Negotiators of Colombia’s government and ELN guerrillas have revealed the agreement on citizen participation in ongoing peace talks.
The nine-page agreement is meant to generate the public support needed for a negotiated end to six decades of armed conflict between the rebels and the State.
The parties to this agreement have enshrined the participation of society as the first item on our agenda, as we consider it fundamental for building the transformations and the foundations of a peace agreement. Therefore, participation must be active, proactive, influential, deliberative, binding and effective, given that we understand that it is necessary in the search for a solution to the armed conflict through dialogue, in order to carry out the transformations that have generated it and to remove violence from politics.
The citizen participation will be coordinated by the so-called National Participation Committee, which is made up by 80 representatives of 30 organizations of farmers, labor unions, veterans and students.
The administration of President Gustavo Petro and the leadership of the ELN will both add four members to this committee.
This committee will take force on July 25 and will be in charge of collecting citizen proposals and demands for almost two years.
In May 2025, the committee will surrender its proposals and demands to the negotiation teams.
In the released agreement, the guerrilla and government negotiators guaranteed that the demands and proposals will be binding.
The citizen participation in the peace talks has been on the first point on the agenda since former President Juan Manuel Santos and the ELN began formal peace talks in early 2017.
It took Petro’s negotiators seven months to come to an agreement on the point that would push the negotiations past the point of no return.
While the committee gathers and organizes the proposals from society, the government and guerrilla representatives will continue negotiating a final end to the armed conflict.
