Colombia

Colombia's 2016 peace agreement with FARC ended a 52-year civil conflict that killed over 260,000 people, but implementation has been partial: former combatants have been reintegrated into political life (FARC holds guaranteed congressional seats), but territorial control in former conflict zones has fragmented among dissident FARC factions, ELN guerrillas, and narcotrafficking organisations. The economy is diversifying from oil and coffee dependency toward services, technology, and manufacturing, but the informal sector employs roughly 60% of workers. President Petro, elected in 2022 as Colombia's first left-wing president, represents a political transition from the centre-right establishment that governed for most of the country's democratic history. Colombia's governance challenge is territorial: the state exercises effective control over major cities and connecting corridors but has limited presence in remote rural areas, particularly in the Pacific coast, Amazon, and Venezuelan border regions — a governance pattern that biologists would recognise as core-periphery metabolism, where nutrients (state services) reach the centre but not the extremities.