Going South to Reach the North? The Case of Colombia

Colombia (along with Chile and Cuba) is the fourth largest provider of South–South cooperation (SSC) in Latin America after Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico (SEGIB 2012). This chapter highlights the particularities of Colombia’s SSC policy. Some of its drivers are similar to those of other countries and can be traced to economic improvement (i.e. it has become a middle-income country) and growing interest in using SSC as a tool to increase regional and international influence as an emerging power. Others, however, are more atypical and are linked to the fact that Colombia has long been considered a “problem country”—given its prolonged armed conflict and drug trafficking problem—and now is trying to convert to being a model provider of “best practices”1 in development sectors.