Iván Cepeda is a senator for the Pacto Histórico, the left-wing alliance that backed Colombian president Gustavo Petro’s election, and its candidate to succeed him as president in the general elections of May and June 2026. A human rights defender, Cepeda has a long political career that has led him, at different times, to be active in the Communist Party, the Patriotic Union, the Democratic Alliance M-19 (the party that emerged after the 1990 demobilization of the M-19 guerrilla group, to which Petro belonged), and later the Democratic Pole, now merged with other forces into the Pacto Histórico.

Cepeda is known for his role in various peace processes with the now defunct guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and with the National Liberation Army (ELN), a guerrilla force that remains active after various failed negotiations. His father, Manuel Cepeda, a congressman for the Patriotic Union — a party that emerged from a peace process with the FARC — was assassinated in 1994 by paramilitaries in a campaign of extermination of the party’s leaders, for which the Inter-American Court of Human Rights condemned the Colombian state. After his father’s murder, Cepeda promoted the National Movement for Victims, with the aim of achieving justice for the people murdered by state agents and paramilitaries.

Cepeda was also involved in the judicial process that ended in the initial conviction of former president Álvaro Uribe for witness tampering in a case related to his alleged connections with paramilitary groups. Even as the outcome of the process remains uncertain, it has become the most famous trial in Colombia in recent history and has weakened Uribe, who remains the main figure of the Colombian right.