Colombia’s President Ivan Duque assigned top officials to reactivate the government’s participation in a tripartite commission that monitors the country’s peace process with demobilized FARC guerrillas.
The commission that consists of representatives of the State, the United Nations and the FARC was left without government representation after the end former President Juan Manuel Santos’ term last month.
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The so-called Monitoring, Promotion and Verification of the Implementation of the Final Agreement will be joined by Interior Minister Nancy Patricia Gutierrez, Peace Commissioner Miguel Ceballos and post-conflict adviser Emilio Jose Archila, the government announced Tuesday.
The UN Security Council last week urged Duque to “renew momentum behind implementation of the Final Agreement” that formally ended more than half a century of armed conflict between the former guerrilla group and the State.
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FARC president Rodrigo Londoño on Monday asked the president to “urgently” appoint government representatives amid ongoing violence in former FARC territory and rearming guerrillas who have lost faith in the government’s commitment to the peace process.
The reports of rearmament of dissident factions of what used to be Colombia’s largest guerrilla have only grown since Duque, whose party opposes the process, took office.
According to transnational crime website InSight Crime, as many as 40% of former FARC guerrillas could be in the process of rearming. Other estimates are considerably less pessimistic.
The United Nations, which monitors compliance by the government and the FARC, last week called on 31 former guerrilla commanders to reaffirm their commitment to the peace process after seven went underground.
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The process is complicated because — after more than half a century of war and more than 8 million victims — tens of thousands of Colombians could be implicated in war crimes.
Furthermore, after decades of consistent war propaganda that sought to make the mass victimization of civilians invisible, many media have had difficulty reporting on the peace process that sought to put victims at its center.
