 I think we're going to get started. Good afternoon. My name is George Lopez, and I have the great privilege here at USIP to serve as the vice president for our Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding, in which is located our Latin American program with special emphasis on Columbia, headed by my colleague and friend, Ginny Bouvier, who will emcee your good panel today. So welcome to USIP, and welcome to the Columbia Peace Forum. As many of you know, we've tried over the past couple of months to particularly keep the peace forum in tune with what's going on and important developments of the peace negotiations. And fortunately, through the tough circumstances of the last couple of months, those peace negotiations continue. And we didn't have to hold a panel on how do we get the peace negotiations restarted. And that's a good news for all of us, but particularly our friends and colleagues in Columbia. Our topic today, for which I am very grateful for all the panelists being willing to come on short notice and be part of this, is the very, very important part of the negotiations and also the part of the ongoing process of how you do disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. At USIP, we say we are committed to the prevention, the mitigation, and the resolution of violent conflict. That entails many, many different things, including finally getting to a peace agreement, of course. But when we say prevent, mitigate, resolve, that has kind of a linear feel to it. And many of us know that there could be no more circular, ongoing, reinforcing process within peace process and in peace building than the notion of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. It's continuing and ongoing, not only, of course, with regard to the signing of the agreement and its first phases of implementation, but it's critical of the three-year mark and the five and the 10-year mark. And we know other settlements where this has fallen apart. So how and where and why to understand this in the Colombian context is very, very important. And we welcome all of you here for conversations in this regard. And we believe that this panel today can contribute to dialogue, not only here in Washington, DC, but of course, we're joined by many of our partners in Colombia and elsewhere who frequent themselves as visitors to the forum. So thank you again for being here. Thank you to our panelists. Let me turn it over to Ginny, who will conduct the proceedings this afternoon. Thank you, Ginny. Thanks so much, George. I'd like to welcome you all to this afternoon's Columbia Peace Forum. We're grateful to today's distinguished speakers for making the time to join us, particularly those who have come from afar to do so. I'll dispense with the lengthy introductions in the name of time and invite you to read the bios that we've prepared that you can get outside if you don't have them already. Today's representatives in the audience, I would just mention, include representatives from the embassies of Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Canada, Russia, the Organization of American States and the United Nations. We have several sectors of the US government represented. From the Congress, I'd like to recognize representatives from the Office of Jim McGovern and from the Tom Lantos Human Rights Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as representatives from USAID, the Department of State, Department of Defense, US Southern Command, and Department of Homeland Security. We've also got students and faculty from more than a dozen universities who have RSVP'd to attend, some of whom I'm assuming are here. And many NGOs, development organizations, religious organizations, and private sector companies and contractors. We're delighted to have you all here and a word of welcome to the press and to those who are joining us virtually. To our tweeting audience, I would note that the hashtag for today's event is hashtag Columbia Peace Forum. So we invite you to send your comments out into the ether sphere and engage in conversation about what you're hearing today. We've seen a steady and serious effort by both the Colombian government and the FARC to seek a political solution to Columbia's long-standing armed conflict. The parties launched a peace process in Norway in October 2012 that's about to enter its 32nd round of talks in Havana next Monday. Likewise, there is hope that exploratory talks with the second guerrilla group, the ELN, will soon be formalized. Preliminary agreements have been reached between the government and the FARC on rural agrarian development, political participation, and illicit crops and drug trafficking. The brief interruption of peace talks with the FARC last November with the detention of General Alsate and his colleagues in the Choco region appears to have strengthened the resolve of all the parties to end the conflict once and for all. A unilateral ceasefire declared by the FARC in December has been effective and continues to hold. When talks resume on Monday, the parties in Havana will be working simultaneously to resolve the last two substantive issues on their agenda regarding measures that will address the rights of victims and crafting agreements to end the conflict. Discussions will also continue about measures to de-escalate the violence and about the terms for a bilateral definitive ceasefire that will mark the end of the war. A technical sub-commission consisting of members of the FARC and the government, including high-level active-duty military and police authorities and insurgent commanders, has been established to discuss these particulars. The head of Columbia's Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces is also spearheading a high-level military transitional command for the post-conflict. And the FARC have launched a parallel guerrilla command for normalization to be headed by one of the top FARC military commanders to implement what they call mechanisms of normalization of the armed forces in order to secure their prompt return to the constitutional role of defending the borders. So what actually does this topic of ending the conflict entail? In their initial framework agreement, one of our speakers today, Alejandro Eder, helped to formulate what the parties laid out as the particulars of the agenda. And I'd just like to read to you what the actual framework agreement that guides these negotiations says about what will be discussed under this topic. Number one, a definitive and bilateral ceasefire and end of hostilities. Number two, the leaving aside of arms, dejasión de armas. And the term is really important in the Colombian context. DDR, which we normally in the international community talk about as demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration, is a term that's been rejected by the FARC. And I think there's been a real effort to create new ways of talking about this that are a little bit less charged for either side at the table. So dejasión de armas is pretty much the compromised position that people have come up with about what will happen when the FARC put aside their arms. So leaving aside of arms and the reincorporation of the FARC into economic, social, and political civil life. Three, an official review of the situation of those persons deprived of their freedom, prosecuted or condemned for belonging to the FARC. Four, increased efforts by the national government to intensify its attacks on criminal organizations and their support networks and to address corruption and impunity. This includes targeting any organization responsible for homicides and massacres or attacking human rights defenders, social movements, or political movements. And five, institutional reforms to address the challenges of peace building, provide security guarantees, and address the phenomenon of paramilitarism. So that's what's been laid out at the table. These are the issues that will be discussed at the table. We have a dynamite lineup today for today's event to address these issues from different perspectives. Our first set of panelists will analyze the successes and pitfalls of DDR processes, especially from Columbia's very rich past efforts at reintegration of ex-combatants. A second session will focus on policy recommendations and the role of the international community, taking as a point of departure a new report from the International Crisis Group called The Day After Tomorrow, Columbia's FARC and the End of the Conflict. And now let us turn to our panelists. Our first presentation will be by Sandra Pabon, who is the team lead for reintegration and prevention of recruitment at the Office of Vulnerable Populations at USAID in Columbia in Bogota, and Kathleen Kerr, who's deputy chief of mission in Columbia for the International Organization of Migrations. And I understand they have a PowerPoint for us. Thank you, Jeannie. Good afternoon, everybody. We will split the presentation, the 15-minute presentation here. Katie will introduce a historical background to illustrate the demobilization. And I'll close the presentation with the identification of some lessons learned. Let me see. Do we have the PowerPoint back there? Hey, Mark. Well, I'll start saying that this, as mentioned, is the compilation of lessons learned in the past process. 10 years ago, it started in 2003. And we're sharing here lessons learned identified by Colombian authorities, think tanks, and different academics that have studied the Colombian case. I think it's coming. He gives me the sign, yes. We'll see. As Sandra said, I'll be presenting really the historical account of what happened so that she can then draw on those facts for the lessons learned. In 2002, in August, President Uribe takes office with a very clear and urgent mission to dismantle the paramilitaries. And by the end of that year, he had a law that enabled him to enter into talks with the paramilitaries. He had set up an exploratory commission that was to start negotiations with four different groupings of paramilitaries. And the largest of those groupings, known as the AUC, the Umbrella Organization, in December of that same year issued a declaration of peace stipulating a ceasefire to begin in January, the 1st of January, in the following year. Now, compliance is going to get a clicker for the. Compliance with the ceasefire was patchy, to say the least. But negotiations progressed. And in mid-2003, the AUC and the government of Colombia enter into the Santa Fe de Rallito Agreement. This agreement was very sparse, but at least contained an agreement for full demobilization by the end of 2005. Now, what the paramilitaries believed they were getting out of this in exchange for demobilization was really never very clear. At a minimum, we can say that they expected to avoid jail time and extradition. And the Uribe administration submitted to Congress a draft bill to this effect in August of that year, stipulating that even those responsible for the worst crimes, who would be sentenced, but their sentence could be immediately suspended. Under this legal uncertainty, but optimism, the first demobilization took place in November of 2003. This was a very urban, quite new paramilitary group that was very heavily infused with the drug trade. And after that demobilization, the country really entered into a sort of collective shock about just how little these groups looked like a self-defense group, how different they were from the public imagination of them. And questions arose immediately about whether it really was even paramilitaries who were demobilizing, or just drug traffickers who were seeking legal cover under a lenient transitional justice law. So in this national mood, the Uribe administration was forced to withdraw the initial law, which was considered by most of Congress to be to lax. And after just two demobilizations, the process entered into a crisis. Negotiations continued. And in May of the following year, a new agreement was reached under a new understanding about the punishment aspects of the agreement. And in November, a full year after the first demobilization, the demobilization schedule started up again. There was still no definitive legal framework for ex-combatants. But there was at least an understanding that any law that came out would have some sort of jail for commanders. After that one-year crisis, demobilization really started on a pretty consistent gradual schedule throughout the next few years until the final demobilization in August of 2006. And shortly after, the High Commission for Reintegration was established, and national attention really shifted to the challenges for sustainable reintegration. This map really shows the same data set, but geographically. Each dot represents one of the 37 demobilizations that represented in the end the demobilization of 31,000-plus individuals. The demobilizations were set up often on farms in zones where the paramilitaries had sufficient territorial control to believe that they were safe. The full demobilization exercise usually took about three weeks. This is the circuit that each ex-combatant would have followed on demobilization day. And in the interest of time, I just want to call your attention to a problem that affected the effectiveness, reduced the effectiveness really, of several of the steps in this circuit, which was the lack of information held by the government at this time on identities and past criminal conduct of the demobilizing paramilitaries. So for example, the step with the Attorney General's office, the Attorney General's office was tasked with conducting a confession and asking the right questions to get a truthful account of that ex-combatant's participation in an illegal armed group. But lacking really any prior information on the individual, those confessions ended up, in many cases, quite shallow and very incomplete. And the same again with the administrative security department, which was to issue a criminal priors, the criminal record for each of these individuals, and based also on that lack of information, some truly hardcore paramilitaries, including those in leadership positions, walked away from that desk without any priors with a clean criminal record. On children, we've applied here a rather conservative estimate saying that 20% of the paramilitaries were likely to have been children. So we should have expected to see about 6,000 to come out of that process, to come forward. Well, in fact, the commanders, during all of these demobilizations, only handed over 334. Another 629 managed to find their way to government services on their own account at some point after their release, recognizing how really urgently these children require government support and care services. The government undertook a kind of search and rescue campaign about four years later to identify these kids and was able to find 275 of them. At that point, only 15 were still children. The rest had reached adulthood. So we still have about 4,700 children that are unaccounted for. They're now adults, but we're never able to receive those services, which is really a source of much concern. This was probably so that the commanders could avoid the consequences and the legal risk under international law associated with the crime of child recruitment. I'm going to close with a quick look at the legal uncertainties around demobilization. So even before the AUC process, Columbia already had a legal precedent that would allow the government to pardon illegal armed groups with two very important caveats. One was that the crime had to be political. And the going wisdom at the time was that insurgency was political, but paramilitarism was not political. Well, the Oriba administration was able to deal with this caveat with a law at the end of 2002, essentially just taking the political question out of the equation. The other caveat is that pardons never apply to what was called then barbaric or horrific conduct. This concept has been developed, so it now encompasses war crimes and crimes against humanity. So those responsible for those crimes could not be pardoned. And this basically split the paramilitary group into two, those that were not presumed of having committed those serious crimes and those that were. And I'll look very quickly at what happened with those who were not presumed responsible for these crimes. They demobilized on the understanding that they would be pardoned on the legal precedent for insurgents, but with the understanding that it didn't matter that their crime wasn't political. And their position was strengthened then under the justice and peace law, which actually declared that paramilitarism was a political crime. So they felt rather safe then. But in 2006, the Constitutional Court strikes down the holding that paramilitarism can be political. And later, the Supreme Court finds that paramilitaries could not be pardoned. So some of them had their pardons and were free and clear. And the rest of them, tens of thousands, fell into a legal limbo in which they could be picked up and imprisoned for their crimes at any time. So the challenge that this represented to a reintegration process in terms of the loss of trust by ex-combatants, but also the fact that some of them want underground to avoid detection, is clear. The government takes another stab at getting around this by issuing a law that would allow the prosecutor to exercise discretion and not prosecute these tens of thousands that were out, which the Constitutional Court also found unconstitutional. Finally, in 2010, a law comes out that doesn't pardon rank and file, but does allow their sentences to be suspended based on their fulfilling certain conditions related to truth-telling and community service. I am going to wrap up there and pass the stage over to Sund. Thank you. I would like to start saying there are two main variables that we need to keep in mind when we think of the Colombian case. The first one is the importance of the ownership that the Colombian government had had over the process, compared to other DDR processes. I don't know, Alejandro, if you're going to mention it, but it really shows how the government has provided support throughout the phases. And this has allowed for sustainability of the full route and the evolution of the models. The second variable that I think is important is to keep in mind that the DDR process in Colombia happened in the middle of conflict. And this threatened the cantonments, the security of ex-combatants, the security of receptor communities, and even the effectiveness at some point of reintegration since recidivism was, it's a risk there. Regarding the immobilization, we had put together 10 lessons learned. I would say the first one is the importance of clear agreements. As Katie had explained, the agreement itself was not that thorough, and it was really not that clear, which were the roles and responsibilities of each of the parties. And that allows, a clear agreement allows for smoother implementation, and also for clear verification. The importance of the protocol for handling over weapons, it's really important to keep that point in mind, so that it's easier, again, to verify how each party is fulfilling the agreements. Third point, logistics, coordinating 37 demobilization processes within three years took a lot of time, resources, and it could be really complicated if it happens in remote areas, as it was the case. So it's a really important point to keep in mind. Fourth, consultations with receptor communities. The processes in Colombia allowed for working with local communities, but we believe this process can be strengthened and further explained to avoid inconveniences. Regarding the cantonments, we believe this period is crucial to allow for mental transition from combatants to civilians, and we are also stressing the point of early reintegration. During this period, authorities can use the time to, A, identify what are the needs of ex-combatants, mental, economic, psychological, but also to start providing assistance to demobilized. We believe these early reintegration processes are important and can be positive and speed up the DER processes as at all. Child soldiers. Regarding child soldiers, the estimates of children within FARC ranks ranges from 20% to 40%. We cannot overstress the importance of assisting and providing all the restitution services to children that had gone through recruitment, and it's really an important lesson learned in the past that we don't want to repeat in future processes. And finally, regarding the legal framework. Evidently, the importance of clear rules will allow the combatants to trust the process to build a GTMACI, as Katie briefly mentioned. It was really an issue, this quilt of legislation that we lived through the past years, and it's important to understand which are the rules and abide by them. Finally, before the DER processes starts, it's important that the high and middle-level commanders of an armed group are identified so that benefits and regulations are clear for each part of the group, both high commanders and middle ranks. I think we're going to wrap up respecting our 15 minutes, but we'll be open for Q&As. Great. Thank you so much. Now we'll turn to Alejandro Eder, who is the former High Commissioner for Integration at the ACR, the Alto Comisionado de Reintegración. And was one of the Alternative Plenipotenciarios, so he was basically an alternate negotiator, involved in negotiating the secret talks that led to the general framework agreement that has really laid out the mapping for how this process would take place and the agenda itself. So with that, I'd like to turn over to Alejandro. Thank you. Thank you, and thanks, Jeannie and USIP, for the invitation, and thanks to all of you for your interest in peace in Colombia. I have 10 minutes to sum up 10 years of history, so I'm going to try to do it. I don't know if I'll achieve it, but I'm going to give it a shot, exactly. So just a quick thought before beginning, and usually the toughest part in a peace process is the gap between peace negotiations and implementing what is agreed to in those peace negotiations. You know, in a peace process, you can agree, all right, we're going to demobilize and reintegrate everybody, but then you have to run out, set up a solid institution to demobilize everyone, reintegrate everyone, allocate budget, develop a policy, try it out, roll it out on the ground. So it's a very complex process, and usually most peace processes fail, or at least fail in part in those first few months because it's just, I mean, it's a huge job that has to be achieved, and it's just, well, sometimes it's impossible. Today, with the FARC demobilization, Colombia has a huge opportunity in that Colombia is not starting from zero. Colombia has various peace-building policies that have been rolled out, DDR policies, land restitution, victims' reparation, historical memory, so Colombia has a lot of experience that should be built on, that can be built on, and it should be built on to make sure that whatever is agreed to with the FARC can be carried out and can be implemented seamlessly once the peace agreement is signed. Having said that, I'd like to focus a little bit more on DDR specifically. In Colombia, Colombia, as Sandra and Katie were saying, Colombia has had an ongoing DDR process for the past 12 years now. Since 2003, Colombia began implementing a process which is different from most processes in the world because, as Sandra was saying, it's a DDR process that's being implemented in the middle of conflict. So in Colombia, there's two types of DD and one type of R. There's an individual disarmament and demobilization process, which is a process whereby members of illegal armed groups can desert and they can opt out, if you will, and say that they want to demobilize it and they can enter the reintegration program. And there's a collective disarmament and demobilization process, which is what happened with the AUC, and it's like a normal DDR process where there's peace talks with an illegal armed group, everybody, you know, they agree to some conditions and everybody disarms and demobilizes together. Regardless of how people demobilize in Colombia, everybody goes into the same reintegration process. Colombia's reintegration process is today, I would say, a very robust process. It has a lot of difficulties, but it's a process that has managed to evolve, I guess, in a single direction without, you know, too much political intervention, if that makes sense. I'd say it's more of a technical or technocratic endeavor than a political endeavor. Having said that, I would say also that one of the great successes of the Colombian reintegration process is that it has a lot of political support. There's a lot of political will in Colombia to make sure that disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration happens and happens correctly. Colombia's, when Colombia's reintegration process started in 2003, it was pretty much a Xerox copy of DDR processes in other countries, or by reintegration process in other countries. By that, I mean that it was a short process. It lasted between 18 and 24 months. People who were in the reintegration process had the option of seeing a psychologist or going to school or getting vocational training, but it wasn't obligatory, and once the time was up, then people would end their process and they'd have to go back into society. That time would show in Colombia that that type of approach doesn't work. You need much more than 18 to 24 months to reintegrate someone, and you need to have a more robust process where you focus, first of all, on stabilizing people psychologically and emotionally when they first leave an illegal armed group. Secondly, you really need to educate them. When people come out of illegal armed groups in Colombia, they come with a very low educational level. Just to give you an idea of the people that demobilized in Colombia in between October 2013 and October 2014, which is when I left my post as general director, 70% of people who were arriving mostly from the FARC were either illiterate or functionally literate, which means that you're pretty much starting from zero. You can't just take someone who just left the FARC and throw them into the workforce because they can't handle it. 90% of people who were coming out of the FARC had some sort of psychological problem. Most of them had post-traumatic stress disorder. But another thing that's being done in Colombia now is that you focus more on education. The process takes more time. It takes between around seven years per person to be able to properly reintegrate someone. And there's a lot of focus paid to the psychological aspect, to the psychological and emotional stability. Just to give you an idea, when the Colombian process first started in 2003, there was one psychologist for every 1200 ex-combatants. Today in Colombia, it's one psychologist for every 20 or 30 ex-combatants. So the proportion, the ratio is much better, so that allows a better system. So in Colombia today, like I said, there's a more rigorous reintegration process. It takes seven to eight years to reintegrate someone. There's a strong focus on psychological attention, strong focus on education, strong focus on vocational training. And there's a strong focus on making the program sustainable in the long term. And by that I mean that the Colombian reintegration program focuses on preparing people to help themselves rather than maintaining them in some sort of parallel welfare state. That makes the program more sustainable in the long run, but it also makes it more fair. Because as you know, Colombia, we have a lot more problems than just ex-combatants. There's also victims, there's IDPs, there's people who are poor, who are marginalized economically. So to sum up, I kind of reviewing or thinking about these past few years of work in reintegration, I drew up six main lessons learned from the Colombian reintegration program. The first lesson learned in these seven years that I was working in reintegration in Colombia is that for reintegration to be sustainable in the long run, in order for it to be successful, the first thing is it has to be an individual and personalized, timely process. By that I mean is that there are no shortcuts. You're not gonna reintegrate someone in six months by teaching them basket weaving or by teaching them how to read and write and that's it. And also finding a communal solution or rather communal solutions usually don't work. When people demobilize from an illegal armed group, what tends to happen is that each individual discovers him or herself and they start to think about their own dreams and they want to pursue their own dreams. So if somebody comes out and you tell them, oh hey, you were in the FARC or you were in the AUC, so now you're gonna have to work in this. More times than not, people are gonna say, you know what, that's not what I wanna do. I've been in this group for the past 10 years and people have been telling me what to do and what not to do and now I just wanna pursue my own dreams. So you need to focus on individuals and you need to personalize each process because each person has different dreams and different aspirations. Not everybody wants to be a farmer. Not everybody wants to be a waiter. Not everybody wants to be a computer technician. You have to give people a chance to define what they want and you have to make them commit to a personal development plan or in Spanish we call it un proyecto de vida, life project. The second lesson learned is that you need to guarantee security and by security we mean both physical and judicial security. Listening to Katie just now, I silently thank God that I don't have to be there anymore because the judicial stability part is highly complex and it's still unresolved. But with judicial stability I think we need to develop a system by which rules don't continue to change. If you look at this slide right here, look at how many times the law changed for the AUC Des Moines Salos. That makes a program unsustainable and it also mines the ex-combatants trust in the government's word. If you tell someone, look, demobilize, you'll go to this program, we're gonna rehabilitate you and you're gonna go back to society and you'll be okay. They say, all right, I trust you government, here's my weapon, I'm gonna demobilize and I'll give you whatever information you want, I'll participate in transitional justice mechanisms, et cetera, and then five years later, many times when the person is already reintegrated because we had thousands of people that were reintegrated that today will hundreds that today are in jail because of this little mix up right here. There are people who are already working with stable families, et cetera. And when other people start seeing that there's instability, then they don't trust the process. And when the bad guys, the spoilers, because there's always spoilers, there were spoilers in the AUC process, there's gonna be spoilers in the FARC process. When they see that the government's word isn't reliable, then they start knocking on the ex-combatants door and saying, see, we told you so, you can't trust the government, come work with us and you'll be able to make more money, et cetera. So you have to grant judicial stability and you also have to grant physical security, sorry, judicial security and physical security. Why physical security? Well, one of the biggest challenges, obviously, is keeping ex-combatants alive. A lot of times when people think of a demobilization process, they think about the commanders and the people who are negotiating or the people who are in charge. But we forget about the base. A lot of times the base is victimized. They're victimized by spoilers, they're victimized by their former commanders who don't want them to participate in historical memory mechanisms, for example, or they're victimized by normal delinquents, if you will, who wanna get them involved in illegal activities. When in, out of the 30, out of the 35,000 people that demobilized from the AUC, 3,800 have been killed. So in other words, that's a little bit over 10%. It's about 11 or 12% have been killed. Most of them were killed between 2006 and 2009 when the Bacrim, the main spoiler, organizations first emerged right after the end of the process with the AUC. But they targeted the lower level combatants. Why? Because they'd go up to them and say, hey, you wanna come, we're starting a new band. You wanna come with us? No, you don't wanna come with us? Okay, well, here you go. And they move on to the next guy. If you put it into perspective, I think that the UPE, the Union Patriotica, the total killings for the UPE was around 2,000 people. So there's been a bigger massacre of ex-paramilitaries than there was of UPE militants. And nobody's cried about that. And I think that it's important that we look at their rights as well. The third main lesson is that you need a strong institution to be able to implement a reintegration process properly. When the Colombian reintegration process first started in 2003, it was managed by a program in the Vice Ministry of Justice, or within the Vice Ministry of Justice. And it had little political muscle or little political sway. So it had a very hard time moving the right actors to be able to implement the reintegration process properly. Then it was brought up to a high presidential counselor level, which gave it political muscle, but it gave it a lot of institutional stability because a high presidential counselor in Colombia is a type of special advisor that the president has, and it can be created or suppressed by simply signing a decree. So in 2010, President Santos created a presidential agency which is called the Colombian Agency for Reintegration, which maintained the presidential level of the policy, so that would grant it the necessary political muscle to be able to implement it. But also by making it an independent agency, it has the proper institutional framework to be able to implement it in the long run. The fourth, and I think, again, thinking of the FARC going forward, I don't know if it's the ACR or if it's gonna be a different agency, but I think that that's one of the main lessons that needs to be learned. You need a proper institution with institutional strength, with political strength to be able to properly implement the process, which is gonna last very well over a decade. Think that to reintegrate the FARC, we're gonna need at least 10 or 15 years to reintegrate most of them. There's some ex-combatants that are gonna need to be maintained by the government for the rest of their lives, but most of them will be reintegrated between 10 and 15 years. The fourth lesson is that there has to be, having said that you need a strong institution, there also has to be a strong dose of co-responsibility. By that, I mean that it can't just be one agency that's in charge of reintegrating. It means that the whole government needs to understand what the needs are of a reintegration process, and everybody has to play a part. That happens today in Columbia in part. Like I mentioned, the reintegration process, for example, has a strong educational component. It's not the ACR, the Colombian Agency for Reintegration that educates ex-combatants. It's the Ministry of Education or the local Departments of Education, but there needs to be strong coordination, and that's something that's, I guess, an awareness that's been developed over years, and again, that's something that can't be lost. The fifth lesson is that reconciliation is key to successful reintegration. You can't pretend to have a reintegration process on the one hand and a reconciliation or victims' reparation process on the other. You need, those two processes need to meet, and they need to interact. Unfortunately, in the Colombian peacebuilding process, but also in peacebuilding processes in general around the world, the difference between victims and victimizers has been politicized. So there's a lot of people that say, oh no, how are you gonna have a reconciliation process where the victims and the victimizers meet? I think the proper question is, how are you not gonna have a reconciliation process where the victims and the victimizers meet? Both of them require that interaction and both of them require that reconciliation to be able to move on with their lives. A victim requires, a victim has a need to know who heard him or his or her family or who wronged them as much as a victimizer has the need to be able to ask for forgiveness and to be able to, I guess, to right that wrong. So there have to be reconciliation processes and spaces where victims and victimizers can meet. Finally, the one thing that you can't forget when you work in a reintegration process and I think, and I worked again, I worked in Columbia's reintegration process from January 2007 until October of last year until I finally demobilized and now I'm gonna learn how to be a baker or something, but the biggest lesson that I learned in those six years is that in a DDR process, we work with humans and you can't forget that because a lot of times people think in general terms, like, oh, these guys are the FARC, so the FARC, they need to get an agricultural reintegration and these guys are from the AUC, so we need to get them in factories and these guys are from Mindanao, so they're probably all wanna get a different type of reintegration process, but at the end of the day, we can't forget that each person has their own life history, each person has their own dreams, each person has their own situations that pain them, each person has his or her own goals, so you need to take that into account because once you take that into account and you start to work with that, that's how you get people to engage in their own reintegration process and that's how you get them to commit and that's how you can guarantee the success of reintegration in the long run. Having said that, there's a lot of experience in this sense that has been gathered in Columbia in the last decade. In the last decade, in Columbia, 56,000 people have demobilized, 35,000 from the AUC, 21,000 from the guerrillas, around 17,000 from the FARC, that number's probably closer to 18,000 people today and 4,000 from the ELN and in Columbia, a know-how has emerged on how to treat people from different groups that we've also managed to put aside certain myths about how people will behave. For example, a lot of people, when they speak about the FARC's reintegration process, they think, well, since this is a collective demobilization process, most people are gonna want to stay together. Well, that's probably what the FARC commanders want but that's probably not what's gonna happen when the FARC demobilizes. Just to give you an idea at the ACR, every year a census is done with the people that demobilized in the previous 12 months. The last census that I had access to, which was mostly, it was 1,200 people, about 900 of them came from the FARC, 300 came from the ELN. Out of those 1,200 people, 60%, when we asked them what they thought would happen when the FARC demobilized, 60% said that they thought that people who demobilized from the FARC are gonna want an individual reintegration process, that they're not gonna wanna be reintegrated with the FARC. 21% said that they thought that people would want a collective process where everybody would stay together. And 19% said that people would want one or the other but they would definitely want community-based reintegration process. When asked more specifically if they would want a reintegration process, an individual process or a collective process, 85% said that they would want an individual process, 15% said that they would like to be reintegrated with other FARC combatants. Let's say that for whatever reason, that's completely wrong and it was twice the number that wanted a collective process. You're still talking about 70% of people who would want an individual reintegration process and that's the reason why I point that out is because of our first lesson learned that for a process to be sustainable, it has to be individual and personalized. Another number, another issue which always comes up with the FARC is that people always assume that because it's the FARC, they're gonna wanna be reintegrated in rural settings. 54% of ex-combatants demobilized between October 2013 and October 2014, 54% said that they would wanna live in urban settings. If you look at people who are in the age group of 18 to 25, 63% said that they would wanna live in urban settings. Of the 42% that said that they would live in rural settings, only 31% of those said that they would wanna be farmers or work in some sort of agricultural activity. The rest wanted to be shop owners and a good number of them wanted to study. They just wanted to live in the countryside but that doesn't necessarily mean that they wanna be farmers. There's another question which we ask ex-combatants is, would you like to go back to the areas where you operated? Because a lot of people for the FARC reintegration process, they're just assuming we need to demobilize them and leave them where they are. Well, again, here we're asking low level gorillas that demobilized thousands of them, would you like to go back to the areas where you operated? 89% of them said no, 11% of them said yes, but of the 11% that said yes, 61% said that they would go back to those areas over a year after their demobilization. So right off the bat, they don't wanna go there. And what we found in practice in all these years of reintegration is that most people, most ex-combatants, they behave like other Colombias. And most ex-combatants, or if you look at normal migration patterns, and there's Katie here from IOM, there's most people in Colombia and in other societies tend to migrate from the countryside into the cities because people just think that there's more opportunities in the cities. A lot of people would rather live in the countryside, I'd rather live in the countryside sometimes, but there's just more things to do in the city, and you can't forget that at the end of the day we're just working with normal people. There's another thing is that when people demobilize, like I said, they behave like normal Colombians. To the point where we identified a good number of ex-combatants, at least 1,000, that have migrated to the US. There's about 1,000 Colombian ex-combatants that are living in the US, immigrant lives, like other Colombians that have immigrated to the US. There's about 1,000 or so that have gone to Spain. There's a couple of 1,000 that have gone to Venezuela because once they demobilize, they just want to be normal people and they want to move on with their lives. So having said all that, I just wanted, again, to highlight one of our main lessons, which is, or the main lesson that I learned and that's that we work with humans. You can't forget, there's no shortcuts, there's no simple solutions, there's no communal solutions. At the end of the day, we're working with people. And whatever deal is struck with the FARC, everybody's gonna be all up in arms and very aware of what's going on in the first few months or in the first couple of years after the peace deal is struck. But it's gonna take many years. It's gonna take well over a decade to reintegrate all these people. Just as it's taken with the ex-AUC combatants, a lot of them are still in the reintegration process. And we need to make sure that whatever process is offered these people is based on reality and it has clear goals and it's sustainable and it respects them as human beings. That's it, thank you, Jeannie. Thanks very much, Alejandro. Let's turn now to Kimberley Tiden who will talk about reintegration in Uraba and the role of the evangelical churches. Great, thank you so much. And can you people hear me? Can you hear me now? Now you can. Great, okay. I have framed my brief comments today in dialogue if you will with the recent International Crisis Group Report. I know you'll talk about it more this afternoon which is the day after tomorrow, Columbia's FARC and the end of the conflict. As well as their earlier report from August, 2013 on Transitional Justice and Columbia's Peace Talks. And I come from the position, I'm an anthropologist so I've worked since January, 2005 with former combatants in Bogota, Medellin and Uraba. So former paramilitaries but also the people who individually demobilized from the FARC and the ELN. So I'm gonna draw a bit on that kind of experience and I'm gonna focus my comments mostly on Uraba drawing on a paper that's forthcoming with Fundación Ideas para la Paz. And the latest report, I love, there's a line in the latest report on the FARC and the end of the conflict where the ICG rightly notes the temptations of rearmament, recruitment and defiance. So we have RRD to replace DDR and there you go. But it is the incredible pressures to pick up arms once again. And I have three critiques and I'm gonna cluster my comments around them. And the first is how gender has been incorporated both into the two texts that I mentioned but also how it's been deployed by the Asiati. And one of the, whenever I'm reading a document I wait to see if there's gonna be the gender paragraph and if the gender paragraph doesn't alter anything anybody else said and the rest of it and if the gender only appears because now you've got women so you have to worry about gender, we have a problem. And so both of these documents, that is precisely what we have and I don't mean that as an insult if there's people from the ICG here. But part of what I think we need to look at is not simply should gender matter now because 30 to 40% of the FARC are women. Gender should always have mattered from the very start and I've tried to make the point in various publications we miss the opportunity to think about a more transformative gender regime if we don't understand the fusion of violent forms of masculinity and ideas of what it means to be good at being a man. So one of the things I'd like us to consider then is that gender regimes are central to military regimes they're central to militarization as much as guns and bullets. And one of the things that I would like us to reflect on a little bit is both the Ministry of Defense but the Ossieri and I say this with total respect look at the gender stereotypes reproduced in some of the media if you will. My favorite was Vuelva te hacer mujer did anybody see that one? And it was very much geared towards women in the FARC and it was come back to being a woman and it featured putting on the lipstick probably silicone breast cause it's not co-cultura but putting on the lipstick being so come back to being a woman. Now what in the world does that mean? Just a correction that wasn't the ACR. It was the Ministry of the Defense. Right that's not the ACR. No, no, no I said it. I said it, Ministry of the Defense. I said ACR. But since you're here to defend yourself no I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding you mobilize on the Ossieri. No but I also, and I don't wanna lose my time on this but I've also critiqued how I would go to these different shelters and certainly what they were reconstructing was the patriarchal nuclear unit. And so we really wanna rethink. Let's do some gender retooling here and I think that would be important. Then I'll cluster my other comments around the call for greater attention to local transitional justice processes and communal tensions and those are absolutely key. The statistics that Alejandro just gave us are powerful and important on how many former combatants have been killed, how many people live with them and are terrified as we know the process with the paramilitaries and again in the middle of conflict there was a brave effort indeed but it was very improvised and it was experienced by many people as a top-down kind of measure where you lived in a community and suddenly mi rest is matones is down there installed on the finca. Suddenly we've got a bunch of killers living in the finca nobody asked us. So we wanna think very much about what does it mean to look locally at communal tensions and you've mentioned that there are no communal solutions. I'm gonna tweak that a bit because I think we only have communal solutions because these people have to live with other humans but I do agree there's no one-size-fits-all but as all of you probably know first generation DDR one man one gun it was a very militarized kind of security technocratic venture, second generation coming out of the UN a more thoughtful approach to DDR understands that we simply have to expand the unit of analysis and intervention to include the comunidades receptores that maybe are not muy receptores. So thinking about the community. So I wanna talk about the micro-politics of reintegration and reconciliation the things that happen in daily life among families among neighbors and then one of the things that's striking to me in the two texts and if someone's here we can certainly talk about them and you will this afternoon I'm sure but the absence of religious actors is really striking to me. When we begin to think about that important psychological component the interpersonal affective and sustainability at the local level of peace initiatives we should think about who the religious actors are. They're always there whether we like them or not they are always there and in Urabá you cannot go to any little pueblo at the end of the bus and walk another mile and you will still find seven temples. You are still gonna see seven churches bringing what is this phenomenon about I'll come back to that in a bit. So I think we want to very much look at local religious actors and the role they play in elaborating theologies of reconciliation and theologies of social repair and yes even with the FARC. Even though the FARC doesn't at the ideological level think really well of religious actors. How many of these local combatants talk about going off to the moment they with the Bible tucked in your shirt going off reciting Psalm 91 though I walk in the shadow of the valley of death so thinking about how the spiritual component is so important here. So turning very very quickly I became extraordinarily interested because I kept bumping into evangelical churches everywhere and I'm gonna focus on Urabá. I was interested in knowing who are all these new pastors and who are all these young men that fill the plastic seats that come from the front to the back. It really asks us to challenge some of the standard narratives of conversion in Latin America and if you know that literature you know but the idea is the women join because their men are real mujer riegos. I'm gonna get him to stop being in the calle chasing after other women. I'm gonna get him to stop drinking so much. He'll stop spending so much in the bar. He's gonna be just contributing more to that canasta familiar. That's the standard narrative that you get around the growth of evangelical Christianity in Latin America and it's true. I expected to see this because that's what I saw many times in other parts of Latin America. That's not what I see in Urabá. Who are all those new, and I love this because you've got, who are all those new evangelicals? Ah, sonneos que tienen pasados. They're the people who have a past. Now I think you all probably have a past but you don't have that kind of a past, wink, wink. So part of it is in understanding these young men that fill these churches because I go to a lot of cultos now. The young men who fill these churches are their own masculinity projects and I'll come back to that in a moment. So really interesting is to look at who the new converts are and this was very true in Peru. I worked with the Truth Commission in Peru. I worked in shining past strongholds. I work in lots of who the new converts are but who are some of these pastors? And that's an interesting part of the story as well. A number of them are former, not mid-level commanders but certainly folks that had el poder de convocatoria. These are people who have charisma, speak well. So a number of these pastors are former paramilitaries themselves. And so there's something powerful about the message that they give when they stand in front of a church full of former combatants, people trying to be former combatants. That message is extremely powerful. They also tend to be lugareños. If we think about, I was very intrigued why the growth of evangelical Christianity in this Catholic stronghold and a Catholic stronghold where certainly you had a conservative branch of the Catholic church historically in Urubá, very much the landholders and with the elites. But you've also had, well, you all know, the peace communities, you've had a very liberation, theologically inflected Catholicism in this region. You'd think this might be a stronghold. No, because who are the priests? If you ask folks, ah, some paisas, right? You've got to think about the racial factor here, right? I've always argued, even when people tell me I'm wrong, I just keep arguing anyway, that I've always argued you've got to understand the paramilitary project in this zone also had a racial component. Why was this an export zone for paramilitaries? Because you have Afro-Colombians and a profoundly racist discourse around who they are, prone to violence, just naturally more savvy. Every racist stereotype about Afro-Colombians are alive and well in World of Baa. And so when I go into these churches and I see all these Afro-Colombian pastors, that right there is really different. And they talk a great deal about la raza humana, right, about this sort of, mm. All right, do I have time? I have a couple of minutes. We've still got Michael. Okay, so look. But you can let me ask. Okay, great, okay, wonderful. So part of what I'm intrigued by then is La Nueva Vida. We all know, and what is evangelical practice? It's a before and after story. Is it not the old me who was rotten and was in the street and drinking too much or whatever? That's not my personal story, mind you, but I do spend a lot of time in cultos. So there's the before and after rupture. It's the new man. And I have attended sermons where to my surprise, we have to think about how much evangelical Christianity lends itself to local vernacularizations. Where you've got pastors up there talking about how to be a new man, how to be better at home, how if your wife is the only one doing the cooking, what's wrong with you? I was floored when I began to hear this. I've had some pastors tell me that part of what we've elaborated is una teología de la masculinidad, a theology of mass delinity. Who would have thought? It's fascinating. But certainly, one of the places we wanna think about, I completely agree with you. Where do you get the transformative component? And I've asked folks within the Asiere in Apartado, how are you coordinating with the Catholic Church? And they said, no, because they really like easy victims and tidy victims. We have gente muy complicada, right? And so the messy victims, that victim-victonizer blurring, right? Is an important thing for us to think about because of course this is also theology of redemption. About narrating your past and learning to leave it behind. And I'm gonna finish because I realize I have, and carving out alternative mass delinities, which I think is extremely important. We know that a lot of post-violence violence in the world targets women and girls. And we need to think about why that might be, right? Whether it's femicide, but other forms of violence. I call it the domestication of violence as it shifts into the home. And certainly studies have been done with former combatants, 79% of them in Medellin households with a former combatant reported domestic violence. It's very important. I'm gonna conclude with one other thing as well then. And it's to think about killing is not an inconsequential thing for many people. And many of the folks with whom I speak, even if they were out there doing it, it's one of the things that haunts them at night. And I wanna just conclude with one conversation from a man in Turbo who was in Conaliman. And he individually demobilized because he said, ah, they're just faking it, I really want out. And he'd been in the Auschwitz for four years and eight months. And he missed his mother terribly because he did not dare to return to Turbo because he'd individually demobilized. I wouldn't last their three days, everyone knows what I was. Which is parenthetically why I have a different take on why those folks don't wanna go back to where they operated. It's not just because the city's more exciting, it's because people know who you are. I mean, that is very important. Being able to pass anonymously where they don't know how to read who you are and what you did. So this very quickly, I will finish this. So I asked him, because we talked for hours and hours and hours, which is what I found a lot of them want to do. So Wilton yesterday, you talked a lot about God and you told me only God can forgive. He nodded. That's what I say, Kimberly. I committed a serious error, a person. A person isn't going to forgive me, the only one who can is God. And in the meantime, the only one who consoles me is God. Apology, sure, but forgiveness is a very big word. So I asked him, if you commit an error in front of the family, is there anything you can say? Anything you can say to those people? The family know. The family will never forgive me. They might accept my words, but they'll never forgive me. But if they don't forgive you, could you live with them again? I mean, could you live in their town? No way. If you live there, you just don't know what's gonna happen. We might be able to live together, but not all mixed up. God gives his touch to each human being and to be a human, you have to work and to live through many things and realize what you're doing. If not, you're not a human being. I repent for the things I did. They weren't acceptable. I was walking around and doing things that weren't acceptable to God. I have found that for many, and I will close with this, the questions of guilt, right? The questions of what you were doing, whether it's the distinction they make between killing out there in the monte and killing in the pueblo, right? Knowing that you killed folks, that you killed civilians, people who weren't necessarily shooting back. So I also wanna open up a space to think about why the spiritual component of this is part of that cycle, social component. Thanks very much, Kimberly. Lots of new ideas emerging at the table. I'm looking forward to the discussion. We'll now turn to Michael Duttweiler, who is a legal analyst with the Transitional Justice Unit at the mission to support the peace process of the Organization of American States. And he'll be talking to us about challenges to demobilization and transitional justice, some of the lessons that the OAS mission has learned. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Cheney and George, for the invitation. My topic is challenges to demobilization and transitional justice, but some of the issues have already been mentioned, so I will try to avoid these, skid around them, maybe a comment or two, and this should also allow me to finish on time. So I will talk about one issue of demobilization, namely the question of who should and should not be included in the demobilization process, and then under the heading of transitional justice, I will talk about the cross-cutting issue of legal certainty and some issues under the heading of guarantees of non-repetition. So turning to the first point, the question of who should and should not take part in the demobilization. The demobilization process of the AUC in Colombia was burdened by a large number of infiltrators, that is people who were actually not members of the AUC, but who on the day of the demobilization were presented as such. And this is to be seen in the context that at the time, as Katie already mentioned, the institutional knowledge about the AUC and the structures and members was not as advanced as it is today. In addition, there was only a very rudimentary screening process applied, and the paramilitary commanders were basically asked to draw up lists of people to be demoralized, and these lists were then subjected to very little scrutiny, so this opened door to abuses. There were basically two types of infiltrations. Firstly, there were civilians with some kind of connection to paramilitary commanders, and they were looking to free ride on the benefits that came with the demobilization. Secondly, there were pure drug traffickers, and when I say pure, I mean people who only engaged in drug trafficking, who were not members of the AUC, because of course the AUC also engaged in drug trafficking. And they in some cases bought their places on the demobilization lists, and their interest was of course to avoid extradition and to avoid lengthy prison terms for the crimes they had committed. So the problem with these infiltrations is of course that they delegitimize the whole process and damage its public image, and in addition they cause a misallocation and the waste of a lot of public resources. Even today for instance, the justice and peace procedure has to be purged of drug traffickers, and this is a very painstaking procedure. They have to be evicted from the procedure and relegated to the ordinary criminal procedure following a request by the prosecution and upon a decision by the court in each individual case. So a lesson learned would be that future collective demobilization procedures have to be accompanied by a very strict screening procedure. On the other hand there are of course people who you want to make sure that they are part of the demobilization procedure. One important category are child soldiers. They have already been mentioned by Katie and Sandra, so I'm not gonna dwell on this issue. Another important category are mid-ranking commanders. During the demobilization of the AUC in Columbia many of the mid-ranking commanders left the process and reintegrated into newly emerging criminal bands, the so-called Bakrim. The problem is that mid-ranking commanders experience a very strong pull back into criminality and one possible reason is lies in their specific situation as opposed to the top commanders or the foot soldiers. To put it a bit bluntly, the top commanders usually had a huge amount of money stashed away on the side so they didn't need to worry about their economical future. Their only problem was a legal one, namely they wanted to avoid extradition and lengthy prison terms for their crimes. On the other side, foot soldiers, they always had a great mobility in economical terms and often for many of them to work for paramilitary groups was just a job like any other and so a demobilization procedure for them will not lead to a big fall in terms of status. As opposed to that, mid-ranking commanders, they always had a lot of prestige, a lot of influence, power and authority in the ranks of the armed groups and a lot of access to resources. They have all the operational knowledge including of course of the illegal markets that the paramilitaries were working. They know all the drug trafficking routes, they know the money laundering channels, they know smuggling networks, et cetera. So their skills and knowledge is effectively worth millions of dollars but of course only in a purely criminal context. At the same time, they don't have many skills that are usable in a civilian life. So they have a lot to lose in a demobilization and now comes the state official and tells them for the foreseeable future you're basically going to be a nobody and you will have to live on subsistence allowance which is even lower than the legal minimum salary. So one lesson learned is that mid-ranking commanders need special attention in a demilitarization process. They're ideally one would find a way of letting them keep some kind of status. Maybe they could be integrated for instance into programs that give them some kind of status and at the same time use their military skills like a program to combat child recruitment for instance or a demining operation. So turning to transitional justice, I was going to talk issues of guarantees of non-repetition but they are also issues of reintegration and in fact Alejandro has already mentioned them. It's, and this goes to show that these are issues of both fields but I would just like to invite everybody here to think about these reintegration issues also as issues of guarantees of non-repetition and guarantees of non-repetition are a victim's rights and from this different point of view, it becomes clear that reintegration is not only an effort that demobilized persons have to make but it's also a state duty. There are two issues that are of interest to the mission at the moment and the context is that those demobilized persons who went through the justice and peace system are about or already have reached the day on which they will have completed the eight year sentence which is the maximum sentence that can be handed down in the justice and peace system. So they are about to be released and the release leads to many challenges. Challenges of reintegration, reconciliation but amongst others also to the challenge of security, of safety. From the point of view of the demobilized persons, physical safety is an issue of non-repetition because if they don't feel protected, they will for their own protection reintegrate into armed groups. Alejandro has already mentioned that there were between three and four thousand demobilized persons killed in Colombia so it is clear that they have reason to fear. One concern is that at the moment there is a lack of a clear definition as to who is the lead agency when it comes to the protection of the postulatos. So that would be one lesson to learn, namely that this competency, this responsibility has to be clearly defined so as to avoid the protection issue to become a reason for reintegration into armed groups. The other issue that stands out is economical reintegration. If you ask around in Colombia, now there is a general consensus saying that the ex-combatants are not going to find the job due to their criminal past. If you add to that the fact that they will have to continue attending legal procedures like the excavation of masquerades, it becomes clear that finding a job or retaining one for that matter will be very difficult. At the same time the law provides that the state is not going to give any seed money to people who went through the justice and peace system so they can start their own projects. At the same time of course they can easily find at any point in time a new employment in inverted commas within the criminal gangs and they will earn more money on top of that. So there is a clear risk of recidivism which has to be counterbalanced and we made in the past recommendations like one could create for instance incentives for employers to hire ex-combatants like the tax incentives that already exist in the context of hiring persons with disabilities. One could create in employment law protective mechanisms that prevent ex-combatants from being terminated just because they have to attend judicial functions. Here again of course there's the question of how far can you go in creating a special treatment for ex-combatants because there are many people, many other people of course who are looking for work and they haven't committed crimes beforehand. So this is a huge question of equality of treatment. However in this context you're operating in the context of guarantees of non-repetition and you're not just giving work to an ex-combatant you're also creating more security for everyone including the victims. Thanks very much. I think what I'll do is go ahead and take a quick five minute break. If you all those that wanna get coffee wanna go get it, use the restrooms or at the end of the hall and then we'll reconvene at 3.30 for the final panel. Thanks. Thank you so much to the speakers. Okay, I think we'll go ahead and get started. A couple of logistical reminders. We do have evaluation cards that are on the desk out front or might have been on your chairs when you came in and we would ask you to fill those cards out. They're very important for us to be able to evaluate the work that we're doing and to get a sense of how to make it better. So we welcome your input on that. Secondly, we have a whole series of publications out in the foyer that might be of interest to you including the latest ICG International Crisis Group Report that we'll be discussing in this panel. Please feel free to help yourselves to those. And I'd also like to just say a word of thanks to Maria Antonia Montes, Tony's who has been instrumental in helping with all of the organizational process and a whole team of people at USIP who it would take me the rest of this hour to name but I am very grateful for all of their assistance including the folks that are helping out with the technology today which I can't do myself. Okay, we'll go into the next round and I think what we'll do is we'll have a presentation by Mark Schneider on the ICG Report and then Adam will make some comments and I'll make some more general comments trying to tie together the first panel and this one. That's the challenge at least. So with that we'll turn over to Mark Schneider who is the vice president for programs or senior vice president and special advisor on Latin America at the International Crisis Group and has a very long biography that you can read in the handout, a very distinguished biography. Mark. Thank you very much. First I appreciate the opportunity to present the recent report of the International Crisis Group to this group. The day after tomorrow, Columbia's FARC and the end of the conflict. And I think all of us should thank Jenny for organizing this panel and for her steadfast pursuit of peace and justice in the hemisphere throughout her career. And I think we should give her a round of applause but rarely have. Thank you Mark. I wanna begin by underscoring two points that sort of relate to the first panel, this discussion and the talks themselves. I think you always have to remember that this conflict was born out of the Cold War and the revolutionary challenges to state structures when changing them through a democratic process was impossible. That's no longer the case. It's not been the case for a long time. There's no Cold War, there's no Soviet Union and leftist parties not only have participated in electoral politics in Columbia and Latin America but they've won. The fact that the negotiations are in Havana indicates again the vestigial nature of this conflict. The second is that you can't forget the enormous human costs of the conflict. Estimated 218,000 persons killed, 25,000 forcibly disappeared, 27,000 kidnapped, more than 5 million displaced, hundreds of thousands of women sexually abused, 11,000 mined victims. And so when you think about what the role of the international community should be, in our view it should be to help Columbia negotiate, sign and implement a peace agreement to end this conflict once and for all. That should be high on the foreign policy agenda of every country in this hemisphere. And given the past 15 years of engagement with the United States, high on the foreign policy agenda of the Obama administration and the US Congress. In a certain way, Jenny was responsible for the report that we just put out. Because 18 months ago, Jenny and the USIP organized an earlier forum on the pending issues on the Colombian peace agenda. And I was privileged to moderate a panel on the DDR issue. That panel asked how the end of the conflict could assure security for demobilizing disarmed FARC, how the process of concentration of forces might occur, how the leaving behind or abandonment of weapons could be monitored and verified, how the reintegration process could be structured to ensure, and this goes to some of the questions, that the rights of victims are respected, that the special needs of women, children, Afro-Columbians and indigenous communities could be guaranteed, both among the demobilized FARC and the victims and the communities where they will be reintegrated. Those are the key issues on the table in Havana as a 32nd session of talks takes place and the special sub-commission on end of the conflict returns to work. And those are the questions that we tried to answer in this report. Among the critical conclusions that came out of our research, both nationally and then with the special interviewing in Tumaco and the state of Nariño, in Columbia Southwest, but you all know where. In Medellin, in the Catatumbo region in the Northeast, near the Venezuelan border, all centers of the conflict. We found that the success of the disarmament and demobilization components in the chapter on ending the conflict, a chapter still to be written in Havana, will depend substantially on three factors. A belief by the FARC that security for the process of reintegration and for political participation will be guaranteed. And it's crucial that the FARC sees disarmament and demobilization, it's crucial that all of us and the negotiators recognize that the FARC sees disarmament and demobilization through the prism of the UP. When an estimated 4,000 party activists, including two presidential candidates, were killed after demobilization. Therefore protection for the FARC ex-combatants and also security in the communities where they're going to be reintegrated is essential. Second, is confidence on the part of the FARC and of the communities that there'll be effective implementation and verification of the other peace accord chapters on rural development, political participation, illegal drugs and victims. And the third crucial factor is a convincing demonstration at the community level and the national level that FARC will respect the agreement as well, giving up its weapons and demobilizing as a military force. Getting the yes on these issues will be enhanced in our view, if there's already been a de-escalation of the conflict beforehand. So that after an agreement is actually signed and ratified, that there could be an immediate move, actually after an agreement is signed, there could be an immediate move to a formal bilateral ceasefire. And to some degree we have some positive news from the ground. FARC announced an immediate unilateral and indefinite ceasefire. President Santos then commented after that the FARC was adhering to that commitment and also that there would be a lowering of offensive military actions of the FARC which actually has occurred. There are still outstanding questions. Whether the FARC ceasefire, as we believe it should, will include an end to extortion and end to child recruitment and an end to attacks on civilian infrastructure. We also argued that during this period, which is sort of a not peace, not war period, that the government could also agree to the FARC call for improved conditions for jailed FARC members. Now, report reaches a conclusion as well that there are very serious threats to implementing a peace agreement given the ongoing conflict dynamic in Columbia. The shortcomings of the paramilitary DDR process has left us with a healthy, and heavily armed Bacrim, comprised of many mid-level AUC commanders, unsatisfied either with the DDR process or really just unwilling to leave their lucrative drugs, kidnapping, extortion, business operations. There remains some 3,000 active Bacrim members operating in an estimated 168 municipalities and 27 departments, with the Orovenias the dominant months but also Rostrojos and Arapa. The Colombian armed forces is also a question. They have some legitimate concerns, they're not monolithic, and some could challenge the very idea that the FARC should be free to demobilize, reintegrate, and engage politically, even if they meet transitional justice conditions of accountability and disarm. That issue was underscored by the head of the government negotiating team in Bertrand de Lacalle a few months ago when he said there's been 17 attempts to hack his computer and by President Santos's comment only last month that any members of the armed forces acting disloyaly would be removed from the armed forces. Finally, the ELN and it's been off the EPL remain outside the negotiations and could complicate the implementation of the peace process by hostile action against FARC members and also by encouraging some FARC commanders not to accept the peace deal. These are not the only complicating factors. The FARC intends to transition from an armed group into a political movement. And if you look carefully at the provisions of the agreed upon chapter on political participation, it underscores the FARC expectations of special provisions for protection and for transitional seats in the Congress. That has been agreed to. The number is still under question, is under discussion. But given the absence of any strong national sentiment in favor of the FARC, in fact the reverse, their hopes to be a major political actor will depend on their future performance at the community level in complying with the peace agreement. While most of the negotiations have focused on the 7,000 estimated FARC combatants, the ultimate reintegration process has to incorporate the militias and support networks as well, which is estimated three times that number. With, as you've heard from Kimberly, and as we note in the special subsection on women, 40% of the combatants and of the support networks, but also large numbers of children. And so what we argue for special provisions on gender and for special provisions for integrating child soldiers. And finally, we also make the point that there needs to be a special recognition which was not adequate in the AUC negotiations to carefully understand the conditions of mid-level commanders and take appropriate actions. So let's think of the process as one of phases in which the early transition phase immediately after a peace agreement is signed includes first bilateral and definitive secession of fire and hostilities and international monitoring of the secession. Obviously, every effort should be made to include the ELN in that ceasefire. With a secession of fire and particularly with signature and ratification of the agreement in whatever form that takes, there will be a need for a great deal of flexibility in how the FARC initially concentrates its forces. In the report, you'll see that we suggest assembly points in the various areas where it currently is essentially in control with international monitoring and verification. That international role would also, to a significant degree, guarantee reciprocity from government armed forces to remain out of those areas. Where those assembly points are located also must be consulted with local communities well ahead of time, particularly Afro, Colombian and indigenous communities. And we make the case that peasant reserve zone should not be considered for cantonment sites as that would put those peasant communities at risk. After ratification of the agreement, then there's legitimate demand for full cantonment of forces again with international verification and monitoring and then leaving behind of weapons. As you know, the FARC objects to the term disarming and the agreement, the generic agreement talks about leaving behind weapons and in lots of agreements worldwide, there are other terms, abandonment of weapons, leaving behind of weapons, et cetera. Essentially, the key is that the FARC doesn't have unilateral access to the weapons. And Nepal, Northern Ireland, those examples are beginning to convince the Colombian military that it's doable and workable. And it also would satisfy the FARC unwillingness to hand their weapons over to the Colombian military. And that would also ensure in this process, international monitoring of compliance. Now, the next stage which begins then and continues well into the future is what we would call territorial stabilization. Much of that falling to the government of Colombia in restructuring of security forces, forming a strong civilian rural police, extending the permanent presence of civilian justice and human rights institutions, and the clear, transparent, and locally participatory peacebuilding program in which economic development, social services, reconciliation needs to take place. And as I said, this is the sort of the phase into the longer-term process, begins immediately but continues into the future of reintegration and peacebuilding. And here, in terms of the comments this morning, we've had this discussion before. I think initially you're going to see more communal reintegration than Alejandro thinks is desirable. But as this is a longer-term process, the experience of Salvador. We started in Salvador when we demobilized the FMLN largely with communal demobilization. And I can remember the co-operatives. After several years, the individual families, some worked harder than others. They wanted individual provisions made, and that wasn't done. And I suspect that you're going to see some of that. The recommendations, as you'll see, say yes, provide for communal demobilization, but also make it voluntary and also ensure that there's individual options for those who don't want communal. And second, as I said earlier, not only in that particular subsection, but throughout the report, and particularly in the recommendations as well, on the reintegration program, there are, we make it clear, there needs to be a very robust program specifically designed for women, and that's stereotypically where they should go by recognizing their role in political leadership and participation. Now, how you do it, the role of the international community we think is very important, not only in verification and monitoring, which should be led by civilian-led, but with some entities that have a degree of credibility to lend legitimacy and support for the process. Unlikely to be a single entity like the UN or the OAS, much more likely to be a hybrid, probably including UNASUR. So maybe UN, UNASUR, maybe UN, UNASUR, OAS, and perhaps specific countries like Norway and Chile to participate as well. Whatever it's makeup, that mission needs three things, autonomy to generate leverage with the parties and establish its credibility. Second, and this is something where I totally agree with Alejandro, it needs to hit the ground running, so that prior to the time it's required to be deployed, there has to be preparation, resources, composition, agreed, and defined deployment guidelines in place. And third, it'll have to be flexible, as I said, civilian-led, but particularly in the early stages, it will have to have sufficient military know-how and experience to manage the technical aspects of disarmament process. Now, what should be the U.S. role? Very quickly, first and foremost, it's political. From the President of the United States to every partner of every Colombian entity, particularly including our Mill-Mill relationship, communicate the United States, as we have done, I think largely, fully supports the peace process, and that we fully support the implementation of the peace agreement, and that we will encourage our interlocutors to do the same. Second, that we'll provide at least, and where are the appropriators, at least as much cooperation to help Colombia support the implementation of the peace agreement as over the next decade, as we have with respect to the conflict over the past decade. And third, that we will maintain sustained support, which we failed to do in Central America, in certain key areas, including security sector reform, as well as support other areas where we have a lot of experience in truth commission, civil society participation, human rights NGOs, extension of justice institutions of the state, into those areas where they are not now. Good. Okay, that's the title page. That's the first set of recommendations. I'm just gonna go through quickly. You can read them, but if you've already read them, you have questions to be happy to, but to stabilize the immediate aftermath, implement a plan to deescalate the conflict, agree on moving FARC troops into broader buffer zones, consult and respect the preferences of local communities, agree on an internationally monitored mechanism for disarmament and storage of weapons. Invite jointly an international civilian-led mission, and that I think that it is important to emphasize has a full trust of both parties, has adequate technical and political capacity, including military skills, and will have permanent territorial presence in the zones with FARC presence, and mechanisms for allowing joint monitoring by the parties themselves, particularly of the overall implementation of the agreement. Sequencing disarmament with the broader violence reduction measures, establish a joint committee, prepare to extend territorial control by the state. And by the way, let me go back, I think. If you notice, strengthening rural police and exploring options for the participation of FARC members in interim stabilization measures, such as road construction, demining or joint unarmed police patrols. Yes, last couple of days, President Santos has talked about a gendarmerie that has strengthened rural police. I think that there would be a need to figure out a way to ensure that there's an extension of civilian police into those areas, and that the civilian law enforcement and justice, and that there's some way for FARC participation in that process as they essentially become reintegrated members of the community. Explore a possibility for the ELN in terms of helping the transition of FARC members to civilian life. That needs to be a, there needs to be a credible and balanced long-term reintegration plan, and it runs through some of those issues, including robust gender and ethnic focus and recognizes fully the rights of child combatants and a special program for mid-level commanders. And it also includes obviously that transitional justice mechanisms are compatible with reintegration incentives for rank-and-file members while providing accountability for serious international crimes. International community reacts swiftly, ready to lend long-term high-level support, pledge multilateral support, and the other is continue to supporting many of those organizations which will go from the current situation into the future. Human rights work, for example, is one of those. And preparing the territories with FARC presence for the end of the conflict to the government of Columbia, increase engagement at the local level, local authorities, strengthening administrators and administrative and political capacity at the local level. And here is something that Alejandro emphasized which I would agree with, I'm not sure it's happened, which is to ensure that government and justice institutions begin budget, program and investment planning for the extension of economic infrastructure, justice and social services into the former conflict areas once the final agreement is ratified. While I agree there needs to be a presidential level sort of overall is the agreement being implemented, every ministry has to have a line item that says we're implementing the peace agreement. And it has to have earmarked resources to do it. Otherwise it's not gonna happen. And I think that process should begin now. There's a Colombian budget, I assume, is being prepared right now for the next year. Goes to the Congress March, Masa Minas. That should have it in it because this agreement hopefully will be ratified this year. And you don't wanna come up late and suddenly say we don't have budget resources. Avoid that the peace agreement has with FARC as negative consequences for participants in current government reintegration program. And that means that ACR in terms of what it's doing now shouldn't be sort of abandoned. And with that, I would just make one final comment, which is it's important to remember that the vast majority of Colombians alive today have never lived at a time when their country has been at peace. And I think that the time has come now. Thank you. Thanks, Mark. Let's turn it over to Adam Isaacson, who is the senior associate for regional security policy at the Washington office on Latin America and a well-known analyst of civil military relations in U.S.-Latin American relations. I think we've all counted on Adam's extensive knowledge throughout many, many years and we're delighted to have him with us today. Thank you, that was way too kind, Jenny. And thank you, Mark, for a really comprehensive overview. I'm just going to, looking at this room, I see most people here could do this exactly as well as we can. You've got the same knowledge base and I'd love to have more of a discussion. I'm gonna limit myself then to just sort of echoing and amplifying one part of what Mark has been talking about, which is the need for international presence and an international participation, not just in the short term, but in the medium and long term. Maybe not something on the scale of, say, an Onusal or Minusta or something like that, but something that is creative, well-resourced and is sustained. Why? Mainly because this is not a surrender negotiation. The FARC do not have any hope of ever taking power in Columbia, but at least in the next five or 10 years, I don't see the Colombian security forces on their own on the battlefield having any hope of forcing the FARC to surrender either. So in order to get a settlement that avoids a lot of unnecessary bloodshed and wasted costs, a solution that involves international community, probably to an extent that will be uncomfortable for both the Colombian government and the FARC is something that we are recommending pretty strongly. And that is at several stages and Mark has talked about some of them. The first is simply protection in that dance period between the signature of an accord and the beginning of implementation and ratification. You've got people coming in from being combatants and you've got spoilers coming out into the field who will pose a real threat. There is going to be need to protect some pretty suddenly vulnerable people who are testing the waters and seeing if it's actually safe to leave the conflict. What form would that protection take? Well, the Colombian government would probably propose that Colombian security forces be the protectors. The FARC obviously won't accept that for reasons that Mark has discussed, the UP and much else. The FARC would probably prefer to just pay their own bodyguards, trusted bodyguards to provide security for them. I don't think the Colombian government would accept that. International role at least in the short term there seems to be the obvious way out. The other which Mark has also mentioned is verification of disarmament, whatever form that takes. If there's the leaving behind of weapons, are they leaving them behind and just saying trust us we left them behind or are they leaving them behind to trusted internationals, as was the case in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, in a process that would probably be much slower than Colombian public opinion would rather it be, but in a process that does have international participants to give it credibility. International, as Mark also mentioned, I'm just repeating everything Mark said, international verification of the reduction of hostilities to the de-escalation, all of the things listed there from de-mining to the reintegration of child combatants to, and this can happen in the earliest phases of a ceasefire even before an accord begins, verifying that there is reductions in aerial attacks and much else, bombings of infrastructure. Any time there's an allegation of a ceasefire violation there would be a need for international verification of that. Going on to transitional justice, if there is some sort of tribunal that is going to be judging those who are the most serious violators after there's been a process to determine who those people are, the FARC again, this is not a surrender negotiation, they're not going to submit themselves just to Colombian justice, it would probably have to be some sort of international or hybrid tribunal that adjudicates these cases and determines whatever alternative punishments are meted out. The Colombian military or police members who are accused of the most serious violations on their side probably would just go to Colombian justice and not to this international tribunal, but still, there's a need for international jurists there. A truth commission generally has international participation and guidance as well. And a big, more medium and longer term international role is simply help with implementation and the territorial and the creation of what the Colombian negotiators are calling la pasta editorial, getting the government into all of these formerly FARC dominated zones in a hurry so that a state can help fill the vacuum before some other actor does. And that's probably the hardest part. We saw the experience of the National Consolidation Plan which had modest success in some areas, but then sort of lost steam. We know that UNDP has identified out of 1100 municipalities in the country, about 125 that are priority municipalities for getting governance established in areas that are currently with a strong FARC presence. That's a big bill that requires an entirely revolutionary change in the Colombian government's system of incentives for state workers. Mark talked about getting the judiciary and the ministries and other parts of the central government into these zones. Well, if you're a captain or a major in the military and you get sent to one of these zones, good for you, you've got an opportunity to get medals and promotions and some glory. If you're somebody in the health ministry or the education ministry and you get sent to Cacatar or Putumayo, what did you do wrong? So they've got to establish a set of bonus pay, fast tracks for promotions, make it part of your professional career to actually be sent to these places and help build the state. The same, of course, goes for Gobernacion, Governor's Offices and municipalities as well, who will actually be doing the bulk of the work of bringing the state into these zones and in many parts of the country, simply are not functioning. In order to help them function, I think there is a big international role, not really to put up the money. The money is gonna be huge and it just won't come from the international community. If you read the content of, say, just the rural accord, the first accord and the drug policy accord, Columbia is committing to just write a list of the things that you see in there. There's a commitment to do a cadastral of the whole country to build irrigation systems and roads all over the country, to enter into special packs with cocoa growing communities all over the country, food security. These are all things that absolutely must be done, but even just building roads are hugely expensive. If you estimate, conservatively, that there are 15 million campesinos in Columbia and you're gonna help each of them to the tune of $1,000 a year for 10 years, that's $150 billion, just for that part of the peace accord, 15 billion a year. And even if the international community contributes 10% of that, 1.5 billion a year, Planned Columbia in its biggest year was about 700 million. So this is a lot of money that is going to have to come from Columbia. The bright side of this is that Columbia is one of the only countries that I can think of that is having a peace process where their national government budget is in excess of $100 billion a year already. So there are resources, despite the drop in oil prices, which are going to make that more difficult. But so there's resources, but there's a need for internationals with expertise and everything from management to how to do a disaster, to how to just help municipal programs function. And a lot of that will probably come from UN, IOM, other agencies that have some experience with that elsewhere. Mark already talked about this possible configuration of agencies that could make up that sort of presence. The UN certainly has the longest history with monitoring and verification around the world. The OAS right now has the best infrastructure on the ground for doing it and would not have to start from scratch. UNASUR certainly probably has more credibility, not as much baggage with, especially the FARC, but it does have the baggage of including two of Columbia's big, big neighbors, Venezuela and Brazil, which could raise sovereignty concerns. And then the idea of sort of a sort of a contadora group of other states working bilaterally is something worth pursuing or talking about. That one I have no great recommendation for, but I could see why people keep bringing up the word hybrid when they talk about it, trying to bring the best of all of those things. I could talk about donor coordination, but I think with all these folks here, it would be better just to have more time for discussion. Thank you. Thanks very much, Mark and Adam. I'm just gonna toss out a few thoughts and synthesize a few ideas from some of the presenters. I think what we're hearing is that we're confronting a key period between a probable signing of a peace accord. I think everyone at this table and probably most of the speakers this morning, correct me if I'm wrong, anticipate that there will be a peace accord signed and that that will be the easy part, that what comes next will be the most difficult. And the speakers today have talked about that difficult period as being the implementation. I'd like to go back just one step and remind us that the peace accord will have to be ratified in some way or is likely to be ratified in some way. So moving from the signing of a peace accord to ratification and putting into practice, not even putting into practice, approving the peace accord before it's put into practice is another step that we shouldn't forget about. We have to think about the generational trauma that everyone who's lived with this conflict has experienced. I listened to Alejandro earlier talking about the importance of remembering that they're human and that really struck me because it reminds me that Colombians have been socialized to see the FARC as the enemy, to see all the insurgencies as the enemy, to fight them, to kill them, to go to war, to destroy them. And just because a piece of paper is signed, people don't stop thinking that way. They've thought that way for a very long time. So there's a major shift that needs to happen and it won't happen by itself. It has to happen through governmental initiatives, civil society initiatives, international initiatives that remind people that after a war, you have to change the way you interact with people that you've seen as the enemy if you want peace to survive. And I think that's a really key piece of the puzzle that we have to keep in mind. I really liked what Michael had to say this morning about the various ways to look at the theme of guarantees of non-repetition. We're talking about victims' rights to truth, justice, reparations, and guarantees of non-repetition. And one piece of those guarantees has to do with ensuring the physical safety of those who are demobilizing. And Columbia does not have a good track record on this front. Most nations that are going through this process have varied records. But I think that we have to understand that part of that security that's provided isn't just about law enforcement and bodyguards and flak jackets. It's about creating a new understanding of who these people are and of the fact that they have a right to have a different voice in the political process, and they have the right to debate these ideas and to be heard without having something happen to them. And that other people have the right to also raise these concerns who are not part of the FARC and be insured that they're not automatically seen as guerrilla sympathizers and disappeared for doing it. So there has to be a real shift in the political culture to allow different ideas, to allow challenges to the current status quo, to be aired and discussed and debated in democratic practice. And I think that will be a real shift. And the other pieces of the guarantees of non-repetition beyond physical safety had to do with economic support and ensuring that the ex-combatants who choose to go into civilian life actually have a way to have livelihoods. Now this is also, I think this is an important and interesting way to merge with the question of victims' rights versus ex-combatants' guarantees. I think this is actually a very interesting way of combining those two and saying it's part of a whole. We're looking at trying to sustain the peace. How do you do that? Well, you have to respect victims' rights, but you also have to make it possible for those who leave the war and abandon their arms to live without fear. So these are major changes. I loved some of the, I think the very rich anthropological research that Kim Thaden brought to bear on this issue. I think we haven't heard this kind of analysis in Washington. It's sorely lacking. It challenges a lot of the ways that we think about ex-combatants, about evangelical churches, about gender and how it intersects with peace processes. And these theologies of masculinity and redemption and the role of the churches is really very complicated but potentially very powerful. Because the churches are the ones that are all throughout the countries. They have structures. They're meeting with people who live in very rural areas that might not have contact with government agencies, for example. And there are many initiatives underway in Columbia today of church people or people of faith trying to figure out how they can be supportive in the aftermath of a peace agreement. And supporting a peace agreement to come to fruition. So I think these are areas that we could have many conversations about and are important to be thinking about. The gender issue. I think I had a slightly different take than Kimberly. I was actually delighted to see that gender is mentioned in these reports. And it's a sign it's not that that's enough but it's progress from what we've seen in the past. And I think there are a lot of ways that people are not fully aware of the dimensions of how gender issues and not just women's participation but women's participation is a part of this. How gender issues really shape what can happen in the next stage. We have an opportunity to either solidify exclusion in the peace process or to open up to a more democratic country and process. And women's inclusion is kind of a marker of that. There was a study. I couldn't. There was a study called, let me see. Sex and world peace. Put out by Harvard University, a study of 174 countries and looking at what the predictors of world peace, what the predictors of peace and violent conflict would be in a country. And the single most important factor was the treatment of women. Equality for women was the best single predictor of whether a country would be at war or not. That is significant. And people have to sit up and take notice when you hear something like that. I think it's really important. There are many dimensions of this that we could talk about today, but I won't go into that because I want to give, let me see if there's anything else here I want to pull out. I appreciated very much Katie and, Katie Kerr and Sandra Pabon's discussion of some of the lessons learned that I think are directly applicable and perhaps some of them are not directly applicable to the demobilization of the FARC and that might be a point for discussion. But I think some of the key ones, the importance of clear agreements with clear verification, protocols, defined protocols for handing over weapons. I would add to the first one, clear agreements and transparent process. I think one of the real fallbacks for the, or drawbacks for the paramilitary demobilization was the absolute lack of information. And I think we see this a bit with the FARC process as well. People don't understand what's going on. They don't know what's going on. There's some very simple things that the government could do for its side to make the process more transparent. For example, knowing who the team of negotiators in Havana is, why not put their pictures up? I mean, if this is an open process and you're assuming it will lead to peace, let people know who these representatives of theirs are and make it clear that they're representing the Colombian people. I think there hasn't been enough attention given to very minor kinds of things that could make a big difference in the long term because I think the skepticism of the Colombian population about this process is partially because of the lack of transparency of the process. And I understand in a certain period you need a confidential protection but I think we've moved beyond that process now and it's really important, I think the government has seen it, has begun to do more public relations, informational kinds of talks and it's really important to get the word out and to get people to buy into the process, to be stakeholders in this process, to feel that it's their process, not some process often, Havana someplace, but something that directly relates to them. And I think the de-escalation of violence that marks the ICG report as advocating and Adam and many others have advocated is part of this. I would just mention one, this is a little bit of a scattering of ideas but I would also mention in the ICG report one of the things I would have liked to see that I didn't see was recommendations to civil society. I think civil society has been learning a lot of lessons about what works and what doesn't, I think they've felt excluded from the process but that doesn't mean that they're not doing things, they're doing a lot of things. So what could ICG offer to the civil society sector that they might do to push this process forward and also to open up the process to the reintegration phase? It's no secret that civil society is not exactly waiting to embrace the ex-combatants. A lot of work needs to be done and I think that peace is the responsibility of every Colombian citizen. It's not just that the government has to do certain things but civil society will also have to step up to the plate. So that's probably enough for now because I know there are many people out here who have many more things to say and ideas and I invite you all to participate to the extent that you'd like. We have two microphones, one on each side. So I would ask if you could step up to the microphone and identify yourself and your organization if you have one and make your comment either directly to one of the panelists up here or Kim and Alejandro and Michael are sitting in the front row so they're also available, I assume, to answer questions if you have them. Let me also, while we're getting assembled, let me say there was a cell phone found in the women's bathroom. If anybody does not have their cell phone and wants to come take it, man or woman. Here we go. I won't tell. Yes, please start. I'm Margaret Case and I'm teaching now at Georgetown. I have two questions but both related to the government preparation for this peace process and Adam, not too long ago, I think I asked you this question already and I got a discouraging response but the question is what is the government of Columbia doing now to begin to prepare the personnel and the policies and so forth that are going to be needed to scale up activities around Columbia? My second question goes to the very specific issue of the abandonment of arms and what is being discussed about the disposal of weapons? Are they to be collected and stored which hasn't worked too well in a lot of other places or should they be destroyed and is that something that is being discussed? Thank you. Thank you, Margaret. Let's take, we've got three people. Why don't we take all three questions and then we'll turn to the panel and those who want to respond. Do you want to? I'm Lily Cole and I'm working here at the US Institute of Peace in their Center for Applied Research on Conflict and we have a project on reconciliation, on applied reconciliation, on practices, reconciliation that's just in its early phases. So my question is, I was very interested in this project and this program today because of the links between reintegration process and reconciliation and if reintegration is linked to reconciliation in the Colombian context, how, I'd be interested to know from any of the panelists how reconciliation is actually being conceived in Colombia because it is rejected in other parts of Latin America as the term is conventionally understood. So is it understood more in terms of transitional justice? Is it linked most strongly to repair for victims and what we think of as perhaps the concerns of transitional justice, which is truth telling or is the focus more on reform or transformation of conflict identities and ability to live together at the village level, community level, even without in the absence of justice. It seems the words are used very, very commonly in discussing all these processes but the actual meanings remain very ambiguous. So I'd be interested to know if we're thinking about how reconciliation could actually also be implemented as a process in Colombia and how it's linked to reintegration, how do you think it's really being conceived? Thank you, Lily. Hi, I'm Kimberly Stanton. I'm the senior democratic staff on the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission as of three weeks ago. And I wanted to also just say thanks to Ginny as always for her leadership on Colombia, which has been incredibly important for the Institute and all of us. I have a couple of questions also. One is just especially towards the first panel. There's a lot of discussion, a lot of mention of legal uncertainty and I'm just curious as to how you understand the causes of that and the reasons for that legal uncertainty. So if anyone has thought about that piece of it, where does that, why did the rules keep changing and what are the implications of that for, well, why did the rules keep changing if it is a question? A related question on protection then is how do any of you see the relationship between rule of law and protection? Or do you see protection principally as an issue of police and in particular police but police and military and the famous scheme as they say, what do you have? I think for the human rights community it's very clear and has been for a long time that protection depends on a justice system that functions and the reduction of impunity against those who commit, who threaten people. And when you look at the numbers on the paramilitary side, the numbers of killings, you'll find I think virtually none of those killings resolved. So, and then finally I was really glad to hear Mark raise the question of the issue of the integration of the police. I wanted to ask the rest of you also, Mayor Petro, Gustavo Petro of Bogota has suggested that the armed forces should be integrated. Many of you I think probably also know that the main thing that those ex-paramilitaries who didn't get killed or didn't go back to their previous activities are doing, many of them are doing security, private security work. Is there, how are you all seeing the possibility of a much more robust proposal to integrate the armed forces? We're more robust than what I think Mr. Sanders has tentatively proposed. Thank you. Thanks, let's start with those three and then we'll go back for a second round. Actually, looking at the time, let's finish up the round of questions and then we'll close it to the questions and we'll just turn it back to the speakers. William Jarvin from SAIS, I only have one question. We just came back from 10 days in Colombia at Kibdo and Bogota. And I am a little troubled that we hear about what's gonna happen to the FARC in terms of integration, reintegration is if there were nice little guys going home and wanted to be able to attend their farm. And from some of our people that we talked to we got a very different picture that they're going back with the plan of territorialization to specific sites, as has been mentioned, free of any government control. And continuing their dream, which they want to carry out not by military but by political means, of creating really a foco of their view of society in connection with continuing their drug activities in connection with the very corrupted local authorities together forming a kind of rotten spot, if you will, in points of Colombia. That doesn't seem to fit with the picture that we've gotten so far and I wonder what people think of that. Thank you. Joshua Lepplitz also from Johns Hopkins. Just in line with the language of territorial peace, I want to know what were some of the opportunities specifically found in different parts of the country for those mid-level commanders that are so difficult to deal with. Thank you. Okay, we've got a plate full of questions here. I'm gonna let Mark lead off. Mark, you talk. First of the Margaret. What's being done now to prepare personnel, policies and a scale up? My understanding is that Sergio Hanamiu in the office of the presidency has a, and I forget her name, who's been designated to do the planning for this in that least since last March or April, there's been a growing set of planners involved in doing that. And I think that from the standpoint of that kind of planning, that's what's happening, my concern has been get the rest of the government planning agencies doing the same thing. Second on abandonment of arms, I think that there's no one that I know of inside the government, outside the government, in the FARC, outside the FARC, that is talking about the FARC having sole control over weapons in some cash that they promised not to use. That's not on the table. There will be either a, there'll be some kind of international control over the weapons. Now, destruction of weapons, my guess is that's gonna come only after a set of stages where the piece of court is being implemented and then, but the key is that the FARC cannot simply go in and get their weapons when they want. Second on the question of reconciliation and to what degree there's a, how is this linked if I understand it correctly to the idea of transitional justice. I think the idea that reconciliation is going to be taking place in part through truth telling, transitional justice is not only truth telling, transitional justice includes some level of responsibility and accountability and reparations for the victims and recognition of the victims. And there's a whole range of elements to it, which I think is going to be part of the ultimate peace agreement. And the key question to be frank is always going is going to be, if you look at that bottom number two, to ensure that transitional justice mechanism, mechanisms are compatible with reintegration incentives for rank and file members, those of large majority. The question is how you do manage accountability for serious international crimes as a constitutional court and the framework says those most responsible for the most serious international crimes. And that's really where the debate is taking place. What we recommended, and I urge you to look, those who are interested in the previous report that we did on transitional justice alone where we set out a path. And I know that that path is not that they're going to accept it as such, but is being considered by the, has been considered by the negotiators, which essentially says those most responsible for the most serious international crimes will be prosecuted, but there will be alternative penalties. Alternative penalties that include some form of deprivation of liberty is the way I would answer that. And I think that there has to be a sense that there is justice in order to have reconciliation. On the question of legal uncertainty, that's sort of what's involved there. And I think I'd agree with you totally. The rule of law is something beyond the role of police and law enforcement. The rule of law is involved with whether or not the community sees itself operating and protected by the norms of society and that they participate in the design of those norms and they participate in the way in which monitoring how those norms are, are in fact implemented and respected. Integration of the police in a rural police where you don't have to have people with, let's say we have, there's some places where you may want to have a lot people in the police who have law degrees. That's not what you need in the most rural areas. You don't need it here. So there are some areas, rural Columbia, where it's possible to think about members of the FARC reintegrated into that. Particularly given most of them have the levels of education, et cetera, that are unlikely to permit them to be policemen in Medellin or Boleta. But I doubt very much that it's gonna be reintegrated into the military, but it does raise the whole issue of security sector reform. And while it's not on the table, it's in the back of people's minds. And the assumption is that if you have a peace agreement implemented over five, 10 years, there's no way that you need the same kind of military structure that you needed when you were engaged in a very serious civil internal conflict. So there will be a change. How it changes is still up in the air. I don't see anybody recommending that they go back. They have control over areas militarily with arms. No, nobody believes that, nor do they believe that their government is not gonna be there. The government will be there. One of the things that's clear is how you get the government there, as we all have said, how you extend, how the government can extend judges, prosecutors, civilian police, economic opportunity, ministry of education, health, transportation, there. But that's all being, that's the assumption is that that will be done. That's my belief. I should say that one of the criticisms that we had of Consolidacion was precisely what Adam said, is it wasn't done. But I believe that that lesson was learned. Thank you. Alejandro, go back. I just wanted to compliment some of what Mark said, which I agree with, which is as far as how the government is preparing, since President Santos' second term began, he created a new counselor minister, ministro cosidero in Spanish, who's a former director of the police general, Naranjo. And he's the counselor minister in charge of preparing for the post-conflict. So the government is paying more attention to that and it's preparing from a central point of view, seeing how things need to be planned. But another thing that's happening is in various government agencies, these various government agencies rather have begun to prepare for the post-conflict implementation. I can speak again for the reintegration agency, which I led, starting in January 2014, the agency doubled the number of psychologists that we had from 350 to 650, almost doubled the number of psychologists, so that the ratio of psychologists per ex-combatants went up from one per every 80 ex-combatants to one per every 40 ex-combatants. The reason why that was done was first and foremost to offer a better service for the people that are in the agency today or at that moment, but the second reason is to begin training the number of people that we will need to absorb at least an additional 30,000 ex-combatants that will come out of a FARC demobilization. The ACR also opened offices in Southern Columbia in regions where the FARC operates so that the agency could learn how to work in those areas. And other measures were taken, that's just in the case of reintegration, but I know that other government agencies also began similar preparations, which is important because it's real on the ground preparation. As far as how is reconciliation understood, unfortunately, if you ask me, it's understood first and foremost as repairing victims, and not first and foremost or not in addition or additionally to getting people to be able to coexist or to live with each other at the local level because that's the type of reconciliation that's most needed. That doesn't mean that victims shouldn't be repaired, of course they should be repaired, but you also need to create spaces where victims and victimizers and just normal community members can interact. A lot of times what happens is that reconciliation processes focus too much either on victims or on victims and victimizers, and reconciliation processes forget that there's other Colombians as well who don't consider themselves to be victims or victimizers, they just happen to be living or living in those communities and they feel that they're just left completely aside from all these processes and they view them as unequal. Why do the rules keep changing? That's the $10 million question, but I think that part of the reason, I think there's two reasons as to why the rules keep changing at least from the way that I lived them while I was in the Colombian government. The first one is that people in Colombia at all levels of society, even in power positions in society, aren't aware of the depth and breadth of Colombia's peace building process. Colombia, we've demobilized and are reintegrating over 50,000 ex-combatants, there's millions of victims that are being repaired and the peace building process is very different and very complex from region to region in Colombia, so it's just very difficult to understand it from a high court in Bogota. So I think when, or from the Congress in Bogota. So, and I also, that's the first reason, people fail to understand it. The second one is that the whole peace building process or the whole solving Colombia's conflict issue has also become highly politicized. So a lot of times the way that lawmakers or judges see it is that the harder that they hit ex-combatants, the better it is politically and also because people don't understand how complex these issues are. When people think of FARC ex-combatants or of AUC ex-combatants, they're thinking of their commanders. They're not thinking of the rank and file. A lot of time they think, oh no, this law is too lax. These guys should all go to jail, but they're thinking of the commanders. They're not thinking of 35,000 people that have demobilized. Many of them, at least 60% were recruited as children. A portion of those that were recruited as adults were forcibly recruited. It's a very complex situation and if you just wanna score political points or do what seems right without doing the research, then you can get into complicated situations. I also think that there's a problem which is that a lot of laws are changed retroactively. I think it's okay to say, look, what we did with the AUC, that shouldn't have been done that way. We should do it differently next time, but it should be next time. You can't change the rules going back because that generates instability. Integration of ex-combatants into the police. I think it'd be beautiful, but I don't think it's possible. I don't think it's possible for what Mark mentioned, which is the first reason why it isn't possible is simply an education or a meeting basic guidelines to be able to go into the police. Columbia in the past decade has carried out serious reforms in its armed forces and in its police. And to be a police officer in Columbia, you need to have at least a high school education. You need to meet certain psychological and emotional criteria. You need to, it's not just a job for anyone. Another thing that's happened in Columbia in the past decade is that the police in the armed forces have been purged of corrupt elements. I mean, there's obviously, unfortunately, rather some still remain, but Columbia has managed to develop a very stable, very professional armed forces. So if you demobilize the girls and you bring them into the armed forces or into the police, that might tarnish, I guess, the job that's been done in the past few years. Just a quick note on that as well. In about four or five years ago, when I was at the ACR, we did a hypothetical exercise with the Columbia National Police to see if it would be possible to begin integrating ex-combatants into the police at that moment, four or five years ago. So we took the profiles of about 30,000 ex-combatants and we ran them through the first filter that the police applies to any person who wants to be a police officer in Columbia. And out of 30,000 people, only 800 people passed the first filter. So it is easier said than done. And I think that needs to be kept in mind. And finally, I agree with Mark is the far-going to areas that they control to do what they want. I've never heard that either. I mean, I haven't heard it in general. I have heard it from FAR Commanders. That is exactly what FAR Commanders want. That's why if you look at what FAR Commanders are talking about, they talk about the jacion de armas which is leaving of weapons and reincorporation, reincorporation or reintegration. They don't talk about demobilization because as far as the FAR Commanders are concerned, they like to keep their whole structures so that essentially they'll just change uniforms. They'll take off their combat fatigues. They'll put on jeans and t-shirts and all of a sudden they're political agitators or whatever. But what you have to be careful though, and that's also what I meant by that ex-combatants are humans, is that what the Commanders want isn't necessarily what the rank and file wants. So when the FARC signs that peace treaty and when the FARC demobilizes because they will demobilize regardless of what their Commanders think, we need to respect the rights of each of those Colombians that is gonna demobilize at that moment in time. And we can't force someone to go back and live in a certain area of the country because that's what their Commanders want. When somebody leaves their weapon and demobilizes their Colombian citizen, they have rights and they have opportunities like other Colombian citizens do. Thank you. Thank you. I'm gonna give the word to Cindy Buell who's come all the way across town from the Hill. And then we'll- I think there are people who come farther. And we may have to close after that because there's another event here. I just wanted to ask Alejandro and maybe you, Jenny, because I know that you travel around Colombia doing this a lot, but I mean, are there examples of reconciliation that contributes to reintegration that you've seen in process? Because I think there are. I think there's a multiplicity of models out there that are kind of happening at the local level. But I would kind of like to hear whether you've seen some that you think- I've seen hundreds. Personally, me, I've seen hundreds. And I think something that's very interesting is that a lot of times victims will more readily forgive an ex-combatant than the rest of society. And what we see a lot of in cities such as Villa Vicencio or in cities such as Puerto Río, which are cities that were heavily affected by violence, that you'll have victims and GOs that are set up to support the reintegration of ex-combatants because the way that they see it is that by helping these boys or muchachos, as they would call them, they're helping other people, other Colombians, not to be victimized in the same way, but also when they start to get close to ex-commands, they start to realize how complex their situation is because you can say that a former paramilitary member is a terrible person. And yes, they probably did terrible things, but when you start speaking with them, you find out again that they were recruited at the age of 14 and that when they were recruited, their mom was executed and raped in front of them and that they tried to run away from one group and were captured by the other. You know, it's not a clear black and white line. These are the victims and these are the victimizers. More times than not, ex-combatants are what we would call complex victims and they're complex because they're victims that are victimized into becoming victimizers and it's just terribly complicated, but there are a lot of victims that work with ex-commands and if you'd like, I can point you in the right direction. No, I just want to say that there's a lot going on. There's hundreds that I've seen and I know that there's thousands. I mean, that I've seen, that I've shaken their hands, hundreds. I would echo that. That's been my experience as well. And I would just say, in Colombia, because the conflict is still going on, you have this odd inversion of the normal sequencing. In other conflict zones where you have a peace accord, you have the peace accord and then you have efforts for reconciliation. In Colombia, people say we need reconciliation in order to get peace. So there's kind of a different way of looking at it, Lily, this goes to your question, I guess, of conceptions of reconciliation. It's varied. There's no specific definition. There's not kind of a shared understanding of what reconciliation means, but I would say that by and large, truth-telling is seen as a really key part and a necessary peace before a reconciliation can happen. You have victims who are all over the map in terms of forgiveness, pardon, reconciliation, whether they're willing to or not willing to. But I would echo, I think what Kim said, you look at what the victims' delegations that went to Cuba on those five different cycles, they were all to a person supporting a peace process. And at different, I think ready to live together, maybe harmoniously or not, but willing to live together in the name of having people set aside their arms and move into a new phase of Colombian life. So with that, I think I will thank all of our speakers. You've been fabulous. You've given us lots to think about and lots of new directions that future discussions will take. And I thank the audience for being patient and for your good questions and look forward to seeing you back next time. Thank you.