The United Nations special envoy for Colombia supported on Tuesday the rapid response plan with which Gustavo Petro’s government seeks to promote the implementation of the historic peace agreement signed in 2016 between the State and the extinct guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
“It is a new instrument that should serve to boost the implementation” of the agreement, said Carlos Ruiz Massieu, special representative of the UN Secretary General, before the Security Council meeting in New York, in the session in which it reviews the application on a quarterly basis. of the peace agreement.
The Colombian government has considered that the implementation of the agreement with the former guerrilla in 2016 has been slow in execution, especially in core points such as the rural reform that sought to distribute fertile lands more equitably, a historical claim in the country, therefore that developed a “shock plan” that seeks to accelerate its implementation.
“I welcome early indications that the plan will focus firmly on rural reform to transform conflict-affected regions, as well as strengthening security guarantees,” said Ruiz Massieu.
The Colombian Foreign Minister, Luis Gilberto Murillo, assured the Security Council that the new plan was built after they identified obstacles to the implementation of the peace agreement such as the lack of institutional capacities and insufficient economic resources.
Murillo explained that the new plan—released on Tuesday—aims to implement a territorial transformation scheme, accelerate access to rural reform lands, strengthen the security approach—especially for victims of the conflict, peace signatories and defenders. of human rights—and promote laws in Congress that allow the agreement to be implemented.
The rapid response plan details that they will ask Congress to approve new laws such as a political reform and another for differentiated criminal treatment for small growers of coca leaf, the raw material for cocaine. The government does not have guaranteed majorities in the legislature, but is promoting a political agreement to achieve it.
The new plan will be in charge of the Ministry of the Interior, meaning that the implementation of the agreement will have a responsible body, as some members of the Security Council had insisted in past sessions.
According to the document released by the government, the plan seeks to focus efforts and resources on projects that give results, especially in the short term, in the places most affected by the armed conflict that lasted for five decades.
Murillo defended the effort to give new impetus to the peace agreement with the former FARC and described it as the “base of peace building in the country”, at a “decisive” moment for Petro’s ambitious peace policy, which includes simultaneous dialogues with other armed groups that persist in the country.
The chancellor added that the government is optimistic about being able to advance at the negotiating table with the National Liberation Army guerrilla, with whom Petro suspended dialogue indefinitely since September in rejection of an attack with explosives that claimed the lives of three soldiers and injured over 26.
About him stagnation of negotiations with the ELNthe UN special envoy regretted that since the parties returned to armed confrontation, the number of deaths and injuries on both sides has doubled, compared to the entire year in which a bilateral ceasefire was in force.
However, Ruiz Massieu welcomed the fact that both the government and the ELN have recently expressed their willingness to meet. “I trust that the parties will take advantage of that opportunity to begin to regain momentum in a process that had advanced promisingly before reaching this impasse,” he added.
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