The members of the United Nations’ Security Council will visit Colombia next month to put their weight behind the country’s troubled peace process.
The four-day visit from June 11 to June 14 was the initiative of the United Kingdom and Peru and will include meetings with the government of President Ivan Duque and the demobilized FARC guerrilla group.
According to Peru’s ambassador to the UN, the diplomatic mission also seeks to “observe and support the United Nations peace mission in Colombia, and better understand the priorities and concerns of the parties to the peace agreement and other actors in the process.”
The mission will be in Bogota to talk to Duque and other top government officials and travel to one of the FARC reintegration sites to talk to former guerrillas, community leaders and local authorities.
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More information will be available next week when Peru takes over the chairmanship of the security council from Germany, according to Spanish press agency EFE.
“We will see how the situation is and will present a report,” the Peruvian ambassador told the news agency.
Colombia’s Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo in April invited the Security Council for a visit amid increasing pressure over state failures to comply with the agreement.
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According to EFE, the visit seeks to speed up the government’s implementation of reintegration programs for guerrillas, some of whom have been without substantial work since peace was signed in 2016.
Additionally, the security council wants to inform itself about the ongoing assassinations of community leaders and human rights defenders of whom more than 600 have lost their lives during the peace process.