Colombia: Quarterly Meeting
Tomorrow afternoon (15 October), 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 June to 26 September. The Council will also hear a briefing from a civil society representative. Colombia will participate in the meeting under rule 37 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure, represented by its Minister of Foreign Affairs, Luis Gilberto Murillo Urrutia. Closed consultations are scheduled to follow the open briefing.
Switzerland, the Council’s president in October and one of the signatories to the Shared Commitments on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), has chosen to have a WPS focus for tomorrow’s meeting. Council members that have signed on to the Shared Commitments on WPS—Ecuador, France, Guyana, Japan, Malta, the Republic of Korea (ROK), Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Switzerland, the UK, and the US—are scheduled to read a joint statement ahead of the meeting.
Several speakers at tomorrow’s Council meeting are likely to welcome the Colombian government’s renewed focus on the implementation of 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 rebel group Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP). They might mention the announcement by Colombian President Gustavo Petro Urrego in the Council’s latest quarterly Colombia meeting, held on 11 July, of his intention to pursue a “rapid action response plan” that would allow him to accelerate implementation of the peace agreement. Members may also welcome the 3 July appointment of Juan Fernando Cristo as Minister of the Interior, who has been tasked, among other things, with coordinating compliance with the accord. (For more information, see the brief on Colombia in our October 2024 Monthly Forecast.) Members are also expected to highlight the need to make concrete progress in implementing the 2016 agreement, especially as next month will mark the eight-year anniversary of the accord’s signing.
Tomorrow morning, ahead of the Council session, Council members will hold an informal meeting with Cristo and Murillo, organised by the Permanent Mission of the UK to the UN, during which they expect to hear more information about the “rapid action response plan”. The plan has apparently yet to have been shared with the Colombian Congress. In the past several weeks, countries serving on the Security Council interacted informally with Colombian government officials and signatories to the peace agreement, including during a meeting hosted by the verification mission in Bogotá on 2 October, to discuss the Secretary-General’s latest report. Expert-level Council diplomats also met in New York with Diego Tovar, a former FARC-EP combatant who briefed the Security Council at the 11 July meeting. It seems that signatories to the peace agreement have been emphasising the need to take their views into account when devising and implementing the “rapid action response plan”. They have also stressed the importance of regularly convening and financing the 15 bodies created to support the agreement, including 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 accord’s implementation.
At tomorrow’s Council meeting, 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, nine killings and eight attempted homicides against former FARC-EP members were reported, particularly affecting indigenous and rural former combatants.
Council members may emphasise the importance of swiftly implementing the public policy to dismantle illegal armed groups and criminal organisations, which the National Commission on Security Guarantees (NCSG)—a body established by the 2016 agreement—presented in September 2023. They might welcome the joint session of the NCSG and the High-Level Unit of the Comprehensive Security System for the Exercise of Politics (SISEP) led by Petro in August. Members might stress that cooperation between these two bodies is crucial, especially as Colombia prepares for presidential elections that will take place in 2026.
Members may also echo several messages contained in a written advice by the chair of the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC), Ambassador Sérgio França Danese (Brazil), which was circulated to Council members on 10 October (S/2024/726). These include emphasising the importance of extending integrated state presence to conflict-affected regions and stressing the need to provide development opportunities for communities, especially youth, and support for reintegration efforts of former combatants, including through access to housing and education. The advice also called for the acceleration of the implementation of the peace accord’s ethnic chapter, to facilitate the protection and inclusion of marginalised groups, particularly indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities.
Several members are expected to express concern about the situation of children affected by conflict. On 6 September, the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict adopted its conclusions on the Secretary-General’s report on children and armed conflict in Colombia covering the period from 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2023. In a public statement issued on 9 September, the working group noted with concern that more cases of recruitment and use were verified in the first six months of 2023 than in the entirety of 2022. It called on armed groups to “release all children, defined as any person below 18 years of age, present in their ranks immediately” and emphasised that measures relating to the protection of children should be included in dialogue processes with armed groups.
In line with the proposed focus for tomorrow’s meeting, several members are expected to highlight the important contribution of women to peacebuilding efforts in Colombia. They may urge the acceleration of the implementation of the gender provisions of the 2016 agreement, which has been slow, and encourage the financing and operationalisation of instruments contained in the agreement, such as the Comprehensive Programme for the Safeguarding of Women Leaders and Human Rights Defenders. They might also encourage the prompt presentation and implementation of Colombia’s first National Action Plan on WPS, while welcoming the active, broad participation of women in the process of devising the plan.
Another likely topic of discussion is the work of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP), the judicial component of the Comprehensive System for Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-Repetition established by the 2016 agreement. Members may urge the SJP to begin handing down restorative sentences and call on the government to establish the conditions necessary for implementing these sentences. Some may also stress the need to address concerns by signatories to the 2016 agreement about such issues as the SJP’s decision to prosecute middle-ranking former guerrillas instead of only top commanders deemed to be the most responsible for crimes committed during the conflict.
There may also be reference to the government’s dialogue efforts with armed groups operating in the country, carried out as part of the government’s “total peace” policy. The negotiations with the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) have faced difficulties in recent months following the government’s decision to hold a regional dialogue with one of the ELN’s regional fronts. On 3 August, the bilateral ceasefire between the government and the ELN, which had been observed for a year, expired, absent agreement from the sides on its extension. In a 1 October interview, Ruiz Massieu noted that there had been more deaths among public security forces and the ELN in the two weeks after the ceasefire’s expiry than during the year of its observance. Tomorrow, members may call on the parties to resume dialogue to resolve their differences, while welcoming the ELN’s 10 October statement accepting the government’s invitation to hold a meeting to that end.
Some members may also encourage the government and factions 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) to renew their bilateral ceasefire, which is due to expire tomorrow. Council members may emphasise that armed groups involved in dialogue processes with the government should cease committing violent acts, in order to bring positive change for conflict-affected communities.
