Nearly half-a-century old, the Colombian conflict has spawned a long tradition of peace initiatives that offer innovative alternatives to violence. Peace Initiatives in Colombia, a conference sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace and the Latin American Studies Program at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, November 19–20, 2005, analyzed these initiatives from various perspectives and identified the variables and strategies relevant to their success. The conference brought together contributors to a book on Colombian peace initiatives being edited by Virginia M. Bouvier, a Latin American specialist and senior program officer of the Jennings Randolph Program at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Conference speakers included some twenty individuals from a broad range of academic fields, as well as human rights and development specialists, photographers, and political and military analysts from Colombia, the United States, and Europe. A list of conference participants, about half of whom are current or former USIP grantees or peace scholars, is at the end of this report. The conference was organized by Dr. Bouvier and Dr. Mary Roldán. Additional sponsors included Cornell’s Africana Studies and Research Center; its departments of development sociology, government, history, and anthropology; the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies; the Institute for European Studies; the Johnson School of Management; the Peace Studies Program; the Society for the Humanities; the Committee on U.S.–Latin American Relations (CUSLAR); and the Colombian Student Association, as well as Syracuse University ’s Program for Analysis and Resolution of Conflict (PARC). This report is based primarily on presentations and papers prepared for the conference, and participants have reviewed it.