YouSaid · the spoken record

Londoño Echeverri

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17
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2023-04-13
most recent
2023-04-13
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1
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un-security-council

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  1. “It is the only one that can lead us to becoming a civilized society. Of all the humankind’s choices, the worst is war. Only peace and the path of dialogue will improve our lives.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source

  2. “Reintegrated persons are in urgent need of land for sustainable and productive work and housing, in both rural and urban areas. But that is predicated on a basic condition, namely, that their lives, security and stability be guaranteed as promised by the State in chapters 2 and 3 of the agreement. For us, it is of the utmost importance that the Security Council exercise its influence to ensure the fulfilment of that condition through the mechanisms adopted at the negotiation table. Today we are aware more than ever of the enormous difficulties involved in building peace. However, we are also convinced more than ever that the path of weapons and confrontation only leads to disaster. We firmly believe — and that is why we support President Petro Urrego’s policy of total peace — that the path of dialogue must never be abandoned.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source

  3. “He has also made resources available to ensure the implementation of the national development plan, which had been entirely neglected by the previous Government. The fact that he had to withdraw his plan for political reform as a subject of debate in Congress, owing to opposition parties’ distortion of its democratic intent, demonstrates the resistance that the implementation of the political participation foreseen in the agreement still encounters. With the support of the Council, the situation will be more bearable. President Petro Urrego has proposed the purchase of 3 million hectares from cattle ranchers for the Land Fund, which represents an astronomical sum of money. Perhaps the international community can do its part in bringing that to fruition.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source

  4. “Petro Urrego has established the Commission for the Follow-Up, Promotion and Verification of the Implementation of the Final Peace Agreement and has defined the role of its bodies dedicated to ethnic and gender issues and committed to financing them. He has delivered more than 681,000 hectares of land and formalized many other such agreements. He meets with the President and the leadership of the Comunes party, and he visited the Mariana Páez territorial area for training and reintegration with a view to guaranteeing the security of its population. We hope that the National Commission on Security Guarantees will be effectively operationalized and that the 187 signatories who remain in prison — some of them abroad — will be released.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source

  5. “We have acknowledged time and again that, if it had not been for the support of the international community, in particular the United Nations, the Security Council and United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia, which tirelessly pushed the Government of Iván Duque Márquez to take the peace agreement seriously and to implement several of its provisions, the effort to reach a political solution to the confrontation with us might have failed. That is why we have come full of hope to this Security Council meeting today. We know that the Council’s support for the current Government in its efforts to fully comply with the agreement will have multiplier effects far greater than in the recent past.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source

  6. “We are aware that the set of reforms required in our country, of which those included in the Final Peace Agreement constitute only one chapter, represent an enormous challenge, especially in view of the declared opposition of the interests and parties that supported the previous Government and are determined to prevent the minimum level of transition for the benefit of the majority. To a great extent, that explains the pace that President Petro Urrego is trying to set in implementing the Havana agreement. We have faith in his word, and we look forward to decisive and comprehensive action to that end. We have met on several occasions, and things are starting to happen.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source

  7. “The first step in that direction is the dialogue with the former guerrillas of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional, the dissident groups of the Havana agreement and other armed groups. We support such an effort, although we believe that it must take into account the dialogue and the agreement with us more meaningfully. In our modest view, we would like to reaffirm that the agreement must form the foundation of all negotiations. The armed groups must acknowledge that the current Government is democratic and progressive and that their struggle against it is senseless. The ceasefire should therefore be initiated by them.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source

  8. “Fortunately for us and for the country, the pent- up discontent with the economic and social situation in Colombia — in addition to the clamour for the full implementation of the 2016 peace agreement — was expressed en masse and with great force during the social uprisings in 2019 and 2021. That finally led to an electoral victory for progressive and peace-loving forces in the 2022 elections, in which Gustavo Petro Urrego was elected President. Mr. Petro Urrego came with a clear position in favour of political and social transformation, including a promise to fully implement the Final Agreement, as well as his policy of “total peace”, which is aimed at creating conditions conducive to full democracy and social justice in Colombia.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source

  9. “The previous Government earmarked a pitiful amount of resources for the National Comprehensive Programme for the Substitution of Illicit Crops provided for in the fourth point, as well as to the pillars of the solution to the issue of narcotics production and commercialization and the prevention of narcotics consumption and public health. That meant that the agreed policy on eradicating illicit crops from the Colombian countryside — a cross-cutting aspect of the comprehensive rural reform in the first point of the peace agreement — was left unimplemented.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source

  10. “Work is only just beginning on the development of the strategic security and protection plan approved in the agreement, as well as on the comprehensive programme of protection for individuals participating in the reintegration process referred to in its third point. The situation of signatories is also critical in terms of land to work on and productive projects that guarantee their full reintegration into society, while basic needs such as housing and education are not being met even in the long term. These circumstances have resulted in the creation of a diaspora of signatories in various regions of the country, making it difficult for them to mobilize in favour of the agreement’s implementation and reinforcing a sense of discouragement and undermining the credibility of the agreement itself and related mechanisms.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source

  11. “There is a blatant lack of protection for social leaders in our country, who are constantly being assassinated by those groups, just as we peace signatories are also falling victim — and that constitutes a flagrant violation of the guarantees for life and security envisioned in the third point of the agreement. The same is true of the forced displacements and constant threats that have led to the destruction of various spaces approved for reintegration efforts. More than 350 signatories to the peace agreement have been murdered with impunity since its signing. Putting an end to the paramilitary successor organizations remains merely an aspiration, despite what was agreed in Havana.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source

  12. “We await the first convictions by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, which should take place within the framework of what was agreed in the fifth point of the agreement, just as we recognize the merits of the Final Report of the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition. The dissident groups that took up arms again represent a minuscule percentage of those of us who signed the agreement. They were reconstituted as a result of renewed recruitment efforts in rural areas, and their activities leave much to be desired both morally and politically. The State never fulfilled its commitment to occupy the regions abandoned by the former FARC after its members laid down their arms, thereby facilitating the strengthening of various criminal groups in those areas.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source

  13. “The previous Government did nothing to create a closed-circuit television channel for parties and social organizations, nor did it bother to make the regulatory adjustments that would make that possible. The former FARC fully complied with the agreement’s third point on ending the conflict. We laid down our arms and became a political party, in addition to appearing without delay before the justice and truth mechanisms contemplated in the fifth point. We have delivered the truth in innumerable cases; we have begged for forgiveness time and again from victims; and we have contributed to providing reparations and the principle of non-repetition in a decisive manner.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source

  14. “We have also seen reports recently that State officials misappropriated more than COL$500 billion that the Órganos colegiados de administración y decisión-Paz mechanism approved for such plans. As for the second point of the agreement, on political participation, the most significant progress made was the final approval of the statute guaranteeing the exercise of opposition and the special transitory circumscriptions of peace. However, there have been major delays in the implementation of the Comprehensive Security System for the Exercise of Politics as a result of the insufficient resources allocated to it. While it was part of the regulations, along with its respective bodies, it was never put into operation.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source

  15. “For the same reason, barely 32 per cent of the 7 million hectares that were promised have been formalized, while the subsidies and credits promised for access to land were merely sketched out in regulations without any genuine design or planning that would make them feasible. Regarding the other two major components of the first point of the agreement — national plans for comprehensive rural reform and development based on a territorial approach, which were aimed at reducing rural poverty by 50 per cent in 15 years — it must be said that their effective implementation has been inadequate. We once again saw a lack of political will on the part of the Duque Márquez Administration, as well as insufficient monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, limited implementation and a high risk of corruption.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source

  16. “The first point of the peace agreement, aimed at finding a civilized solution to the country’s scandalous concentration of rural property, provided for the creation of a Land Fund in the hands of the State, initially consisting of 3 million hectares, to be distributed over a period of 12 years to those most in need of land and willing to work it. Today, more than six years after the signing of the agreement, the official figures show that only 251,122 hectares have been allocated since the creation of the Fund — barely 8.37 per cent. The only coherent explanation is the lack of political will demonstrated by the previous Government, which was characterized by its opposition to the implementation of the agreement.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source

  17. “Mr. Londoño Echeverri (spoke in Spanish): I am grateful for this opportunity to address the Council today. I am Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri. In 1976, when I was 17 years old, I voluntarily joined the ranks of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). At 57 years old, as Commander of that guerrilla group, I signed the Final Agreement for Ending the Conflict and Building a Stable and Lasting Peace with the Colombian State. At the beginning of the Havana talks, the two high contracting parties proceeded from the idea that the social and armed conflict, which had been going on for more than 50 years, was due to objective causes that needed to be resolved. They included the inequitable distribution of landownership, the exclusion of the farming population and the underdevelopment of rural communities.”

    2023-04-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9303 (2023) · source