Book excerpt: Parties in conflict have labelled opponents for centuries, but Proscribing peace explores how international proscription has solidified such judgments by creating a category that has both symbolic and material ramifications. Sophie Haspeslagh draws on personal interviews and 20 years of statements by successive Colombian governments and the FARC to show how having stigmatized the armed group in such an extreme way, proscription makes it much harder to make peace with them. The branding of armed groups as 'terrorists' post 9/11 created a policy straitjacket for governments making it is more difficult to initiate negotiations with a listed group. This book develops the notion of the 'linguistic ceasefire' to explore how governments that claim they will never negotiate with terrorists end-up doing just that.