President-elect Ivan Duque will “guarantee” the continuation of an ongoing peace process with demobilized FARC rebels, outgoing Vice-President Oscar Naranjo told the UN Security Council on Thursday.
Naranjo, Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin and the UN’s mission chief in Colombia, Jean Arnault, traveled to New York City for the periodic review of the peace process.
Duque and his hard-right Democratic Center party have consistently opposed the process. The incoming president is set to take office on August 7 after years of opposition to outgoing President Juan Manuel Santos.
Naranjo, however, said that the incoming President “has said he will continue with this agreement and guarantee that Colombia will continue down a path toward sustainable peace.”
The security council’s member states unanimously reiterated their support for the peace process and encouraged Duque to continue implementing the 2016 peace deal that ended more than 50 years of war between the FARC guerrillas, the state, and privately funded far-right paramilitary groups.
Duque’s election vows to unilaterally amend the agreement received no support in New York.
Can Duque undo the Colombia’s peace deal as he said he would?
US ambassador Nikki Haley stressed the importance of “preserving and cultivating” the “existing peace agreement.”
The agreement that ended five decades of war in Colombia has created the conditions for the just and lasting peace that Colombians deserve. It was a historic achievement, but peace in Colombia remains an unfinished project. All of us have a role in ensuring that it succeeds.
US ambassador Nikki Haley
“The success of the peace agreement is inseparable from our shared efforts against drug trafficking,” Haley said.
Swedish ambassador Olof Skoog, who was ambassador in Colombia in the beginning of the century, said that “the Colombian peace agreement demonstrates that conflicts can be solved with dialogue rather than guns.”
“We should like to say to our compatriots and to the world as a whole we have no words to thank the unanimous way in which this council has supported the building of peace in our country,” Colombia’s VP said.
The peace process has been under pressure, partly because of the ongoing resistance of conservative and far-right activists in Colombia.
The deal that was signed in November 2016 sought to end an armed conflict that has killed at least 265,000 Colombians. Another 60,000 people remain missing and are feared to also have been killed.
