Santos warns leaders when silence stops serving peace
CAPE TOWN — Former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos has warned that silence can become complicity when leaders fail to confront threats to peace, even though discretion can play an important role in negotiations. Delivering the 24th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, he argued that the growing acceptance of war demanded a public response.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate addressed the gathering on 6 November under the theme “When is silence complicity?” Santos acknowledged that remaining silent can sometimes help manage conflict, but said that justification should not become an excuse for failing to challenge injustice.
“My dear friends, we must not remain silent in this world as war is once again normalized,” he said. Santos warned of international law and United Nations Charter principles being disregarded, pressure on institutions such as the International Criminal Court, and civilians suffering as diplomacy weakened.
The lecture, presented by the Nelson Mandela Foundation in partnership with One Young World, drew its theme from Mandela’s 1998 address in Burkina Faso. In that speech, Mandela challenged the use of national sovereignty to justify inaction when people faced violence and oppression.
The foundation’s framing also recognised the difficulty of deciding when intervention is justified. Histories of colonialism and foreign interventions that caused harm complicate appeals to act in the name of justice, placing responsibility on leaders to consider both the consequences of inaction and the consequences of intervention.
Santos brought experience of those difficult choices from Colombia, where he pursued negotiations with the FARC guerrilla movement after previously serving as defence minister. He received the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the country’s decades-long civil war. After voters narrowly rejected an initial peace agreement, negotiations produced a revised accord that Congress subsequently ratified.
Now chair of The Elders, the independent group of global leaders established by Mandela, Santos used the Cape Town platform to challenge the retreat from diplomacy. His warning placed civilian protection and the defence of international institutions at the centre of the responsibility to speak out.
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