Colombia: Petro proposes to extend the implementation of the Peace Agreement by seven years

Colombian President Gustavo Petro proposed this Thursday extend the deadline for the implementation of the Peace Agreement by seven years signed in 2016 by the Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP), which was originally scheduled to take 15 years to complete.

Before him Security Council The UN stressed the need to intensify efforts to achieve peace in Colombia and raised a “fast track” which lays the foundations for a definitive peace.

Petro explained that Your country is divided in two and that is why it has not reached a national agreement that would allow it to make the necessary changes. A large part of Colombians opposed the Peace Agreement and voted against it. Those who reject it, he said, do not want to change the rules and without changing them there will be no progress, he added.

But if this is the most unequal society in the world, “how can the rules not be changed?” he asked.

Social integration of the territory

The president said that one of the priorities for the implementation of the Agreement is the integration of the national territory into developmentfor which comprehensive rural reform is urgent.

Colombia’s rugged geography creates enormous cultural diversity but also creates difficulties, he recalled, before explaining the conflict in the country as several regional conflicts.

In this regard, he stated that Colombia has not solved its violence problem because it has not been able to include the territory. He explained that of the 55 million inhabitants of Colombia, ten million are farmers, although they only own 1% of the fertile land.

“One has to socially integrate the territory“, he insisted, is the center of the peace process.

Rural reform and clarification of the truth

With respect to drug cultivation to which the peasants were forcednoted that the Agreement proposed changing what is illegal into what is legal, which is why comprehensive rural reform is imperative.

The axes for the implementation of the Agreement must be agrarian reform, the transformation of the territory and clarification of judicial truth, Indian.

More funding and a mission

In addition to extending the implementation period of the Agreement, the Colombian president asked the Security Council to take measures to “strengthen the financial capacity” of the country. and release funds to continue the peace process.

Referring to the continuation of violence, Petro made a third request to the UN security body: a international investigative mission to support the Prosecutor’s Office to “establish the intellectual and material authors of the systemic murder of ex-combatants” and to stop the emergence of paramilitary groups in Colombia.

The points of the acceleration plan

He “fast track” The proposal submitted by Petro to the Security Council for the implementation of the Peace Agreement seeks the quickest approval of laws and reforms and consists of the following points:

• Extension of the implementation period of the Agreement for seven years more and the areas of the Territorial Development Program (PDET)
• Modification of the rules of future terms and the medium-term fiscal plan that allows financing territorial inclusion to development, prioritizing investment in the territories
• Change in the distribution of the General Participation System that allows direct resources to PDET areas to finance its infrastructure and investment projects
• Release of the peasantry coca leaf producer
• Optimization and new investments forced towards the productive substitution of illicit economies and a path to agroindustrialization
• Creation of the figure of the hereditary conversion in jungle areas of the second law
• A agrarian reform containing the modification of the current regulations for the express administrative purchase of land, and a transformation of the National Land Agency into a structuring entity for productive projects with access to credit and a formalization of titles with special mechanisms.
• Single system of truth, justice and reparation and reconciliation for all actors in the conflict

Gustavo Petro addressed the highest decision-making body of the United Nations in a session to review the implementation of the Peace Agreement in which Diego Tovar, signatory of the Agreement on behalf of the FARC-EP and currently representative of the Comunes party and the Commission for the Monitoring, Promotion and Verification of the Implementation of the Agreement, also participated for the first time.