Brussels, 10 November 2021
The organisations that have signed this press release celebrate the fact that 24 November 2021 marks the fifth anniversary of the Peace Agreement between the Colombian Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP), which put end to an internal armed conflict that left more than nine million victims and that lasted more than fifty years.
The signing of the Peace Agreement in Colombia filled the country and the world with hope. There was an immediate decrease in rates of violence, a positive and tangible result of the Agreement’s early implementation stages. This highlighted the importance of swiftly implementing the contents of the Agreement to ensure lasting peace.
Five years on, Colombian society continues to show it wants to make this transition towards peace: the mass citizen demonstrations in recent years related to social issues and the boom in electoral participation are indicators of this. There has been some progress in implementing the Agreement: the mechanisms of the transitional justice system are operating and are yielding their first results. In June 2022, the report of the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition is set to be launched. There are, however, serious concerns about the delays in implementing fundamental points of the Agreement, serious violations of human rights and the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Colombian regions, disproportionately affecting ethnic minorities and small-scale farming communities.
