Eyes On: Colombia

Foreword

In January 2023, several of our consultants travelled to Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia, in order to gain a granular and up-to-date understanding of the country’s risk environment. We have purposely focused our research into core areas that we assess could have significant impacts on businesses currently operating in, or are looking to enter, Colombia and the wider Latin American (LATAM) region.

Key themes of enquiries were, notably, political and civil instability, kidnap and extortion, and a more general understanding of the growing changes to the security environment. We also investigated how the new Colombian President, Gustavo Petro, has been received in country and further afield, and how he may impact the security landscape, alongside continuing the discussion surrounding the peace talks between the ELN and government. Furthermore, as the war in Ukraine continues unabated, we learnt how it is having a variety of impacts and ramifications on Colombia and the region, and how this may evolve and cause more areas of concern for LATAM in the future.

The following report is based solely on anonymised conversations between our team and various local experts and commentators, to provide an ‘on the ground’ view of the situation from human sources. For this report, we have anonymised each source with code names. We have split these findings out thematically and in some parts, reinforced our Colombian intelligence with regional data to provide a further level of analysis.

In order to gain a comprehensive and reliable picture of the environment we engaged with a variety of different sources. These included, but are not limited to; region specific journalists, kidnap and ransom response consultants and former Intelligence personnel.

This report serves as the third edition in a wider series of ‘fact finding’ missions that AnotherDay, a Gallagher company, consultants will carry out in different hotspot locations around the world over the coming year.