Since 2017, the UN Verification Mission in Colombia (UNVMC) has helped implement the 2016 Peace Agreement between the Government of Colombia and the former FARC-EP guerrilla group. As Colombia prepares to celebrate the 8th anniversary of the historic accord on 24 November, we look back at the impact of the conflict and the Mission’s work throughout the years.
The UN Verification Mission in Colombia, overseen by the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA), was established by the UN Security Council to verify the Peace Agreement’s implementation and assist Colombia in its commitment to building peace. It started its operations in 2017, succeeding the UN Mission in Colombia, which had been tasked with verifying the laying down of arms, the definitive bilateral ceasefire and cessation of hostilities.
The Final Peace Agreement was signed on 24 November 2016 by the Government and the guerrilla group known as the FARC-EP, ending a conflict that racked the country for 50 years.
The violence reached its deadliest level between 1995 and 2004, when 45 per cent of total victims were recorded. Between 1985 and 2018, it is estimated that 450,664 people lost their lives because of the conflict. Ninety-eight per cent of victims belonged to ethnic groups.
The UNVMC verifies the implementation of the Agreement in relation to rural reform, the reintegration of former combatants, security guarantees, restorative sentences, the ethnic chapter and efforts to broaden peace.
Rural reform and reintegration
Rural reform is one of the central elements of the Peace Agreement and includes formalizing land ownership to those owning land but lacking legal documents to prove it, and adjudicating land to new beneficiaries. From 2017 to 2024, almost 3 million hectares of land have been formalized to rural inhabitants, while 129,656 hectares of land have been adjudicated to beneficiaries.
Overall, a total of 13,829 people took part in the social, economic and political reintegration of former combatants, and today 85 per cent are still involved in the process. 10,900 former combatants take part in productive projects, while 5,397 former combatants have obtained a university degree.
To date, 21 per cent of people involved in the reintegration process belong to ethnic groups, namely indigenous people and Afro-Colombians, while 25 per cent are women.
Women’s participation
Women played a key role in the negotiation of the agreement as well as in its implementation, making the Colombian peace process an example globally.
“It was not pre-ordained that Colombia’s peace process would set a global standard for the inclusion of women in a peace process and for the incorporation of specific gender-related provisions in a peace agreement,” said Carlos Ruiz Massieu, Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) for Colombia and Head of the UNVMC, during a Security Council briefing on 15 October 2024.
He added that the inclusion of women was driven by the demands of Colombian women’s leaders.
A total of 187 women observers took part in the verification of the ceasefire, the highest number of women to participate in such a process worldwide. Thanks to the strong advocacy of women’s civil society organizations, the Peace Agreement also includes 128 gender-specific measures. Their implementation is monitored through gender indicators.
“Women’s voices continue to be heard very strongly as they advocate for greater progress overall and in the implementation of the gender provisions of the Agreement, and for the effective inclusion of women in the newer dialogue processes,” SRSG Ruiz Massieu said.
Security guarantees and justice
Despite efforts to build peace, violence continues to affect both women and men. From the signature of the Agreement to 26 September 2024, the Mission has verified 432 murders, 151 attempted homicides and 42 disappearances.
The complex security situation in several regions of the country, where signatories of the Agreement and social leaders continue to be targeted by armed actors fighting for territorial control, remains one of the major obstacles to peacebuilding.
Meanwhile, the quest for justice for the victims continues. The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP), instituted to prosecute crimes committed during the armed conflict, is working on 11 macro-cases in which it investigates, judges and punishes those accountable for the most serious crimes of the conflict. 11,000 individual victims have been represented in judicial processes.
Commitment to peace
While much remains to be done to fully implement the Peace Agreement, the laying down of arms in Colombia remains one of the most successful processes in which the United Nations have taken part.
After 2016, the Mission received 8,994 weapons belonging to former FARC-EP combatants- all of them operational. The weapons were disabled and the material was used to create three monuments to underline Colombia’s commitment to peace.
One is ‘Fragments’ by Doris Salcedo in Bogotá, made with 37 tons of weaponry, and the other one is ‘Kusikawsay’ by Mario Opazo, made with 7 tons of incinerated ammunition and installed at the United Nations in New York earlier this year. A third monument will be installed in Havana, Cuba.
Data source: UNVMC