Colombia has persevered against armed conflict, violence, terrorists, and narcotraffickers. It is now managing a massive influx of migrants from Venezuela. But a new challenge has emerged.
Current violent protests in Colombia are extremely concerning. This should be a signal that frustration regarding the pandemic could threaten democracies overseas. Any disruption to next year’s Colombian presidential elections could significantly affect the region. Therefore, the United States should implement a bold plan to protect the important gains made in Colombia.
Next year will mark the 200th anniversary of the bilateral relationship. In recent years, Colombia has become an international leader in its own right. It became NATO’s first partner from Latin America and joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Colombia has also become our 25th-largest goods trading partner, at $28.9 billion annually. And next year is the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement’s coming into force.
Colombian President Ivan Duque took bold and courageous action by granting temporary protected status to more than 1.8 million Venezuelans in Colombia. The international community and both sides of the aisle in Congress have praised this decision, but we must go further with a vigorous, bipartisan development initiative.
The Biden administration has already pledged to send vaccines overseas. Colombia must be at the top of the list of recipients. Colombia’s economy has suffered greatly due to the pandemic. The crisis has only been exacerbated by the protests, which have already caused more than $1.5 billion in economic losses. Vaccine doses will help mitigate the crisis, stabilizing the economy and allowing it to reactivate quickly and restore prosperity.
Second, the U.S. should offer Colombia sovereign loan guarantees to help it better achieve access to financing from international markets with favorable terms. In the past, the U.S. has issued similar sovereign loan guarantees to allies such as Jordan, Tunisia, and Ukraine.
Third, the U.S. should provide Colombia with direct budget support. This will allow the government to implement its ambitious plan for migrant integration and inclusion while maintaining support for Colombian communities hosting them.
Fourth, we should increase the Development Assistance and Economic Support Fund accounts for the U.S. Agency for International Development mission in Colombia. While at USAID, former Administrator Mark Green and I worked with Congress in a bipartisan manner to increase Colombia’s development bilateral assistance account by $20 million, for a total of approximately $207 million in fiscal year 2020. On top of that, we also reprogrammed from elsewhere and invested about $75 million in Colombia.
The increased funding could help expand the government’s presence in its entire national territory — historically an unsolved problem in Colombia. This is critical not only to combat drug trafficking and other illicit economies such as gold mining, but also to bring social services, land titling, economic opportunity, and the rule of law to historically neglected rural areas. An integral presence of the state is also vital to the protection of the human rights of community leaders and minority populations, such as Afro-Colombians and indigenous peoples, among others.
Fifth, the U.S. should convince the international community to invest in Colombia to help better absorb Venezuelans. If it hasn’t already, Venezuela will surpass Syria this year as the country with the most migrants fleeing. As of late last year, the U.S. alone had provided a total of $1.2 billion in humanitarian and development assistance for the Venezuela regional crisis since 2017. But pledges by the international community have gone unfulfilled. The United Nations humanitarian response plans in 2020 included $1.9 billion for Yemen and $3.79 billion for Syria but only an embarrassing $116 million for Venezuela as of June 2020.
Sixth, we need to create a realistic private-sector engagement plan aimed at long-term sustainability. Before the Development Finance Corporation was established, USAID had already leveraged about $25 million of U.S. taxpayer dollars to incentivize over $1 billion worth of total value of Colombian investments through its previous Development Credit Authority. Once the DFC was established, it launched the Colombia Growth Initiative in 2020. This initiative was ambitious in committing to bringing $5 billion worth of investments to Colombia, but it proved to be a disappointment and set unrealistic expectations that were going to be difficult to meet.
Now that USAID’s former DCA has become the Mission Transaction Unit within the DFC, we should first expand and then build upon the previous deals that USAID and DCA had made in Colombia to help create jobs and improve local economies.
Colombians have been resilient and extremely generous, but they need to know that they are not alone. Violent unrest and instability in Colombia undermine long-term U.S. interests in its region. We must help Colombia now or else risk jeopardizing the progress we have made over the last two decades in partnering with one of our strongest allies.
Eddy Acevedo, a former congressional staffer and senior official at USAID, is a senior adviser to former Ambassador Mark Green and president and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
