Source: United Nations (Video News)
The Head of the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia (UNVMIC), Carlos Ruiz Massieu, today (15 Oct) told the Security Council that “historic progress has been made” in the implementation of the peace agreement, “but much remains to be done.” He welcomed the rapid response plan, or “Plan de Choque” being developed by the Minister of the Interior and other stakeholders.
The plan, Ruiz Massieu said, “is a new instrument that should serve to energize implementation.”
The UNVMIC Chief said, “we remain encouraged by the Government’s commitment to advancing the rural reform chapter of the Agreement – provisions that have a transformative potential, attacking structural causes of the conflict, but which had lagged in their implementation in previous years.”
He said that as a result, “more land is being distributed and formalized for those in need, bringing the promised benefits of peace to landless peasants and those dispossessed of it during the conflict.”
Ruiz Massieu said, “in some territories, signatories to the Agreement and social leaders continue to be the target of violence, pressure and threats from armed actors fighting for territorial control and strategic routes linked to illicit economies.”
He noted that since the beginning of the reintegration process, five former territorial areas for training and reintegration (TATRs) have had to be relocated for these reasons
Ruiz Massieu said, “the difficult situation in some areas continues to impact the lives of communities that are caught in the crossfire and subjected to condemnable phenomena such as the recruitment of minors, displacement and confinement.”
Colombia’s Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo for his part said, “with the firm commitment to fulfil what has been agreed and to territorialize peace, we have developed a new strategic framework for peace, where effective and comprehensive compliance with the 2016 agreement becomes an inescapable requirement, unavoidable for the sustainability of strategic proposals surrounding territorial transformation.”
On women’s participation in negotiation and peacebuilding, he said it was “not only is a question of justice, but it is crucial to ensure stronger and more durable agreements.”
For this reason, he continued, “the Colombian government has formulated and is implementing a feminist foreign policy linked to the precepts of the women, peace and security agenda. Included in Security Council Resolution 1325”
Outside the Council, Switzerland’s representative Riccarda Christiana Chanda read a statement on behalf of Ecuador, France, Guyana, Japan, Malta, the Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States on Women Peace and Security.
Chanda said, “during a visit of the Security Council to Colombia in February of this year, we were able to engage meaningfully with former combatants, victim representatives, women’s organizations, indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities to discuss the progress made and remaining obstacles in the comprehensive implementation of the peace agreement. And what we have witnessed over and over again, was the urgent call for improved security guarantees, equitable land distribution, and the successful social, political, and economic reintegration of former combatants as well as the crucial implementation of gender provisions and the ethnic chapter of the Peace Agreement.”
UNVMIC was established by the UN Security Council pursuant to resolution 2366 (2017), adopted unanimously on 10 July 2017. The resolution followed a joint request for UN support from the Government of Colombia and the then Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia–People’s Army (FARC-EP).