Colombia: Quarterly Meeting
Tomorrow morning (18 July), the Security Council will hold its quarterly 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. Colombia will participate in the meeting under rule 37 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure. Closed consultations are scheduled to follow the open briefing.
Ruiz Massieu, who has been in this position since 2019, will provide his last briefing in this role, which he will end in late July. He is expected to begin his new position as Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Haiti and Head of the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) in August. At the time of writing, the Secretary-General had yet to name a new Special Representative and Head of the UN Verification Mission in Colombia.
As in the past several quarterly meetings on Colombia, Ruiz Massieu and Council members are expected to call on the government to focus on the implementation of the 2016 Final Agreement for Ending the Conflict and Building a Stable and Lasting Peace between the government of Colombia and the former rebel group Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP) in the remainder of the term of Colombian President Gustavo Petro Urrego, which ends in August 2026. They are likely to welcome the administration’s efforts to promote rural reform, while calling for advancement in other areas where progress has been slow, such as the agreement’s gender and ethnic provisions.
Speakers may welcome the convening on 8 May of 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 this meeting, the first held in 2025, the parties jointly defined priorities for the implementation of each chapter of the peace agreement for the remainder of the year. Speakers may emphasise the importance of taking concrete steps to advance these priorities, including by consistently convening the CSIVI.
For the past three years, signatories to the peace agreement have emphasised the need to create a high-level body to coordinate the institutions involved in the implementation of the peace agreement. They most recently reiterated this call during an 8 July meeting hosted by the verification mission in Bogotá to discuss the Secretary-General’s latest report, which was also attended by government officials and representatives of several member states serving on the Security Council. Absent such a body, implementation of the agreement has depended on relevant ministries—including the interior, defence, and foreign affairs—which have seen frequent turnover in recent years. For instance, the “rapid action response plan” to accelerate implementation of the peace agreement, which the president announced during an 11 July 2024 Security Council meeting, appears to have been abandoned since the departure in February of former Interior Minister Juan Fernando Cristo. Most recently, on 3 July, Laura Sarabia resigned from her position as foreign minister, after having served approximately six months in this role. Rosa Villavicencio was subsequently named as Colombia’s acting foreign minister.
Tomorrow’s meeting is likely to emphasise the need to avoid political polarisation as Colombia prepares for presidential and congressional elections in 2026. Many speakers are expected to condemn the 7 June assassination attempt against Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a presidential hopeful with whom the Council interacted during its 7-11 February 2024 visiting mission to Colombia. At the time of writing, Uribe remained in critical condition. Speakers are likely to stress the need to promote inclusive political participation in the elections and to provide security guarantees to that end. Some may welcome in this regard the fact that, on 10 June, Petro chaired a meeting of the Comprehensive Security System for the Exercise of Politics (SISEP), a body created by the 2016 agreement.
Speakers are expected to reiterate their strong concerns about the persistent violence against communities (including indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities), former FARC-EP members, human rights defenders, and social leaders. The Secretary-General’s report says that former combatants, both those residing inside territorial areas for training and reintegration (TATRs) and in other areas, remain vulnerable to security risks due to the activities of illegal armed groups. During the period covered by the Secretary-General’s report, the mission verified the killing of ten former combatants, bringing to 470 the number of ex-combatants killed since the signing of the peace agreement. Council members may call on the government to strengthen the presence of public security forces around TATRs and to conduct risk assessments once residents of TATRs are displaced due to insecurity, to ensure that they are not faced with further threats in the new location.
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) noted in its latest humanitarian situation report, published on 25 June, that confinement—which, among other things, manifests in severe mobility restrictions and curfews imposed by armed groups—affected over 91,100 people between January and May, representing a 70 percent increase compared with the same period in 2024. In an 8 July statement, the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) in Colombia expressed concern about growing restrictions on humanitarian access in the country. The HCT noted that in the departments of Cauca and Guaviare, starting respectively on 24 May and 18 June, the general staff of the dissident group of the former FARC-EP that identifies itself as the Estado Mayor Central Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (EMC) has imposed a ban on the presence of UN personnel. This has forced at least nine UN agencies to suspend their operations, resulting in the interruption of humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding initiatives for more than 290,000 people in Cauca and more than 35,000 in Guaviare. Tomorrow, some speakers may call on armed groups operating in the country to allow unrestricted access for humanitarian aid delivery.
Several Council members are expected to express concern about the effects of conflict on children, including their disproportionate impact on Afro-Colombian and indigenous children. According to the Secretary-General’s latest annual report on children and armed conflict, dated 17 June, 450 children were recruited and used in Colombia in 2024, an approximately 70 percent increase compared with 2023, including by former FARC-EP dissident groups, the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), and the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (AGC).
A key expected focus of tomorrow’s meeting 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. In a significant development, the SJP scheduled public verification hearings for trials within Case 01 (on hostage-taking, other severe deprivations of liberty and concurrent crimes committed by the FARC-EP) and Case 03 (on killings and forced disappearances presented as combat casualties by state agents) in the Caribbean Coast. After the completion of these hearings—which will be held on 23, 24, and 25 July for Case 03 and on 31 July and 1 August for Case 01—the SJP will have 20 working days to issue its first restorative sentences.
Council members discussed the potential implications of this crucial—and potentially polarising—stage in the Court’s work during an informal meeting with the SJP’s president, Judge Alejandro Ramelli, hosted by the Permanent Mission of Colombia to the UN yesterday (16 July). Ramelli apparently covered the SJP’s work in the past seven years and emphasised the importance of the Council’s continued support for the peace process in Colombia and for the SJP. It seems that some members stressed that it is crucial to accelerate progress on handing down restorative sentences, especially before the official start of the electoral period. Some members also emphasised that the Court should have an effective communications strategy to explain what the restorative sentences will entail and highlighted the need for the government to provide adequate security conditions and financial resources for the implementation of the sentences. Some members also asked questions about pending amnesties for former combatants and 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. Members may also raise these issues at tomorrow’s meeting.
Council members are united in their support for the peace process in Colombia. However, recent strains in the bilateral relationship between Colombia and the US may affect the latter’s approach to the file at the Security Council. Most recently, on 3 July, the US recalled its top diplomat in Colombia for consultations after comments from Petro appearing to question the US position on an alleged plan to remove him from office. While tensions around this incident appear to have subsided, they reflect potential difficulties ahead, including as the US deliberates its decision, expected by 1 September, on whether to renew Colombia’s certification as a country that has cooperated fully with the US in drug control efforts.
