Determinants of Successful Reintegration of Ex-Combatants in Colombia : Some Initial Findings

This paper presents the structure, descriptive statistics, and some initial findings of the research project “The Determinants of Successful Reintegration of Ex-Combatants in Colombia”. The general purpose of the project is to measure and explain the level of social, economic and political reintegration of Colombian ex-combatants, following graduation from the national reintegration program managed by the ACR/ARN. This includes collecting data on several measures of social, economic and political reintegration and correlating these outcome variables with the socio-economic backgrounds of ex-combatants and reintegration program interventions, respectively. To this end, data has been generated through a survey of 444 ex-combatants that had graduated from the program by September 2015. This paper briefly describes the sampling method and survey roll-out, followed by descriptive statistics and initial findings from the survey. In this working paper, we present some initial empirical findings and contrast them to previous research. As this is still work in progress – and more in-depth analysis will be conducted of specific sections of the survey – it should be made clear in references to this version of the paper that the findings are preliminary. A personal contact prior to citation is welcomed