Collective Reintegration and Gender Relations among Ex-Combatants Lessons from Colombia

Female combatants often experience empowerment during armed conflict that is seldom preserved after a peace deal. Empowerment of women fighters is associated with gender equality practices within armed groups that get dismantled as part of post-conflict reintegration. Given the link between gender equality practices and female empowerment, this article considers how alternative reintegration policies that preserve rebel unity after war affect gender relations among ex-fighters. Specifically, the paper examines Colombia’s collective reintegration for the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-ep) that supported the establishment of ex-combatant settlements. The analysis draws on 59 semi-structured interviews with FARC ex-combatants conducted between 2019 and 2022. The main finding are that collective reintegration did not preclude erosion of gender equality norms among former FARC, but it did support grassroots ex-combatant organizing around a feminist agenda with an innovative care approach. To explain these mixed results, the article examines Colombia’s hybrid ‘liberal-local’ peace deal. It shows how the liberal focus on electoral politics falls short, while local peacebuilding efforts better support gender-equal reintegration and the empowerment of female ex-combatants.