Event Date: October 30, 2017 - 2:00pm to 3:30pm
Location: Salle Huguette-Labelle (Tabaret) , 550 Cumberland Street

Presented by CIPS and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) 

In 2010, Juan Manuel Santos was elected President of Colombia for a four-year term and re-elected in 2014 for a second term.

Under his administration, Colombia has achieved several milestones. These include: moving a majority of the country’s 48 million people into the middle class for the first time in Colombian history; reducing the national homicide rate to its lowest level in 40 years; increasing foreign Investment to record levels; and decreasing the poverty rate from 40.3% to 27.8% in five years.

During his presidency, Juan Manuel Santos successfully negotiated a peace agreement with Colombia’s oldest guerilla group, the FARC, an organization that has now laid down its weapons and accepted the jurisdiction of a transitional justice system to answer for their actions before entering the national discourse as a political party. This is the first peace agreement in modern history in which a justice system will investigate and sanction war crimes, crimes against humanity and grave human rights abuses. The peace agreement puts victims of the conflict at the center of the peace process and focuses on their rights in peacebuilding efforts.

For these efforts, President Santos was awarded the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize.

President Santos graduated from the Colombian Naval Academy. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and business administration from the University of Kansas before undertaking post-graduate studies in economic development at the London School of Economics and earning an MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He has published several works, including a book on the Third Way with Tony Blair as well as Jaque al Terror (Check on Terror), which describes operations against the FARC during his tenure as Minister of Defence.

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