The implementation of the peace deal between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has been everything but a success for the country.

Not only did voters reject the original peace agreement, there has also been a significant increase in violence targeting left-wing activists and community leaders. Since the ratification of the final accord on November 29-30, 2016, right-wing paramilitaries and local drug gangs have assassinated twenty-four social leaders, and sixteen since the beginning of this year alone. A new wave of violence has even reached the streets of the country’s capital Bogotá, where recent bomb attacks targeting protesters and the police force try to undermine the legitimacy and validity of the peace process.

Colombia is a country with a long history of systematically oppressing and violently killing left-wing campaigners, feminist activists, racial minorities, and members of the LGBT+ community. And while President Santos has broken ties with his past as a minister of defense (or “señor de la guerra”) under the notoriously hard-right Alvaro Uribe presidency and is seeking to shape a postwar Colombia, the increased killings of social leaders in zones formerly under FARC’s control puts the state’s capacity and willingness to protect its most marginalized citizens into question.