of data collected from local users  Second, users could reroute their internet traffic to servers outside of the country imposing the DST and mask their physical location  Virtual private network services (VPNs) allow users to access websites while making it appear that their IP addresses are from locations other than their actual locations  VPNs connect users to servers located in different parts of the world  Websites will see that a user's web traffic is originating from the VPN server, which could or could not be in the same jurisdiction as the user  Typically, VPNs are used for anonymity reasons or to bypass firewalls and website censors imposed in certain jurisdictions  VPNs are not sufficient to protecting a user's IP address, as other unmasking techniques (some requiring more effort) can be used  Still, users could use VPNs located outside of the taxing jurisdiction to reduce the flow of user activity attributed to IPs within the taxing jurisdiction, thereby reducing revenue collected from "local" user activity  Even if this does not completely eliminate the revenue base for a DST, VPN use still results in mismeasurement of the amount of revenue attributed to local users  Overall, lawmakers writing DSTs would likely need to consider specifying what level of enforcement would be sufficient for companies to make good faith efforts to source their revenues to local users  More due diligence required by companies to determine the source of their users or unmask user efforts designed to preserve their privacy will impose higher costs to the companies  A lower standard might require fewer resources from firms and be less intrusive on user privacy but reduce the amount of tax raised from local users  Thus, DSTs could present policy tradeoffs between individual privacy concerns and tax revenue collection  Two features of the UK's proposed DST create additional administrative challenges  An exemption based on low UK-source profits could also have unintended consequences for proponents of the DST in the form of reduced revenue  Some digital economy MNCs do have subsidiaries physically located in Europe  For example, these firms might have the purpose of providing customer service or call centers that speak the local language or market the company's lines of business  Generally, these types of business activities are low profit margin  If a digital economy MNC does have a permanent establishment in the UK that earns close to zero profits, thereby owing little to no income tax in the UK, does the tax situation of this local subsidiary justify an exemption for the entire MNC controlled group? If so, the MNC could still be technically generating millions of British pounds in revenue from sales to UK customers over the internet  In contrast, an MNC that does not have a UK subsidiary but also has millions in revenue from sales to UK customers would not be eligible for the low-profit exemption  The clear tax planning implication of such an interpretation of the low-profit exemption is that MNCs should establish a low-profit subsidiary in the UK as a means to claim the low-profit margin exemption  If allowed, then the UK DST would likely raise little to no revenue  Alternatively, the UK could base its low-profit exemption based on worldwide profits of the MNC  In the United States, corporations are required to report a number of tax-related calculations and information on their annual Securities and Exchange Commission filings for shareholders  Among these tax-related data are their effective tax rate and tax paid across all jurisdictions where the firm is subject to tax  However, the tax data reported under financial accounting rules typically varies from actual tax paid  This phenomenon is described as "book-tax differences " For example, different rules for depreciation are typically used for accounting purposes compared to actual tax policy in a jurisdiction (e g , if the lawmakers in that country decided to speed up cost recovery with the intent of increasing business investment)  Thus, an exemption based on financial disclosure forms may not accurately reflect taxable income  U S  corporations are allowed to claim a tax credit against U S  corporate income tax liability for income taxes paid to foreign jurisdictions  The rationale is to prevent double taxation of foreign-source income  DSTs are taxes on revenue earned from specific business activities and should not be eligible for U S  foreign tax credit treatment for several reasons  First, such taxes are not income taxes under common bilateral tax treaty language  Statements from some countries imposing DSTs, such as the UK, indicate that they do not intend DST payments to be creditable against taxes that an MNC might owe in its home country  Nor are DSTs "in lieu of income taxes," as the countries imposing DSTs do have a corporate income tax system  The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) could clarify that U S  bilateral income tax treaties do not provide for a foreign tax credit against U S  tax for U S  corporations that make DST payments to foreign jurisdictions  If the IRS does not do so, then Congress could enact legislation denying a U S  foreign tax credit for such payments  Denying a foreign tax credit could increase the total taxes paid by U S  MNCs in jurisdictions around the world, but allowing DST payments to be creditable would effectively force the U S  Treasury (and U S  taxpayers) to subsidize tax rates imposed by foreign jurisdictions  Policymakers who sympathize with the premise that MNCs in the digital economy are unfairly able to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions could still disagree with the unilateral response of foreign countries to impose DSTs  The tax on GILTI serves as an alternative policy tool intended to impose higher effective tax rates on U S  firms in the digital economy  For example, in the 115 th Congress, the No Tax Break for Outsourcing Act ( H R  5108 ; S  2459 ) would have increased the GILTI tax rate to 21% and eliminated the deduction for the return on tangible assets derived by domestic corporations from serving foreign markets in computing GILTI tax liability, among other provisions  As discussed, above, DSTs have the same economic effects as an excise tax  It is not controversial for countries to levy excise taxes on imported as well as domestically consumed goods or services  Such taxes are considered to not distort trade  However, some DST proponents have not explicitly labeled them as "excise taxes," making it unclear how these taxes should be viewed in terms of international agreements  Regardless of the label attached to them, some commentators argued that DSTs violate restrictions on tariffs under the rules of the World Trade Organization  For example, some scholars argue that the high-revenue thresholds for taxation and the exclusion of certain revenues earned by European firms effectively discriminate against the digital exports of U S  firms  Many proponents of DSTs argue that they are "interim measures" until the international community adopts broader reforms in international tax rules  As mentioned in the discussion of the European Commission's DST proposal, the commission prefers changes, both inside and outside of the EU, in the permanent establishment rules to incorporate some measure of "digital presence " This goal aligns with the EU's goal of a consolidated tax base among its members and formulary apportionment of corporate tax revenue based on a set of factors (e g , sales, assets, employment), which would result in a shift away from tax allocation based on assets  The form and rationale of DSTs appear to better comport with a formulary apportionment tax being pursued in the EU than a traditional national corporate income tax  The inability for consensus to impose a DST at the European Commission level could lead more individual member states to unilaterally impose their own DSTs  Even if the United States objects to unilateral DSTs, these sovereign countries are generally able to impose their own tax systems (within the boundaries of any other international agreements, such as EU membership)  Congress could consider creating "carrots" or "sticks" affecting the policy choices of DST proponents  Tax policy and legal scholars have debated the merits of "potential compromises" that would not require fundamental rewrites of international tax rules  Some of these options would rely on the executive branch for day-to-day negotiations at a bilateral or multilateral level (e g , at the OECD)  Any modification to existing or new tax treaties, though, would require Senate approval  Congress could also direct the executive branch to impose incentives (and disincentives) that would affect key sectors of the EU economy  An evaluation of these emerging ideas and concepts is, however, beyond the scope of this report  DSTs Are Not Structured as Taxes on Profits Corporate profit is generally defined as: (1) π=TR-TC Where π is profit, TR is total revenue, and TC is total cost  This is before taxes  After tax corporate profit, π t , for a firm after imposition of a percentage tax ( t ) on corporate profit, is defined as: 2 πt=(1-t)(TR-TC) In contrast, a DST ( dst ) is levied as a percent of total, gross revenue yielding an after tax profit, π dst , of: 3 πdst=(1-dst)TR-TC Algebraically, equations (2) and (3) are not equivalent  To further illustrate, the following amounts can be substituted: TR = $1,000, TC = $500, and t = 0 03 (or a 3% tax rate)  Using these parameters, πt based on a 3% profit tax would be: 4 πt=(1-0 03)($1,000-$500) 5 πt=$485 Using these parameters, πdst based on a 3% DST revenue tax would be: 6 πdst=(1-0 03)$1,000-$500 7 πdst=$470 As shown above, after-tax profit for a corporation subject to a 3% income tax rate (equation 5) is greater than after-tax profit for a corporation subject to a 3% DST (equation 7) in lieu of an income tax  The two taxes are not the same  Effects of a DST on Supply-Demand Conditions in Digital Markets To analyze the economic effects of a DST, the different markets in which digital economy firms operate must be conceptualized  In a general sense, the consumers or buyers in these markets are those that pay money to the supplier or seller for the provision of a service  Many firms in digital economies operate in "two-sided markets" in which they provide services to two different consumers: individual users and businesses  While both sides of these markets could be relevant for calculating DST liability, the markets for the latter group of services are the starting point for analyzing the economic effects of a DST, because these business-to-business transactions are where the statutory incidence of a DST is typically first imposed  For example, in the market for internet advertisements, a clothing company could be the consumer and Google or Facebook could be the seller or supplier  In the market for marketplace sales, a vendor could be the consumer and Amazon could be the seller or supplier  In the market for user data sales, a data transfer firm could be the consumer and Facebook, Google, or Fitbit could the supplier  From an economic perspective, there are two extremes of market structure: perfect competition and monopoly  Most market structures lie somewhere in between  Monopolies rarely exist, and they are typically regulated  For reasons explained below, there are specific reasons why monopolies are likely not to exist in the markets in which DSTs apply  However, firms could have market power if there are barriers to entry  The following analyses examine how a DST would apply, over the long run, in the two extremes of market structure for a digital economy firm facing a downward sloping demand curve  Analysis of a DST in a Competitive Market In perfect competition, firms face a downward-sloping demand curve, and the supply curve is perfectly elastic (horizontal) as increases in output are achieved by new firms entering the industry over the long run  Each firm earns no economic profit, meaning that the opportunity cost of investing in alternative ventures is zero, and each is a price taker in the market (i e , an individual firm cannot influence the price prevailing in the market)  In this scenario, when the government imposes an excise tax, firms must ultimately pass on the cost of the tax to their consumers or exit the market  The market for services provided by firms in the digital economy could be depicted as "perfectly competitive " Under this scenario, many firms are willing to provide a relatively similar service  These markets can be outlined more narrowly to encompass only activities by other digital economy firms (e g , internet advertising, marketplace sales, data transfer), or they can be outlined more broadly (e g , consumer advertising, retail outlets, consumer marketing research)  In other words, although users typically associate Facebook as primarily a social network and Google as primarily a search engine, both firms may operate and compete in the same market for internet advertising  Additionally, both firms compete in the larger market for consumer advertising alongside television, print, and radio advertisers  If a clothing seller is deciding where to spend his advertising budget, that seller can purchase advertising placements on Facebook, Google, etc  (not to mention television, print, and radio)  Similarly, a data transfer company looking to purchase and analyze user data then selling marketing services for another good or service not only has the choice to purchase data from Facebook, Google, etc ; it can also collect data from other companies that collect data and surveys on consumer preferences  Figure A-1 and Figure A-2 illustrate the long-run effects of a DST in a perfect competition scenario with demand curves of different slopes  The demand curves are downward-sloping because consumers demand less of the taxed service as price increases  The different slopes represent scenarios where consumer demand is more responsive, or elastic, to changes in price ( Figure A-1 ) and less responsive, or inelastic ( Figure A-2 )  The supply curves in both figures are flat, or "infinitely elastic" because suppliers, in the aggregate, are able to adjust their capacity to meet whatever level of consumer demand prevails in the market  In both figures, the initial equilibrium (E), before the tax, between the prevailing market price (P) and quantity (Q) is denoted by an asterisk superscript (*)  After the tax is applied, the change in equilibrium between price and quantity is denoted by a subscript ( t )  In both figures, the tax is also passed forward to consumers in the form of higher prices  Firms reduce output or some firms exit the market because participants earn zero economic profit  If the DST rate is 3%, for example, then suppliers in a competitive market are assumed to increase price by 3% minus any tax savings (i e , deductions for excise tax payments from any income tax owed to the jurisdiction imposing the DST)  In Figure A-1 , imposition of a DST causes prices to rise and quantity demanded to fall in the market  The magnitude of the change in quantity is roughly similar to the change in price in the illustration below, but in a market with relatively elastic demand, the change in quantity can exceed the change in price  One cause for this phenomenon is the availability of near-substitutes  For example, if television advertisement is equally as effective as internet advertising, then a tax increasing prices of the latter will lead to a larger decline in demand as more companies purchase advertisements on television instead of the internet  In Figure A-2 , imposition of a DST also causes prices to rise and quantity demanded to fall in the market  With a relatively inelastic demand curve, though, the magnitude of the change in price exceeds the change in quantity  This could be caused, for example, by a lack of substitutes (e g , a strong preference for internet advertising or lack of alternative outlets to online marketplaces to sell goods and services)  In this case, the change in price is greater than the change in quantity demanded  Many of the services subject to a DST are intermediate inputs to the final sales of other goods and services  This means that the method of analyzing the effects of the DST would be replicated for each stage in the supply chain  For example, if a DST increases the price of advertising a clothing company's products over the internet, then that clothing company will likely increase the cost of the clothing that it charges its customers (the retail consumer in the country levying the tax)  The exact magnitude of the effects will vary depending on elasticities of supply and demand in that downstream market for retail clothing sales  In a perfectly competitive retail clothing market, though, it is anticipated that prices will increase and quantity demanded will decrease  In addition to effects on price and quantity prevailing within a market, DSTs can also have "welfare effects " Under this method of analysis, economists consider changes to consumer surplus, producer surplus, and deadweight loss  Consumer surplus is the total benefit of value of a good or service that consumers receive beyond what they actually pay in the market  It is depicted on a supply-demand graph as the area below the demand curve and above the price  Producer surplus is the benefit to producers from selling a good or service at a price higher than their marginal cost of producing one additional unit  It is depicted on a supply-demand graph as the area above the supply curve and below the price  Deadweight loss is an inefficiency in the market that is typically introduced by government intervention, such as a tax, that results in a loss in economic activity and potential losses to consumer or producer surpluses  In a supply-demand graph of a competitive market, like the ones above, deadweight loss is depicted as the center triangle created after the imposition of a tax  Welfare analyses of the DSTs depicted in Figure A-1 and Figure A-2 indicate that they reduce consumer surplus, have no effect on producer surplus, and create deadweight loss inefficiencies  Before the imposition of a DST, consumer welfare is measured as the areas a + b + c in both figures  This area indicates that consumers are receiving benefits from consuming goods or services subject to DSTs in excess of the price they actually pay for them  This could be in part because social media platforms, shopping on online marketplaces, or using search engines are free to consumers  After the imposition of a DST, though, consumer welfare is reduced to the area a   As producers increase the cost of goods and services subject to a DST, consumer welfare decreases due to higher costs  The area b becomes revenue collected by the government and the area c becomes deadweight loss in economic activity discouraged by the DST  There is no effect on producer surplus, because it does not exist in a perfectly competitive market  In a perfectly competitive market, producers are price takers and earn no economic profit  The main differences in Figure A-1 and Figure A-2 are due to the slope of the demand curve  The relatively inelastic demand in Figure A-2 leads to greater reductions in consumer welfare, more tax revenue collected, and smaller deadweight losses  This is because a relatively inelastic demand curve indicates that consumers are less responsive to changes in price  If consumers are unable to substitute away from goods or services subject to DSTs toward nontaxed activities, then they pay higher prices for taxed activities, and the government collects more revenue  Analysis of a DST in a Monopoly Market Some argue that major firms in the digital economy have "monopoly power " Proponents of this assertion could point out that Facebook is the largest social media platform or that Google is the predominant search engine  Others may say that digital economy platforms create network effects that prevent competition  For example, Facebook is able to maintain its status as the most popular social media platform because the value of interacting on a network with billions of users exceeds a new platform with only a few users  Similarly, Amazon might be characterized as a monopoly because many customers shop and provide reviews on its website, so a vendor looking for exposure to the largest customer base will choose to pay for the service of listing its products on that site compared to a smaller internet marketplace  These views may be seen, by others, as misguided because they are viewing the opposite side of the two-sided markets in the digital economy or defining the "market" too narrowly  As explained in the perfect competition analysis, above, Google and Facebook can be viewed as competitors in the market for selling digital advertising space or data transfer services even if they have some degree of market power on the other side of the market (e g , search engines and social networks)  Additionally, digital economy firms also compete against "non-digital" competitors  For example, in the larger markets for consumer product advertising, internet companies compete with advertising via television, print, and radio  Whether firms have supernormal profits or economic rents in an industry is often difficult to determine  In general, the presence of high accounting profits (total revenue minus total costs) is not indicative of whether a firm has profits in an economic sense  Economic profits take into consideration the opportunity costs of investing in a different income-producing activity  There is typically a risk-free portion of the return to any investment  For example, in the corporate sector this could be the average rate of return of the stock market  However, riskier investments generally require a higher potential return in order to attract capital (also known as the "risk premium")  The point of this distinction is that high accounting profits can be an indication of a higher risk premium  For the sake of argument, Figure A-3 illustrates the effects of a DST in a hypothetical monopoly market where there is one producer  An example of this phenomenon in the digital economy could be a single firm that sells internet advertising, marketplace sales, or data transfers to a potential buyer  Figure A-3 illustrates a monopoly market before the imposition of a tax  In a monopoly market, the seller still faces a downward-sloping demand curve  However, the monopolist does not have a supply curve because it does not accept the price prevailing in the market (like individual sellers in a competitive market)  Instead, it sets price (P M ) and output (Q M ) at the intersection of marginal revenue (MR) and marginal cost (MC) to arrive at a profit-maximizing equilibrium (E M ) along the demand curve  The upward-sloping MC represents the fact that the monopolist firm faces increasing marginal costs as it increases the quantity supplied in the market  The monopolist also has an upward-sloping average total cost (ATC) curve, which includes the upward-sloping function of the MC curve plus added fixed costs of production  Unlike producers in the competitive markets in Figure A-1 and Figure A-2 , the monopolist in Figure A-3 earns economic profits, or rents  Economic profit per unit sold is the difference between the price charged by the monopolist (P M ) and the ATC curve, or the distance bc   That average profit per unit times the total number of units sold ( dc ) equals the total economic profit earned by the monopolist, as shown in the gray shaded box ( abcd )  The effects of a DST on a monopoly market are illustrated in Figure A-4   A DST shifts the demand curve in as consumers of taxed services respond to higher after-tax prices  As a result of the reduced demand, the marginal revenue earned by the monopolist declines, and the MR curve shifts from MR M to MR t   The equilibrium in the market shifts from E M to E t   Quantity decreases from Q M to Q t   The price faced by the consumer in the market increases from P M to P t   The price received by the monopolist, though, decreases from P M to P Mt   The economic profit earned by the monopolist under the new post-tax demand and MR t curves is represented by the gray shaded box ( fghi )  The revenue collected by the government is represented by the dashed-line area just above the monopolist's profit  Changes to deadweight loss is not illustrated on Figure A-4 , but they can be explained in qualitative terms  The presence of a monopoly market creates deadweight loss relative to a competitive market because P M is set higher than the price where supply and demand intersect in the competitive market (e g , in Figure A-1 and Figure A-2 )  When a tax is introduced on top of the distortions caused by the monopolist, the size of the deadweight loss in the market is further increased 

ground_truth: VA spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually on medical supplies to meet the health care needs of about 7 million veterans. To provide a more efficient, cost-effective way for its medical centers to order supplies, the VA established the MSPV-NG program. The program's goals include involving clinicians in requirements development, leveraging buying power when making competitive awards, and consolidating supplies used across medical centers. VA began developing requirements in early 2015 and launched the program in December 2016. This testimony summarizes key information contained in GAO's November 2017 report, GAO-18-34 . Specifically, it addresses the extent to which VA's implementation of MSPV-NG has been effective in meeting program goals. GAO analyzed VA's requirements development and contracting processes, and identified key supply chain practices cited by four leading hospital networks. GAO also met with contracting and clinical officials at six medical centers, selected based on high dollar contract obligations in fiscal years 2014-2016 and geographic representation. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) established the Medical Surgical Prime Vendor-Next Generation (MSPV-NG) program to provide an efficient, cost-effective way for its facilities to order supplies, but its initial implementation did not have an overarching strategy, stable leadership, and workforce capacity that could have facilitated medical center buy-in for the change. VA also developed requirements for a broad range of MSPV-NG items with limited clinical input. Further, starting in June 2015, VA planned to award competitive contracts, but instead, 79 percent of the items available for purchase under MSPV-NG were added through non-competitive agreements. (See figure). As a result, the program did not meet the needs of medical centers, and usage remained below VA's 40 percent target. (See figure.) VA has taken steps to address some deficiencies and is developing a new approach to the program. However, VA will likely continue to face challenges in meeting its goals until it fully addresses these existing shortcomings. GAO made 10 recommendations in its November 2017 report, including that VA develop an overarching strategy, expand clinician input in requirements development, and establish a plan for awarding future competitive contracts. VA agreed with GAO's recommendations.

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



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

Report 1: For over a decade, each of VA’s 170 medical centers used VHA’s legacy MSPV program to order medical supplies, such as bandages and scalpels  Many of those items were purchased using the Federal Supply Schedules, which provided medical centers with a great deal of flexibility  However, as we reported in 2016, this legacy program prevented VHA from standardizing items used across its medical centers and affected its ability to leverage its buying power to achieve greater cost avoidance  Standardization is a process of narrowing the range of items purchased to meet a given need, such as buying 10 varieties of bandages instead of 100, in order to improve buying power, simplify supply chain management, and provide clinical consistency  In part because of the legacy MSPV program’s limited standardization, VHA decided to transition to a new iteration, called MSPV-NG  The transition to MSPV-NG has been a major effort, involving the MSPV- NG program office, stakeholders from the VHA’s Procurement and Logistics Office and VA’s Strategic Acquisition Center (SAC)—a VA-wide contracting organization—and logistics and clinical personnel at every medical center  The program also includes hundreds of new contracts with individual supply vendors and a new set of prime vendor contracts to distribute the supplies  VA’s goals for the MSPV-NG program include (1) standardizing requirements for supply items for greater clinical consistency; (2) demonstrating cost avoidance by leveraging VA’s substantial buying power when making competitive awards; (3) achieving greater efficiency in ordering and supply chain management, including a metric of ordering 40 percent of medical centers’ supplies from the MSPV-NG formulary; and (4) involving clinicians in requirements development to ensure uniform clinical review of medical supplies  VHA launched the MSPV-NG program in December 2016, but allowed a 4-month transition period  After April 2017, medical centers could no longer use the legacy program  MSPV-NG now restricts ordering to a narrow formulary  VHA policy requires medical centers to use MSPV- NG—as opposed to other means such as open market purchase card transactions—when purchasing items that are available in the formulary  Leading hospital networks we spoke with have similar goals to VA in managing their supply chains, including clinical standardization and reduced costs  These hospital networks reported they analyze their spending to identify items purchased most frequently, and which ones would be the best candidates to standardize first to yield cost savings  The hospitals’ supply chain managers reported establishing consensus with clinicians through early and frequent collaboration, understanding that clinician involvement is critical to the success of any effort to standardize their medical supply chain  By following these practices, these hospital networks have reported they have achieved significant cost savings in some cases, and the potential for improved patient care, while maintaining buy-in from their clinicians  VHA’s implementation of the MSPV-NG program—from its initial work to identify a list of supply requirements in early 2015, through its roll-out of the formulary to medical centers in December 2016—was not executed in line with leading practices  Specifically, VHA lacked a documented program strategy, leadership stability, and workforce capacity for the transition that, if in place, could have facilitated buy-in for the change throughout the organization  Further, the initial requirements development process and tight time frames contributed to ineffective contracting processes  As a result, VHA developed an initial formulary that did not meet the needs of the medical centers and has yet to achieve utilization and cost avoidance goals  VA made some changes in the second phase of requirements development to address deficiencies identified in the initial roll out  Key among these was to increase the level of clinical involvement, that is, to obtain input from the doctors and nurses at VA’s individual medical facilities  Despite changes aimed at improving implementation, the agency continues to face challenges that prevent the program from fully achieving its goals  VA did not document a clear overall strategy for the MSPV-NG program at the start and has not done so to date  About 6 months after our initial requests for a strategy or plan, a VHA official provided us with an October 2015 plan focusing on the mechanics of establishing the MSPV-NG formulary  However, this plan was used only within the VHA Procurement and Logistics Office and had not been approved by VHA or VA leadership  Leading practices for organizational transformation state that agencies must have well-documented plans and strategies for major initiatives (such as MSPV-NG) and communicate them clearly and consistently to all involved—which included VHA headquarters, the SAC, and all 170 medical centers  Without such a strategy, VA could not reasonably ensure that all stakeholders understood VHA’s approach for MSPV-NG and worked together in a coordinated manner to achieve program goals  In our November 2017 report, we recommended that the Director of the MSPV-NG program office should, with input from SAC, develop, document, and communicate to stakeholders an overarching strategy for the program, including how the program office will prioritize categories of supplies for future phases of requirement development and contracting  VA agreed with this recommendation and reported it would have a strategy in place by December 2017  Leadership instability and workforce challenges also made it difficult for VA to execute its transition to MSPV-NG  Our work has shown that leadership buy-in is necessary to ensure that major programs like MSPV- NG have the resources and support they need to execute their missions  Due to a combination of budget and hiring constraints, and lack of prioritization within VA, the MSPV-NG program office has never been fully staffed and has experienced instability in its leadership  As of January 2017, 24 of the office’s 40 positions were filled, and program office officials stated that this lack of staff affected their ability to implement certain aspects of the program within the planned time frames  In addition, since the inception of MSPV-NG, the program office has had four directors, two of whom were acting and two of whom were fulfilling the director position while performing other collateral duties  For instance, one of the acting MSPV-NG program office directors was on detail from a regional health network to fulfill the position, but had to abruptly leave and return to her prior position due to a federal hiring freeze  In our November 2017 report, we recommended that VHA prioritize the hiring of a MSPV- NG program director on a permanent basis  VA agreed with this recommendation and indicated a vacancy announcement will be posted by the end of 2017  The MSPV-NG program office initially developed requirements for items to be included in the formulary based almost exclusively on prior supply purchases, with limited clinician involvement  The program office concluded in its October 2015 formulary plan that relying on data from previous clinician purchases would be a good representation of medical centers’ needs and that clinician input would not be required for identifying which items to include in the initial formulary  Further, rather than standardizing purchases of specific categories of supplies—such as bandages or scalpels—program officials told us they identified medical and surgical items on which VA had spent $16,000 or more annually and ordered at least 12 times per year, and made those items the basis for the formulary  Officials said this analysis initially yielded a list of about 18,000 items, which the program office further refined to about 6,000 items by removing duplicate items or those that were not considered consumable commodities, such as medical equipment  This approach to requirements development stood in sharp contrast to those of the leading hospital networks we met with, which rely heavily on clinician input to help drive the standardization process and focus on individual categories of supplies that provide the best opportunities for cost savings  Based on the requirements developed by the program office, SAC began to issue competitive solicitations for the 6,000 items on the initial formulary in June 2015  Medical supply companies had responded to about 30 percent of the solicitations as of January 2016  As a result, according to SAC officials, they conducted outreach and some of these companies responded that VHA’s requirements did not appear to be based on clinical input and instead consisted of manufacturer-specific requirements that favored particular products instead of broader descriptions  Furthermore, SAC did not solicit large groups of related items, but rather issued separate solicitations for small groups of supply items—consisting of three or fewer items  This is contrary to industry practices of soliciting large groups of related supplies together  Therefore, according to SAC officials, some medical supply companies told them that submitting responses to SAC’s solicitations required more time and resources than they were willing to commit  By its April 2016 deadline for having 6,000 items on the formulary, SAC had been working on the effort for over a year and had established competitive agreements for about 200 items, representing about 3 percent of the planned items  Without contracts for the items on the formulary in place, VA delayed the launch of the MSPV-NG program until December 2016 and SAC began establishing non-competitive agreements in the last few months before the launch of MSPV-NG  As shown in figure 1, these non-competitive agreements accounted for approximately 79 percent of the items on the January 2017 version of the formulary  While this approach enabled the MSPV-NG program office to establish the formulary more quickly, it did so at the expense of one of the primary goals of the MSPV-NG program—leveraging VA’s buying power to obtain cost avoidance through competition  Once VA’s MSPV-NG initial formulary was established in December 2016, each medical center was charged with implementing it  According to logistics officials we spoke with at selected medical centers, they had varying levels of success due, in part, to incomplete guidance from the program office  Without clear guidance, many medical centers reported they were unable to find direct matches or substitutes on the MSPV-NG formulary for a substantial number of items they routinely used, which negatively impacted utilization rates for the initial formulary  In our November 2017 report, we recommended that the Director of the MSPV- NG program office provide complete guidance to medical centers for matching equivalent supply items  VA agreed with this recommendation and indicated it would provide this guidance to medical centers by December 2017  According to SAC, as of June 2017, only about a third of the items on the initial version of the formulary were being ordered in any significant quantity by medical centers, indicating that many items on the formulary were not those that are needed by medical centers  Senior VHA acquisition officials attributed this mismatch to shortcomings in their initial requirements development process as well as with VA’s purchase data  VA had set a target that medical centers would order 40 percent of their supplies from the MSPV-NG formulary, but utilization rates were below this target with a nationwide average utilization rate across medical centers of about 24 percent as of May 2017  Specifically, Chief Supply Chain Officers—who are responsible for managing the ordering and stocking of medical supplies at six selected medical centers—told us that many items they needed were not included in the MSPV-NG formulary  As such, we found that these six medical centers generally fell below VA’s stated utilization target  As shown in figure 2, among the six selected medical centers we reviewed, one met the target, while the remaining five were below 25 percent utilization  Instead of fully using MSPV-NG, the selected medical centers are purchasing many items through other means, such as purchase cards or new contracts awarded by their local contracting office, in part, because they said the formulary does not meet their needs  These approaches run counter to the goals of the MSPV-NG program and contribute to VA not making the best use of taxpayer dollars  Greater utilization of MSPV-NG is essential to VA achieving the cost avoidance goal of $150 million for its supply chain transformation effort  Under the legacy MSPV program, the National Acquisition Center tracked cost avoidance achieved by comparing prices for competitively-awarded MSPV supply contracts with prices available elsewhere  However, VHA officials stated that they are not currently tracking cost avoidance related specifically to MSPV-NG  In our November 2017 report, we recommended that the VHA Chief Procurement and Logistics Officer, in coordination with SAC, should calculate cost avoidance achieved by MSPV-NG on an ongoing basis  VA agreed with this recommendation and reported it would develop a new metric to measure cost avoidance by June 2018  In Phase 2 of MSPV-NG, the program office has taken some steps to incorporate greater clinical involvement in subsequent requirements development, but both its requirements development and SAC’s contracting efforts have been hampered by staffing and schedule constraints  In the fall of 2016, the program office began to establish panels of clinicians to serve on MSPV-NG integrated product teams (IPT) assigned to the task of developing updated requirements for the second phase of the formulary  Program officials said they had difficulty recruiting clinicians to participate  We found that slightly more than half (20 of the 38) of the IPTs had begun their work to review items and develop updated requirements by the time the MSPV-NG program launched in December 2016  Staff on the IPTs had to complete their responsibilities by the end of March 2017 while simultaneously managing their regular workload as physicians, surgeons, or nurses  By early March 2017, the IPTs still had about 4,200 items to review  Faced with meeting this unrealistic time frame, the MSPV-NG program office had 9 IPT members travel to one location—with an additional 10 members participating virtually—to meet for 5 days to review the remaining items  Members told us that this time pressure limited the extent to which they were able to pursue the goal of standardizing supplies, and that their review ended up being more of a data validation exercise than a standardization review  VHA ultimately met this compressed timeline, but in a rushed manner that limited the impact of clinician involvement  In our November 2017 report, we recommended that the VHA Chief Procurement and Logistics Officer use input from national clinical program offices to prioritize its requirements development and standardization efforts beyond Phase 2 to focus on supply categories that offer the best opportunity for standardization and cost avoidance  VA agreed with this recommendation and stated it is in the process of finalizing guidance that will detail the importance of involving the national clinical program offices in MSPV-NG requirements development and standardization efforts  The SAC plans to replace the existing Phase 1 non-competitive agreements with competitive awards based on the Phase 2 requirements generated by the IPTs, but it may not be able to keep up with expiring agreements due to an unrealistic schedule  Because they were made on a non-competitive basis, the Phase 1 agreements were established for a period of 1 year  In order to keep the full formulary available, the SAC director said the staff must award 200 to 250 contracts before the Phase 1 agreements expire later this year  SAC officials acknowledged that it is unlikely that they will be able to award the contracts by the time the existing agreements expire  According to SAC officials, they are in the process of hiring more staff to deal with the increased workload  Further, the SAC division director told us that they canceled all outstanding Phase 2 solicitations in September 2017 due to low response rates, protests from service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses, and changes in overall MSPV-NG strategy  In our November 2017 report, we recommended that the MSPV-NG program office and SAC should establish a plan for how to mitigate the potential risk of gaps in contract coverage while SAC is still working to make competitive Phase 2 awards, which could include prioritizing supply categories that are most likely to yield cost avoidance  VA agreed with this recommendation and indicated it has developed a plan to mitigate the risk of gaps in contract coverage with short- and mid-term procurement strategies to ensure continued provision of medical and surgical supplies to VHA facilities  The department also stated that it plans to replace the current MSPV-NG contract and formulary process with a new approach where the prime vendor would develop the formulary  However, VA will likely face challenges in this new approach until it fully addresses the existing shortcomings in the MSPV-NG program  Chairman Roe, Ranking Member Walz, and Members of the Committee, this concludes 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 statement, please contact Shelby S  Oakley at 202-512-4841 or OakleyS@gao gov  In addition, contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this statement  Individuals who made key contributions to the report on which this testimony is based are Lisa Gardner, Assistant Director; Emily Bond; Matthew T  Crosby; Lorraine Ettaro; Michael Grogan; Jeff Hartnett; Katherine Lenane; Teague Lyons; Roxanna Sun; and Colleen Taylor  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 


Report 2:  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  

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.