UNITED NATIONS — Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s commitment to transform long-marginalized rural and conflict areas and new peace efforts were the highlights of his first year in office, the U.N. special envoy for the South American country said.
But Carlos Ruiz Massieu condemned the killing of nearly 400 former combatants who signed a 2016 peace agreement and called for “urgent and concrete measures from the authorities for their protection, as well as that of social leaders and human rights defenders.”
He told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that lagging progress in implementing rural reforms has limited the transformation in rural and conflict areas that the 2016 peace accord between the government and Colombia’s then-largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, was expected to bring.
“While a great distance still remains to attain the ambitious goals of the agreement in this respect,” he acknowledged “the increasing government efforts under way to bring about these reforms.”
The 2016 peace agreement ended more than 50 years of war in which over 220,000 people died and nearly 6 million people were displaced. More than 14,000 FARC fighters gave up their weapons under that agreement, but violence between some rebel groups has grown in parts of Colombia.
Colombia’s Foreign Minister Alvaro Leyva told the council that various forms of violence persist and “our efforts and renewed commitment to peace must be maintained and must be our highest task.”
He said it hasn’t been easy and requires perseverance to implement the 2016 agreement, but it must be “inviolable.” He added that Colombia’s decision to ask the Security Council to establish a political mission to verify implementation of the 2016 agreement — which it did in a resolution endorsing the peace deal — “attested to the desire at that time to achieve irreversible reconciliation.”
As the seventh anniversary of the agreement approaches, he…
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