The Making of the Right to Food: Tracing Food Policy Conflict and Negotiated Outcomes in Colombia

ABSTRACT The 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian Government and the FARC guerrilla group marked a historic step toward ending more than five decades of armed conflict. It also reshaped national food policy with lasting implications. During the negotiations, deep ideological divisions emerged between food sovereignty and food security, and these tensions threatened to stall progress. Yet, negotiators converged on an unexpected overarching frame: the right to food. This study examines the debates and tensions that produced this outcome and shows how the right to food helped bridge entrenched divides. Drawing on qualitative document analysis and process tracing of previously classified and public documents, including internal working papers, civil society proposals, official statements, and negotiation records, as well as interviews with negotiators, the study traces a 12‐year trajectory of food policy debates across the phases of exploration (2012), negotiation (2013–2016), and implementation of the peace accord (2016 to date). The findings suggest that this shift did more than enable agreement at the table. It also influenced implementation choices and helped open new policy pathways beyond the accord itself, including the later constitutional recognition of the human right to food in Colombia.