Colombian Congress approves law to negotiate peace with armed groups

(Reuters) — The Colombian Congress approved this Wednesday a law that authorizes President Gustavo Petro to seek peace with guerrilla groups and criminal gangs linked to drug trafficking, through negotiation and processes of submission to justice.

Petro, a 62-year-old economist who took office in August as the first left-wing president in Colombia’s history, intends to start a comprehensive peace process that silences the guns and puts an end to the almost six-decade armed conflict that has left at least 450,000 dead and millions displaced.

The law approved by the plenary of the House of Representatives and previously by that of the Senate, empowers the president to initiate peace negotiations with groups such as the National Liberation Army (ELN), a faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). ) who rejected a 2016 agreement and returned to the armed struggle and another who never signed the pact.

It also authorizes the president to initiate dialogues with criminal gangs involved in drug trafficking and illegal mining, such as the Clan del Golfo, whose leaders and members may receive benefits such as reduced sentences and no extradition in exchange for the disclosure of routes to export cocaine and the delivery of part of the fortunes obtained illegally.

“It is the beginning towards the deepening of democracy, solidarity, inclusion, but above all the beginning to definitively turn the page of the bloodbath in which we are still immersed, of the delay to which the armed conflict subjects us, which It should lead us towards total peace, where life is dignified,” Interior Minister Alfonso Prada told reporters.

At the end of August, Petro proposed a multilateral ceasefire involving the illegal armed groups and the Armed Forces to build trust while advancing in the search for peace.

The Government of Colombia and the ELN announced at the beginning of October in Caracas that they will reestablish the dialogue process after the first week of November in a new attempt to put an end to the participation of the rebel group in the violent armed conflict, but they did not specify the place of negotiation.

The norm approved by Congress will allow the temporary location of illegal armed groups in precise and determined areas of the country in which the execution of arrest warrants will be suspended, including those for extradition purposes, while progress is made and the processes of arrest are concluded. dialogue.

Additionally, it contemplates the creation of a fund for peace to guarantee social investment in remote areas hit by violence and the presence of illegal armed groups.