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Executive Summary Twenty-Fourth Report of The EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TWENTY-FOURTH REPORT OF THE SECRETARY GENERAL TO THE PERMANENT COUNCIL ON THE OAS MISSION TO SUPPORT THE PEACE PROCESS IN COLOMBIA The twenty-fourth report of the Secretary General to the Permanent Council on the OAS Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia (MAPP/OAS) is submitted pursuant to resolution CP/RES. 859 (1397/04), by which the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) requested the Secretary General to report periodically on the work of the Mission. The mandate of the MAPP/OAS springs from the agreement concluded by the Government of the Republic of Colombia and the General Secretariat of the OAS (GS/OAS) on January 23, 2004, and resolution CP/RES. 859 (1397/04) adopted by the Permanent Council on February 6, 2004. That mandate has been expanded and extended on seven occasions,1/ most recently until December 31, 2021. The GS/OAS is grateful to the Government and people of Colombia for the confidence they have shown in the OAS by extending the MAPP/OAS mandate until 2021. The GS/OAS would also like, in particular, to express its appreciation for President Juan Manuel Santos who has worked tirelessly for peace and assisted in ensuring that the Mission can carry out its functions properly in an autonomous and independent way. That recognition extends to his entire government team. In the period from February 1 to August 31, 2017, significant progress was made in the implementation of the Final Agreement to End the Armed Conflict and Build a Stable and Lasting Peace concluded by the Colombian Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP), leading to a reduction in loss of life due to violence, opening the way for forgiveness, and laying the foundations for justice and reconciliation. However, various provisions of the Agreement relating to rural matters, fair access to land and territory, development in the areas worst affected by violence, and political participation for victims, among others, have encountered obstacles. This poses an enormous challenge for the institutional framework, since without an adequate response to address those causes and their underlying factors there could be a rapid resurgence of violence or criminality resulting from an insufficient state presence, which would set back the permanent consolidation of peace in provincial areas. The GS/OAS welcomes the resumption of the fifth cycle of talks between the Colombian Government and the ELN, which sends a clear message regarding the will on the part of both sides to end the armed conflict in Colombia and to open the way for the consolidation of full peace. The GS/OAS reiterates its support for and desire to assist the peace process underway and highlights that the current context calls for meaningful dialogue and progress on agreements in order to de-escalate the conflict and restore confidence between the parties. In that regard, it is critical to achieve a broad bilateral cease-fire with proper verification mechanisms to ensure that it encompasses provincial 1. The mandate has been expanded and extended via additional protocols to the original agreement signed on January 15, 2007, January 19, 2010, December 23, 2010, October 3, 2013, December 15, 2014, September 27, 2016, and December 19, 2017. - 2 - areas and to guarantee the continuity of progress with point 1 on societal participation in peace building. With respect to the situation in relation to violence, justice, and peace, the continuous monitoring by the MAPP/OAS has revealed persisting disputes between ELN guerrillas, organized armed groups (GAO), and organized criminal groups (GDO) vying for control of territory vacated by the FARC-EP,2/ particularly in areas where natural resources and conditions for engaging in unlawful activities are suited to their interests and which the State does not effectively control. The GS/OAS underscores the efforts of the authorities to dismantle those structures, enabling them to carry out operations whose main outcomes have been to neutralize several leaders of those groups in Caquetá, Nariño, Meta, and Bolívar. There have also been large drug seizures, such as those in May and August in Ipiales (Nariño) and Buenaventura (Valle del Cauca). Having said that, the GS/OAS considers that in order to guarantee the safety of the whole population efficiently, the State needs to strengthen its effective control of the entire country and increase the permanent presence of security forces in areas where other armed actors seek to fill the vacuum left by the FARC-EP. With regard to the territorial dynamics of the ELN, the GS/OAS finds that upon positioning itself in areas where the FARC-EP once had a presence, the ELN has generated various negative effects in terms of homicides, displacement, confinement, forcible recruitment, strengthening of its control over communities, harassment against the security forces, and hostile actions toward journalists. Those dynamics have particularly impacted departments such as Chocó, which has witnessed armed clashes between the guerrilla group and the Clan del Golfo in the Darién region. In that regard, the GS/OAS was deeply troubled by the killings in the village of El Carrá, in the Municipality of Litoral del San Juan, where four civilians were murdered after the ELN accused them of being members of the Clan del Golfo. Similar dynamics have been identified between the guerrilla group and other armed groups, such as FARC-EP dissidents in the coastal area of Nariño Department. The ELN has also harassed and directed attacks against the security forces in the municipalities of Fortul, Saravena, Arauquita and Arauca (Arauca Department); Vianí (Cundinamarca Department); La Gloria (Cesar Department); Hacarí, Teorama and Tibú (Norte de Santander Department); Samaniego and Cumbal (Nariño Department); and Sipí (Chocó Department). The GS/OAS welcomes the creation of coordination mechanisms and bodies within state institutions in order to offer security guarantees to those in local leadership roles. The GS/OAS recognizes the efforts and progress made by the National Commission for Security Guarantees, the Elite Corps of the National Police, the National Protection Unit, and other State institutions that within the framework of their official responsibilities help to advance understanding of this phenomenon and mitigate security risks in participation settings. Nonetheless, the ongoing murders, threats, attacks, forced displacement, and stigmatization of community leaders is cause for utmost concern. In that regard, the GS/OAS considers it pertinent to draw distinctions between each territorial context, and the dynamics associated with the armed conflict and social unrest. It also 2. GAO (for Grupos Armados Organizados) and GDO (for Grupos Delictivos Organizados) are terms adopted by the Colombian Government, which in Ministry of Defense Permanent Directive No. 15 of 2016 defines GAOs as groups “under the direction of a single command that exert control over an area of territory so as to enable them to engage in sustained and concerted military operations”; and GDOs as “structured groups of three or more individuals that exist over given period of time and act in concert for the purpose of committing one or more serious crimes or offenses recognized in the Palermo Convention, in order to obtain, either directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit.” It identified the Clan del Golfo, Los Pelusos, and Los Puntilleros as GAOs. It placed other, smaller groups with fewer weapons and less capacity to make war, such as Los Rastrojos, La Constru, and La Empresa, among many others, in the GDO category. - 3 - considers it relevant to identify the social, cultural, political, and economic drivers that lead to attacks on community leaders in order to adequately address that phenomenon, as well as to move forward with inquiries that do not stop at identifying the perpetrators, but also investigate possible masterminds. The national crop substitution program (Programa Nacional Integral de Sustitución de Cultivos de Uso Ilícito – PNIS) has been advancing in provincial areas in a bid to accomplish the goals set by the Government. In that context, as of August 31, 2017, the Crop Substitution Department (Dirección para la Sustitución de Cultivos Ilícitos) of the Office of the Advisor for the Post-Conflict (Alta Consejería para el Posconflicto) initiated the rollout of the PNIS by organizing 860 municipal awareness drives and concluding 82 collective voluntary substitution agreements in 85 municipalities. The agreements cover approximately 127,000 families and 85,000 to 90,000 hectares under illicit crops. This approach has generated high expectations as well as an opportunity for families that make their livelihood from illicit crops to obtain access to mechanisms that would enable them to change their sources of income. Having said that, the GS/OAS, through the MAPP/OAS, has learned that local communities have little faith in the program’s success, given the slow pace of its implementation and the presence of illegal armed actors who drive the illicit economies and threaten those who lead voluntary crop substitution processes. Several aspects relating to the implementation of the PNIS, such as the need for comprehensive rural reform, require a coordinated institutional framework in order to address issues such as access to land and peasant communities settling on collective lands belonging to Afro- Colombian communities, indigenous reservations, national parks, and unused State-owned land. In addition, clear rules are needed on aspects such as the maximum number of hectares to be substituted per household, the distinction between small and large farmers, and the linkage to substitution programs of non-farming individuals and families that make their living from the drug production chain,3/ among other issues. As regards the forcible eradication strategy being implemented by the security forces, according to reports from the Ministry of Defense, it is advancing at a good pace, as evinced by the fact that it has surpassed the annual target for 2017.
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