There are strong resonances of the tortuous road of our own peace process in the historic agreement reached this week between the Colombian government and the Farc guerilla movement which should see the end of the longest running war in the Western Hemisphere.
It has raged since 1964 and has claimed some 220,000 lives, displacing seven million people internally. A government team spent nearly four years negotiating the deal with Farc in Havana.
President Juan Manuel Santos has declared a definitive ceasefire, although one has been in effect since June, announcing that "We have reached a final definitive agreement to end the armed conflict with the Farc."
Controversial and often painful compromises, all too familiar to the Irish, like prisoner releases and amnesties, the subsidised reintegration of fighters into society, arms decommissioning overseen by the UN, and political representation for the guerillas, will be put to voters in a referendum in October following a 30-day debate in Congress over the 297-page text.
Although polls currently suggest it will receive majority support, the margin is likely to be far smaller than that that in the Belfast Agreement, supported in the North by 71 per cent of voters. Opposition to the deal comes from the political mainstream, particularly urban communities, and is led by conservative former President Alvaro Uribe.
He echoes victim families’ rage that rebels are being amnestied under the “transitional justice” provisions for all but the gravest crimes and opposition to subsidising fighters as they leave jungle and mountain hideouts to look for work.
Part of the plan includes paying ex-fighters 90 per cent of Colombia’s minimum wage. The negotiators, however, compared the monthly $200 subsidy to the thousands of dollars spent on each army bombing raid. “War is much more expensive, even without counting the human cost,” Senator Roy Barreras, one of the negotiators, said. Moreover the amnesty proposals closely resemble Alvaro’s own deal while in office with murderous right wing paramilitaries.
The package is undoubtedly bitter medicine to swallow for those who have suffered on both sides, but a pragmatic reconciliation that, like the Belfast Agreement in eschewing the idea of victory, can bring what both sides see as an honourable peace. It deserves a fair wind.
And the support being offered by the European Union, both in overseeing and funding implementation of the agreement with €575 million in assistance, is welcome. But as the EU's special envoy to the peace process, former tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, points out , the challenge of implementation may well be as difficult as the negotiations have been. Colombia is not out of the woods yet.
The sharing of experience from the Northern Ireland 's peace process by Sinn Féin politicians is also a welcome sign of how times have changed here – not long ago their erstwhile comrades in the IRA were advising Farc on mortar technology.