By Richard McColl
BOGOTA, Colombia
Peace dialogues between FARC rebels and the Colombian government will recommence at the beginning of February, according to a joint declaration.
Negotiations that initially began in November 2012 were expected to restart earlier but during an agreed period of pre-negotiations Jan. 15-18, both sides were able to exchange thoughts on the progress of the dialogues and which issues may have been overlooked.
It was during these discussions that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and the government’s negotiating team constructed the methodology of how to continue after recessing for Christmas and New Year.
While agreements have been reached on agrarian reform, political participation and illicit drugs, this next round of talks due to take place from Feb. 2–10 in Havana, will address “the end of the armed conflict.”
The day after this latest round ends, the Historical Commission on the Conflict and its Victims, or CHCV, created in June 2014 is scheduled to publish its findings.
The commission was designed jointly by the government and the FARC to contribute to ending the armed conflict and is seen as a step toward historical clarifications on the causes of the conflict.
The panel declared in a joint communiqué last August that this would be “a fundamental ingredient for the comprehension of the complexity of the conflict and the responsibilities of those who have participated and had an impact in it, and for the clarification of the truth. To that extent, it will be a basic component for a future truth commission and will contribute to reconciliation.”
The mission of the commission, comprised of high ranking Colombian academics, is to evaluate the origins and multiple causes of the Colombian conflict, the principle factors that have facilitated or contributed to its persistence and the effects and most notable impacts of the conflict on the population.
“I think the most innovative and interesting part of the commission’s work is likely to be the identification of areas of consensus and disagreement in the telling of the historical narrative of the war,” said Virginia M. Bouvier, Senior Advisor for Latin American Programs at the United States Institute of Peace, in a statement on her website. “Just as the peace table in Havana has been a model for laying out differences and then finding common ground, so too the CHCV will need to engage in an exercise of discernment–one that represents the best academic practice of critical thinking,” she said.
