Colombia: Quarterly Meeting
Tomorrow afternoon (11 July), the Security Council will hold an open briefing on Colombia. Special Representative and Head of the UN Verification Mission in Colombia Carlos Ruiz Massieu will brief on recent developments and the Secretary-General’s latest 90-day report on the mission, which covers the period from 27 March to 26 June. The Council will also hear a briefing from Diego Tovar, an ex-combatant from the former rebel group Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP) and signatory to the Final Agreement for Ending the Conflict and Building a Stable and Lasting Peace concluded in 2016 between the government of Colombia and the former FARC-EP. Colombian President Gustavo Petro Urrego will represent his country at a Council meeting for the first time since taking office in August 2022. The meeting will also mark the first time that a former FARC-EP member briefs the Council in person. Closed consultations are scheduled to follow the open briefing.
Tomorrow morning, before the Council session, the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) will hold a meeting on peacebuilding in Colombia, at which Petro will participate.
Ahead of this month’s quarterly session, Colombian officials have repeatedly referred to challenges in implementing the 2016 peace agreement. In a 14 May speech, Petro announced that he would go to the UN to warn that “the State of Colombia does not want to comply with the peace agreement it signed”, alluding to lack of cooperation from certain ministries. (For more information, see the Colombia brief in our July 2024 Monthly Forecast.) Yesterday (9 July), Colombian Minister of Foreign Affairs Luis Gilberto Murillo Urrutia maintained that the peace agreement could not be implemented in the envisioned 15-year timeframe, considering the limited progress in the eight years since it was signed. He added that the government may propose an extension of between five and eight years, noting the need to remove “some existing structural barriers, which may be legal or institutional”. Murillo apparently also discussed this matter at an informal meeting with Council members hosted today (10 July) by the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the UN.
Petro may raise some of these issues at tomorrow’s meeting. The president is also expected to present a strategic report on the implementation of the peace agreement during the period 2016-2024. Although it was initially announced that the report would be presented jointly with signatories to the 2016 agreement, who apparently shared with the government a proposed roadmap for short- and medium-term implementation actions, it seems that the report was prepared solely by the government.
Tomorrow, although Council members are not expected to comment on these issues directly, they may emphasise that, as the president reaches the half-way point of his term, it is crucial to make concrete progress in implementing the 2016 agreement. Members may also highlight the need for Colombian actors to build broad political consensus to that end.
Tovar, who represents the signatories to the 2016 agreement at the Commission for the Follow-up, Promotion and Verification of the Implementation of the Final Agreement (CSIVI)—the main forum for dialogue between the parties on the implementation of the accord—may emphasise in his briefing the importance of regularly convening and financing the 15 bodies created to support the agreement, including the CSIVI.
During Council members’ 7-11 February visiting mission to Colombia, they interacted with Tovar when they went to a former territorial area for training and reintegration (TATR) in the Caquetá department called Agua Bonita, which Tovar heads. Tomorrow, Tovar may highlight the lack of security faced by former combatants, including those residing in TATRs. In this regard, ex-combatants from the Miravalle TATR, also located in Caquetá, are being displaced due to threats by a faction of the dissident group of the former FARC-EP that identifies itself as the Estado Mayor Central Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (EMC FARC-EP) and the armed group Segunda Marquetalia, which consists of former FARC-EP dissidents who signed the 2016 agreement but took up arms again. Both the EMC faction and the Segunda Marquetalia are currently in a dialogue process with the government carried out as part of Petro’s “total peace” policy. (In early April, several factions of the EMC announced that they would no longer participate in the dialogue process with the government.)
Tovar may note that Miravalle’s displacement crisis, which will upend the travel agency successfully established by the TATR’s inhabitants, is an example of how persistent insecurity undermines the sustainability of ex-combatants’ reintegration. He may emphasise the need to deploy an integrated presence of state institutions and services and to address impunity for violence against former combatants. In this regard, the Secretary-General’s report expresses concern about the “limited progress in apprehending perpetrators” and the existence of 234 outstanding arrest warrants.
Council members are expected to raise alarm about the persistent violence against communities (including indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities), former FARC-EP members, human rights defenders, and social leaders. In the period covered by the Secretary-General’s report, the verification mission verified the killing of five ex-combatants, bringing to 421 the number of former FARC-EP members killed since the peace agreement was signed. According to the report, violence continued to affect ethnic communities disproportionally, especially in southwestern Colombia, including reported child recruitment and violence against women. Council members are expected to denounce the recruitment of children by armed groups—instances of which doubled in 2023 compared to the previous year, according to the Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict, dated 3 June—and emphasise that measures relating to the protection of children should be included in the dialogues with armed groups operating in the country.
Members may also welcome the government’s recent signing of a decree formally adopting the public policy to dismantle illegal armed groups and criminal organisations presented by the National Commission on Security Guarantees, a body established by the 2016 peace agreement. They may encourage swift implementation of this policy.
The need for progress in implementing the 2016 agreement’s ethnic chapter—an issue which was apparently raised during this morning’s meeting between Council members and Murillo—is also likely to be highlighted at tomorrow’s meeting. The Secretary-General’s report notes that although the government in November 2023 signed a pact pledging to achieve 60 percent of implementation of the ethnic chapter by 2026, efforts “remained in the early stages of the process”. The report emphasises that achieving tangible results by the end of 2024 “will be essential to initiate the long-awaited transformative changes in ethnic territories”.
There may also be reference to the government’s dialogue efforts with armed groups operating in the country. Some members may note that although the negotiations with the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) have faced difficulties in recent months, the ceasefire between the government and the group generally continued to hold, according to the Secretary-General’s report. These members may encourage the parties to agree on the extension of the ceasefire, which is set to expire on 3 August. Some may welcome the fact that the first round of dialogue between the government and the Segunda Marquetalia, held between 24 and 28 June, resulted in the armed group agreeing to observe a ceasefire. According to the government, the ceasefire will take effect when a presidential decree is issued to “de-escalate offensive operations”, which it expects to discuss by 20 July. Council members may emphasise tomorrow that armed groups involved in these processes should cease committing violent acts, in order to demonstrate good faith in the negotiations and bring positive change for conflict-affected communities.