Résumé
The “Final Agreement to end the armed conflict and build a stable and lasting peace” signed on 24 November 2016 by the Colombian Government and FARC-EP has been presented as being innovative with respect to other peace agreements. However the first evaluations on implementation point at delays and shortcomings, specifically regarding those measures involving the rural dimension of the agreement (Comprehensive Rural Reform including access to land, socio-economic rehabilitation of former combattants eradication of illicit crops). These are precisely the measures, programmes and plans that intended attacking the roots of armed conflict and thus laying the basis for a lasting peace (as different from those sections of the final agreement relating to laying down arms and instauring a special justice system). The authors acknowledge this quest for innovation, but argue that the low rate of implementation of the rural dimension of the agreement observed in two departments (Caquetá and Putumayo) should be sought, firstly, in the quality of the formulation of the text of the agreement itself and the process through which it was produced. A second explanation emerges from the analysis of the way in which the national government steadily added financial, institutional and organizational arrangements for implementation into the existing State apparatus, without questioning and rethinking its functioning thusfar. Finally the analysis of how the international “community" channeled and managed external resources in support of the implementation of the peace agreement, may contribute to a third explanation. The authors then suggest some alternative paths, including a focus on future managing of land issues in the two departments studied.