Carlos Vives and Juanes have teamed up with a slew of fellow Colombian musicians to record a new peace anthem, calling for an end to the country's ongoing armed conflict.

Singer Vives and his producer pal Ivan Benavides gathered the 60-strong group of stars, including Andres Cepeda, Adriana Lucia, Don Tetto, Gustavo Garcia and Santiago Cruz, to lend their vocals to A Step Toward Peace as part of the I Can campaign.

Benavides reveals they drew inspiration for the project from Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie's We Are the World charity single, which was released in 1985 to raise funds for African famine relief, and they hope the new peace song will show Colombians that peace is "more than the signing of agreements between the government and the illegal armed groups".

He tells news agency Efe, "To recover peace and to rebuild in peace the process must come from the civil society, and in this effort we all should participate: artists, the private sector, the Church and the parties in conflict."

Discussing the wide range of musicians involved in the collaboration, Benavides says, "With this array of artists we were able to show Colombia's diversity because well-managed differences enrich us all and we find that there are more things that unite us than separate us."

The Colombian conflict has been raging since the mid-1960s, when the nation's government forces, paramilitary groups, crime syndicates and other armed forces began to clash in a battle to increase influence and control over the land.

Peace talks are currently being held in Havana in an effort to bring the decades-long fighting to an end.