U.N. greenlights Colombia-rebel peace mission
UNITED NATIONS -- With the hope of ending the half-century conflict between the government of Colombia and the rebel group known as the FARC, the United Nations Security Council on Monday approved the creation of a U.N. mission of unarmed observers from regional nations to monitor a peace agreement.
If the two sides agree to a deal, the deal is expected in late March. Diplomats called the agreement "historic." The war has been been responsible for almost a quarter-million deaths and six million people displaced.
The four-year negotiations to end the fifty-year conflict have involved President Obama, Pope Francis, and Raul Castro -- in addition to scores of diplomats in Colombia and regional nations. It still faces some pitfalls, but diplomats at the U.N. called the request for help by both sides unprecedented.
There is hope the conflict may be at a turning point. Both the government of Colombia and the FARC rebels asked the Security Council to help monitor and verify end of hostilities if the two sides reach a complicated agreement that involves a ceasefire and disarmament as well as land allocation, reparations for victims, and justice for those convicted of crimes.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power recounted a story about the horrors of the war shown in a ceremony in the town of Villavicencio, where the remains of 29 people who had been killed in the conflict were returned to their relatives. One of the victims had been abducted and forced to join the FARC when he was 11 years old.
Power said that President Obama looks forward to welcoming Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos, Foreign Minister María Ángela Holguín Cuéllar, and U.N. Ambassador Maria Emma Mejia next week.
But not all analysts are sanguine about the possibility of an eventual deal.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal in September, Mary Anastasia O'Grady said, "FARC atrocities will not land the perpetrators in jail. Instead they will go before one of two special tribunals, which will include judges from other countries. What countries, nobody knows."
In November, O'Grady, who writes frequently about Latin America, said, "to get a peace deal, the president offers one concession after another." That continues to be a view widely reported in Colombia.
Last month, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of U.N. Women, and Zainab Hawa Bangura, United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, said in a statement that the finalized agreement announced in September, "will establish a Special Jurisdiction for Peace, a Truth Commission, and a Unit for the Search for the Disappeared, and will put in place measures for comprehensive reparations for peacebuilding, and guarantees of non-repetition."
The FARC has yet to agree to those terms.
Diplomats close to the negotiation say that there is still a lot of distance between the FARC rebels and the government of Colombia to reach a peace agreement by the target date of March 23.
The Foreign Minister, speaking to reporters at the U.N., said that date is not as important as the intention to find a peaceful solution.
Members of the Security Council were, nonetheless, optimistic that it was significant that both sides were asking for U.N. intervention.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, speaking in early January, said, "The Government of Colombia and the FARC entered the last stretch in their search for peace, and expect to sign a final agreement in the coming months."
Ban said he welcomes the joint communique issued by the Government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) in Havana, which announced their decision to request the Security Council to establish a political mission in Colombia to monitor and verify an agreement. That agreement will include the support of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to contribute international observers to the mission to be established by the United Nations.
U.K. Ambassador to the U.N. Matthew Rycroft called it a "positive moment," saying it is the first agreement in a long time that "a country chose to come to the Security Council of its own volition and have a U.N. authorization around important parts of the peace deal."
"Colombia needs the support of the United Nations and the United Nations should help provide that support," Russia's Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said.
He added: "We need to settle some crisis somewhere," a clear reflection of the frustration with the U.N. in other areas of the world.