This book has explored how key international organizations and countries promoted geographically targeted peacebuilding efforts in Colombia between November 2016 and February 2019 through online subsidies. The work has captured this international dimension of framing under the notions of public mediated diplomacy, particularly in the exploration of online subsidies published in countries’ and international organizations’ web pages.

The question guiding the work was to what extent the different frames regarding space transformation and peacebuilding promoted by key international actors reflected consensus, complementarity, dissent or dispersion, against the background of two Colombian governments opposed to each other over the peace process, and the implications of that for consolidating the peacebuilding initiatives of the government of Juan Manuel Santos. The short answer to this question is that, for the most part, consensus and complementarity were dominant features in the frames promoted by international actors in consolidating the presence of the state in targeted areas of the country as well as the institutional architecture post conflict. This did help to consolidate the peace agreement of the Santos government by legitimating the project as a state-(rather than government-) led multilateral intervention project, thus prompting Ivan Duque's incoming government to continue its implementation. It is important to note, however, that some of the departures from the peace agreement by the Duque administration were in line with the US Trump administration and its turn to a more traditional focus in the war against drugs. International community members overall were weaker in confronting some key drivers of the structural violence denounced by local actors, including the counterproductive punitive approach of the war against drugs, neoliberal development that was at odds with territorial autonomy, and denounced political and institutional links to killings of HR activists and ex-combatants all over the country.

Chapter 3 showed that there were important differences between the Santos and the Duque administrations despite convergence on: a) promoting DDR; b) fighting illegal armed groups, illegal mining and violence against social leaders and HR activists (understood as apolitical violence committed by criminal gangs) through law enforcement mechanisms; c) clearing territories from anti-personnel mines; and d) strengthening local authority capacities and services for the provision of justice, land registry and development programmes.