The General Secretariat of the Organization of American States (OAS) presented today to the Permanent Council of the Organization Semiannual Report 36 on the monitoring work of the Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia (MAPP/OAS), which in 2024 is completing 20 years of uninterrupted work accompanying communities and institutions in the territories.
The Report, which covers the period from July 1 to December 31, 2023, coincides with the first year of the "Total Peace Law" and recognizes progress in its execution, especially in the definition of agreements for immediate implementation with territorial impact on humanitarian issues and citizen participation. Its implementation, affirms the report, represents an opportunity to mitigate the impacts of the armed conflict on the civilian population and prevent violations of human rights and infractions of international humanitarian law.
In the second half of 2023, the MAPP/OAS carried out 833 field missions in 300 population centers in 112 municipalities in 18 departments of the country and traveled more than 108,000 kilometers. These population centers include municipal seats, townships, villages, indigenous reservations and community councils.
The Mission delivered 20 recommendations to the Colombian State, of which 11 are directed to the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace (OACP), within the framework of approaches, peace dialogues and Spaces for Socio-legal Conversation with different armed groups.
While presenting the Report, the Chief of the MAPP/OAS, Roberto Menéndez, recognized that "the task of building peace in Colombia is of great proportions and requires equally great commitments, and the Report makes visible achievements that have been achieved such as the conclusion of participatory processes that seek to adopt the Women, Peace and Security Agenda as State policy; (…) and the strengthening of the institutional architecture that leads rural transformation for peace, which according to official figures indicates a trend of significant exponential increase in the processes of purchasing and formalizing property titles." Later he highlighted that progress has also been made in the public policy of dismantling criminal organizations, in the decontamination of territories by Antipersonnel Mines and in the development of intersectoral strategies to respond to risk scenarios due to forced recruitment, use, and utilization of children, girls and adolescents.
Likewise, he emphasized that "the Mission calls for persistence in efforts to establish and advance dialogues with all armed groups and, through them, materialize concrete actions that allow for a definitive cessation of violence, guaranteeing protection, comprehensiveness and well-being of the civilian population, facilitate the arrival of the State as a whole and move towards the transformation of the structural causes of inequality and abandonment that perpetuate the conflict."
Regarding the ceasefires, the Report indicates that the permanent companions of the peace dialogue process, among them the MAPP/OAS, contributed to the prevention of combat between the public force and the structures of the Central General Staff of the FARC-EP, to the development of humanitarian efforts that led to the release of the kidnapped civilian population, members of armed groups and members of the public force held in confrontations, as well as the recovery of civilian property in Antioquia, Arauca, Cauca and in the regions from Catatumbo and south of Bolívar.
"Simultaneous dialogue with different groups that converge in the same territory represents a challenge of great magnitude. The General Secretariat highlights dialogue as the privileged and non-violent path to reach concrete agreements, guarantee effective compliance and generate profound changes and transformations," stated the Chief of Mission of the MAPP/OAS.
Consult the most recent Semiannual Report 36 and its Highlights.(Only in Spanish)
