This is the comprehensive account of the long and difficult road traveled to end the fifty-year armed conflict with the FARC, the oldest guerrilla army in the world; a long war that left more than eight million victims. The obstacles to peace were both large and dangerous. All previous attempts to negotiate with the FARC had failed, creating an environment where differences were irreconcilable and political will was scarce. The Battle for Peace is the story not only of the six years of negotiation and the peace process that transformed a country, its secret contacts, its international implications, and difficulties and achievements but also of the two previous decades in which Colombia oscillated between warlike confrontation and negotiated solution. In The Battle for Peace Juan Manuel Santos shares the lessons he learned about war and peace and how to build a successful negotiation process in the context of a nation which had all but resigned itself to war and the complexities of twenty-first-century international law and diplomacy. While Santos is clear that there is no handbook for making peace, he offers conflict-tested guidance on the critical parameters, conditions, and principles as well as rich detail on the innovations that made it possible for his nation to find common ground and a just solution.

In the second decade of the 21st century, Colombia showed surprising results in the fight against poverty. Monetary poverty dropped, extreme monetary poverty was cut in half, and multidimensional poverty fell. More than five million Colombians overcame poverty. Inequality also decreased significantly. In the middle of an internal armed conflict and peace negotiations, Colombia became a poverty reduction success story. All of this happened under the leadership of President Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018). How was this accomplished? In this important book, based on his experience and with data and statistics, former President Santos explains how this battle against poverty was waged and describes the tools, programs, and policies that produced these results. In particular, he emphasizes the importance of Colombia's globally pioneering adoption of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), calculated according to the Alkire-Foster method and developed at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI). The MPI, inspired by the work of Professor Amartya Sen, has been used in Colombia not only as a poverty measure but also as an instrument to guide social policy. The Colombian approach to poverty offers lessons, clearly explained in this book, to other nations, academics, and decision-makers. The Colombian experience demonstrates that, with political leadership and reliable poverty measurement, it is possible to make progress toward social equality.