How To End A War: Lessons from Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Juan Manuel Santos
What can Colombia teach us about what's still possible?
Juan Manuel Santos is the former President of Colombia, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and the Chair of The Elders. In 2016, under his leadership, Colombia signed a peace agreement with FARC, the country’s largest rebel group, bringing an end to a conflict that had lasted for over 60 years.
On the eve of the recent elections in Colombia we spoke to him about what it takes to make peace. It’s a question that feels increasingly urgent: there are more armed conflicts in the world today than at any point since the Second World War. President Santos is one of the few living leaders who has actually ended one. He told us what he learned from Nelson Mandela, about his friendship with Pope Francis, and why he still has so much faith in the power of forgiveness.
We also explore Colombia’s environmental leadership, from Indigenous wisdom to the recent Santa Marta climate conference, to the idea that there can be no peace among people unless we also make peace with nature. And along the way, he explains how Colombia helped inspire the Sustainable Development Goals, why cooperation remains humanity’s greatest challenge, and what lessons the world can learn from a country that many once considered beyond repair.
You can listen to the full conversation on our podcast, watch it on Youtube, or read the transcript below.
Amy Rose
President Santos, in doing research for this interview, I came across one of your key lessons from the Navy: ‘Before you do anything, decide where you want to go first.’
If you could give the world a direction right now, what would it be?
Juan Manuel Santos
When I joined the Navy as a recruit, one of the officers called me over and said, ‘Santos, take this small sailboat and learn how to sail.’ I had no idea how to sail. I started going from one side to the other, and he started laughing. ‘Come here,’ he said. ‘I will teach you a lesson. To be a good sailor, and also in your life, in your business, in government, you need to know where you want to go. As a sailor, you can use all the winds, even the winds that are against you, in your favour.’
That lesson was extremely important for me. Many years later, I discovered what I call my port of destination: what I wanted to do in my life. One of the objectives, probably the most important, was to find peace in my country after more than 55 or 60 years of war. That became my port of destination. I also learned that you have to create the necessary conditions to reach that port, and that is how we finally arrived at the port of peace in Colombia.
In the world today, we also need a vision, a port of destiny that will bring back something like the system created after the Second World War: a multilateral system that helps countries not only work together, but also confront the existential threats that have emerged in recent decades.
I am chair of something called The Elders, a group founded by Nelson Mandela 19 years ago. They are former heads of state and Nobel Peace laureates. We use our experience and our moral authority to push good news and hope into the world, because right now the world is going through a very difficult time, with too much uncertainty.
We have identified four existential threats. The first is nuclear war. The risk has increased enormously: more nuclear weapons have been produced, more countries possess them, and the treaties among the great nuclear powers have disappeared. The second is climate change. There are still deniers, but the scientific community has shown us that if we don’t address this problem with much greater effectiveness, we will be in serious trouble. The third is pandemics. We are not prepared for the next one. The last pandemic showed us that without cooperation, the effects are disastrous. We are seeing this right now in Congo with Ebola.
The fourth, which has emerged more recently, is AI. The Pope has just published his Encyclical. It is a document we should all read and absorb. The Elders convened a group of experts a month ago in England. Among them was the Anthropic co-founder who was photographed with the Pope when he presented the Encyclical. Experts from Russia, China, the US, the UK, all around the world: they all agreed that the world needs to cooperate to manage AI. So I think we have a challenging port of destiny.
Angus Hervey
International headlines often frame Colombia through the lens of conflict and drugs, overlooking the remarkable progress of recent decades: millions lifted out of poverty, the care economy in Bogotá, cities like Medellín reinventing themselves with green corridors, the extraordinary efforts to protect the Amazon and expand clean energy.
What lessons does Colombia have to teach the world, and how might those lessons change our course at the international level?
Juan Manuel Santos
There is no conflict that cannot be resolved. For 60 years, fighting the most powerful guerrilla movement in the western hemisphere, everyone thought peace was impossible. All my predecessors failed. But when we began planning very carefully, learning from other peace processes, what worked and what didn’t, we were able to create the necessary conditions for success.
And I think this is a lesson for the rest of the world. In the past 15 years, it is the only peace process in which the UN, which is now under fire, was instrumental and effective. At the beginning of this century, Colombia was considered a failed state. Eighteen years later, it was the country in Latin America with the best indicators in poverty reduction, inequality reduction, environmental conservation, and job creation. The lesson of how this can be done from a position of real difficulty is one that other countries can use. It is possible, through leadership and perseverance.
Angus Hervey
The peace agreement was the defining moment of your presidency. For generations, war had been the backdrop to everyday life in Colombia. What made you believe that peace was possible? Where did that belief come from?
Juan Manuel Santos
I had a conversation with Mandela when he was president. I went to Johannesburg to hand over the chairmanship of UNCTAD, the 8th United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. He was to chair the 9th.
I arrived at the hotel. That morning I turned on the television, the public South African channel, and found myself watching a surreal live programme. For the first time, they were filming the encounters of victims and perpetrators who had never met before, broadcast live for the whole country to see. Some of them embraced. Others struck each other. Others screamed. It was extraordinary. That afternoon, I asked Mandela: ‘What are you doing? Why did you have this programme?’
He sat and began explaining how important it is to reconcile after so many years of war.
‘The way to reconcile is to bring the victims and the perpetrators together and put them on the path of forgiving each other, of working together, of healing the wounds.’
In the middle of the conversation, Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop, came into the room and sat down. He began telling me how important truth was for reconciliation, for healing: that often the victims don’t want reparations. They want to know why the perpetrators did what they did.
I absorbed all of this. At the end of the meeting, Mandela said to me: ‘Colombia and South Africa are very similar countries. You will never take off if you don’t have peace.’ That is when I truly decided: my port of destination was to bring peace to my country. So I started working to create the necessary conditions for the peace process. And in the end, we did it, against the odds.
Making peace is often very unpopular, and I suffered for it. I had been elected president because I was formerly Minister of Defence, a war hero, seen as very effective. When I announced at my inauguration that I was going to make peace with the FARC, everyone, even my family, said: ‘Don’t do it. All your predecessors have failed. You are one of the most popular politicians in the country. You will lose your political capital. Don’t try it.’
But I knew it was the right thing to do. I had to do it. A friend of mine, Shlomo Ben-Ami, who had been Foreign Minister of Israel, told me: ‘I know what you are going through. I know you want to make peace. And I know everyone is telling you: don’t continue, you are good at making war, your popularity is very high, why risk your political capital to sit down with these people? But consider this. You are about to go to your grave, and you look back and ask yourself: if I had taken the risk and been successful, how many lives would I have saved? If you didn’t take the risk, could you go to your grave at peace with your conscience?’
That argument was so powerful that I went to my wife and said: ‘I am going to do it, no matter how unpopular.’ And it was very unpopular. Every peace process comes down to one question: where do you draw the line between peace and justice? How much justice is a society, a country, willing to sacrifice for peace? Wherever you draw it, you will always have people demanding more justice and people demanding more peace. That is why peace processes are so often unpopular. But after a while, people realise it is better to live in peace than in war.
Amy Rose
I had never considered that line before, between peace and justice. This was also a very long process: six years, public scrutiny, setbacks. And once you made that historic agreement, that wasn’t the end either. At a time when multiple conflicts are unfolding around the world, what is the difference between making peace, and building it?
Juan Manuel Santos
I’ll tell you another anecdote. I was a good friend of the late Pope Francis, and we used to joke about football. He was Argentinian, I was Colombian. During the peace process, I used to say to him: ‘Pope Francis, why don’t you come to Colombia? This is a very difficult process. Give me some help, a push.’ And he would joke: ‘Oh, President, don’t worry. I pray a lot for you.’ So I said: ‘Pope Francis, if you have to pray for me, that means I’m in real trouble.’ But he said: ‘No, I will go when you and the Colombian people most need me.’
He came to Colombia after we had signed the peace agreement, after the guerrillas had given up their weapons and been reintegrated into civil society. He described his visit as going to Colombia to push Colombians to take the first step in the most difficult phase of any peace process: reconciliation.
You mentioned peacemaking and peacebuilding. Peacemaking in the Colombian process was fast. Nine months, which was itself a world record. No other peace process had completed what they call DDR, disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration, in nine months. And with something extraordinary: the soldiers and policemen that the guerrillas had been fighting for 60 years were in charge of their safety.
But then came the process of peacebuilding, the real reconciliation, which may take generations. We are, ten years on, still in that process, with something else we also invented. No other peace process had a special tribunal of transitional justice under the umbrella of the Rome Statute, bringing together both parties, with the most responsible judged and sanctioned by that tribunal. That had never happened before.
And it has been difficult. That phase of peacebuilding is the most difficult, but you have to persevere. You have to keep going and show people why it matters. And this is what we are going through in Colombia: former combatants and former military men working together, their sons now working together on common projects, building that empathy between two factions that have been killing each other for so long. It’s difficult, but it’s possible.
Amy Rose
You said you reached the point where you couldn’t in good conscience not make peace, even if it went against what many people in your country wanted. How does it feel to now see the next generation working together?
Juan Manuel Santos
I did what my conscience and my heart told me was the right thing to do, even if I lost much of my political capital, which I am slowly but surely getting back. It was worthwhile. I’m proud I took that decision.
It was very hard. I’ll share an anecdote, because I have told this to President Zelensky and to others living through conflicts: the importance of the victims.
When I started the peace process, a former professor of mine from Harvard came to visit me. ‘President,’ he said, ‘you are entering a very difficult path. You will feel the loneliness of power. There will be moments when you are ready to throw in the towel. Talk to the victims. Ask them what they have suffered. It will re-energise you.’
I was reluctant. I assumed that the victims, precisely because they were victims, would not support the peace process, since transitional justice meant the perpetrators would not go to ordinary prison but would face other kinds of sanctions. But I started talking to them. All around the country they told me the most terrible things: daughters raped and killed, sons tortured. But most of them, not all, said: ‘President, continue. Persevere.’ And I said: ‘But the person who did this is not going to ordinary prison. He will be sanctioned, yes, but not imprisoned. Why are you so generous?’ Most of them said: ‘Because we don’t want others to suffer what we have suffered.’
That was a lesson in life. My faith in the human condition grew.
One story in particular touched me. A woman called Pastora Mira, from the coffee region. Her parents were killed. Her brother was killed. Her son was tortured and killed. One week after she buried her son, someone knocked on her door. A wounded man, asking for help. She helped him, put him in her son’s bed. Three days later, when he had recovered and was leaving, he saw a photograph of her with her son. He fell to his knees. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘don’t tell me this is your son.’ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Why?’ ‘My God, you have been so good to me. I must tell you. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I was the one who tortured and killed your son.’
She grabbed him by the shoulders. He was kneeling, almost in tears. ‘Stand up,’ she said. He stood. She looked him in the eyes and embraced him. ‘Thank you,’ she said. He couldn’t understand it. ‘Why are you thanking me? I just confessed that I tortured and killed your son.’ ‘Because by asking for forgiveness, by telling the truth, you have relieved me from hating for the rest of my life.’
I took Pastora with me to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In my speech, I said she was the one who truly deserved it. The victims are the ones who deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.
Amy Rose
I think we need to take a breath after that story.
Angus Hervey
President Santos, could we switch to the environment? You have warned that we are destroying the Earth. But it’s also true that there are spots of hope. Deforestation in the Amazon has dropped sharply in recent years, especially in Colombia. The current government is also leading the world on ending new oil and gas exploration and prioritising forests. Is this a dividend of peace, or something different?
Juan Manuel Santos
It is a lesson I learned from the indigenous communities, particularly the oldest in the western hemisphere, who live in the mountains called the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. They are the Kogi community. They have their own culture, their own way of life, their own health system.
When I became president, as a gesture to them, I went up there on inauguration day, before being sworn in to Congress, and asked for their permission to serve, as our older brothers. ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘we give you permission. We know you are going to make peace with the FARC, but you also have to make peace with nature. Because without peace with nature, peace among humans will not last.’ They gave me a staff and said: stop the war, but also make peace with nature. When you finish your mandate, come back.
Eight years later, in 2018, two months before leaving office, I went back. ‘Your mandate has been fulfilled,’ I said. I brought with me the peace agreement, all 320 pages, signed with the FARC. I also brought the document approved at the United Nations: the Sustainable Development Goals, because those were a Colombian initiative. Two very wise young women in my government had come to me and said: ‘Do you want to be a great world leader?’ I said yes. ‘We have this idea. The Millennium Goals expire in 2015. We should replace them with something much more ambitious, with an environmental dimension, where rich countries also have to contribute. What do you think?’ I said it was a great idea. They began the multilateral diplomacy that culminated at the United Nations. A historic moment in the General Assembly: every single country voted in favour of the SDGs.
So I returned to the indigenous community with those two documents, and to give back the staff they had given me. ‘Mr President,’ they said, ‘come back in a week.’ I went back a week later. ‘The peace process with the FARC is perfect. But the SDGs, no.’ ‘What do you mean, no? We negotiated for five years. Every single country approved it. What is wrong?’ ‘It lacks the most important factor.’ ‘What is that?’ ‘The spiritual factor. Unless humans feel that nature has life, that mountains have life, that rivers and seas have life, and treat nature as an equal rather than a secondary citizen, there will never be peace with nature. Go back and continue working for peace with nature, because there will never be peace among humans if there is no peace with nature.’
And we are living that now. What is happening with climate change, the displacement, the hunger, the inequalities it produces: all of this shows that peace and nature are indivisible. But we are also seeing positive examples, technology being used well, sustainable development, regenerative agriculture, all of which must be scaled much faster to change course. I am cautiously optimistic, because I have seen what is possible in Colombia. Deforestation has come down, but it has to come down faster.
Angus Hervey
You mentioned that the indigenous community is in the Sierra Nevada near Santa Marta, and of course Santa Marta has been in global headlines recently for a different reason: it was the site of the first gathering of a coalition of the willing on climate, 60 countries coming together to try to move beyond discussions that have stalled at the UN level. What do you make of the symbolism of that? That the place where you received a mandate to bring humans back into harmony with nature has now hosted something that may unlock our collective inability to act on climate?
Juan Manuel Santos
A happy coincidence. I was there. I was also at COP30 in Belém, where for the first time the scientific community and the indigenous communities came together and gave the same message.
In Santa Marta, the initiative of bringing together what they call the coalition of the willing matters enormously, because we saw in Belém how powerful countries blocked decisions on deforestation and the transition to clean technologies. The alternative path is like what happened with the Mine Ban Treaty: enough countries came together to start rolling the ball and create a snowball effect. I hope Santa Marta does the same.
The indigenous communities were deeply present. I arranged a meeting between some of the conference participants and the indigenous communities, and they were clear: you must do much more. They showed, for example, that the famous glacier in the Sierra Nevada is disappearing. In five or six years, there will be no glacier. No glacier, no water. ‘It is our life that is at stake,’ they said. That is what the world needs to understand: we must be far more conscious of caring for nature. Otherwise, we will all suffer.
Amy Rose
President Santos, we are aware that your country is in the middle of an election. Does a moment like this make a former leader reflect differently on legacy? Which parts of yours feel strong right now, and which feel fragile?
Juan Manuel Santos
When I became president, I took something from Abraham Lincoln. He asked his former rivals in the election to join his cabinet. He wanted to abolish slavery and win the Civil War. I did the same. After winning the election, I invited my former rivals in. I chose aspects of their proposals, incorporated them into my government plan, and made them part of my cabinet. That gave me the political authority to govern, to make reforms, to push the country forward, with very good results.
Right now, in this very polarised world, Colombia is also very polarised. The campaigns have been very aggressive, and I am worried. If you burn bridges, rebuilding them is difficult. Without a minimum consensus on where you want the country to go, it will simply not progress.
My lesson is this: don’t just think about winning. Think about how you are going to govern. The next president will inherit very serious problems that require a minimum consensus among Colombians, across left and right. Many of these issues are not left or right. They are existential, and we have to address them together. This is true not only in Colombia. Many countries around the world are going through the same thing.
One lesson I keep trying to promote: you can always reach an agreement. I quote Mandela often: the most powerful weapon in the world is to sit down and talk. But not to impose your view. Sit down to learn from those who think differently, to understand why they think the way they do. That is how you begin to find common ground, to make the minimum agreements needed to move forward in peace. Colombia needs this. The whole world does right now.
Amy Rose
Sitting with you today, what strikes me most is your ability to listen, which I fear is being lost in the world right now. You also truly listen to young people. So many of them are struggling with climate anxiety, really worried about the world. What would you like them to know?
Juan Manuel Santos
The Elders met in Nairobi two weeks ago. The Irish Embassy organised a meeting with young people from across Africa, and we sat down with them. We sat down to learn from them, not to teach them. It was a remarkable meeting, lasting hours, with the Elders learning from the young people. They had many initiatives, many ideas, including about how to communicate. We are very old-fashioned, and they told us: you have to communicate differently.
Learning from young people, rather than telling them what to do, is something leaders everywhere should pay much more attention to. One of the problems of the world today is the lack of long-term leadership. Leaders worry about the effect of their decisions on the next election, so they don’t take the long view, and many decisions become counterproductive over time. Young people think in the long term, because they are young. Having faith in the future is what moves a society. We should give far more weight to the young.
Angus Hervey
President Santos, one last question. You have seen so much change in your lifetime, in Colombia and in the world. You have been at the helm of many of those stories of progress. But you have also seen things fracture and fall apart.
In this moment, in 2026, what is still possible?
Juan Manuel Santos
Many of the good things are possible if we work together. If we set aside short-term interests and start working together, everything is possible. Take AI, an existential threat for some, but for many the solution to enormous problems. We have to come together and talk. China and the United States, instead of competing, should sit down, as the Pope has been urging, and work out how to use AI for the benefit of the whole world. So many of our problems can be solved if there is the will to cooperate and to talk constructively.
Take Latin America. We have been the continent of the future for decades. Why have we not become an important voice in world affairs? Because of petty fights among leaders. Mexico against Ecuador, Colombia against Bolivia, Argentina against Brazil. If we don’t speak with one voice, we will never be relevant.
The same is true globally. If we accept the logic of spheres of influence, the United States in the Americas, China in Asia, Russia likewise, it will end very badly. We need to sit down and ask: how can we work together? I know it is not easy right now. But we must insist, because that is how things become possible.
Go Deeper:
👉 The Elders
👉 Juan Manuel Santos
👉 The Open Library of the Colombian Peace Process
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