 On behalf of the US Institute of Peace and the Due Process of Law Foundation, I want to welcome everyone to what we hope will be a very interesting and enlightening event. The Due Process of Law Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Professor Thomas Bergenthal and colleagues at the UN Truth Commission for El Salvador to work on issues of transitional justice. Headquartered in Washington has offices in San Salvador and a team of professionals throughout the hemisphere. DPLF is dedicated to human rights and the rule of law in Latin America and works with civil society organizations to promote compliance with international standards and the use of inter-American law to improve legislation, policy, and practice. USIP is a publicly funded institute funded by Congress with the objective of seeking to avoid and resolve conflicts around the world and to help countries coming out of conflict to remain at peace. It does this through research, analysis, and programming in 40 countries. In the hemisphere, the institute is most active in Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Central America, seeking to help reduce polarization, strengthen communities coming out of conflict, and broker new solutions to existing political conflicts. So one housekeeping issue, the event is being conveyed in both English and Spanish, but there is a different link for each language. You have to commit to one language or the other, so Spanglish in this case is not going to be an option. So if you're in the wrong language, please come back in with the other language, other link in that language of your choice. Just by way of framing, just over 30 years ago, in the early morning hours of January 1, 1992, President Cristiani, his cabinet, the Estada Mayor, and the FMLN commanders signed a final peace accord in Chipotlepec Castle in Mexico City. It was a hard fought victory that was the result of two years of very skillful negotiations, the alignment of a number of factors both inside El Salvador and in the international community. The writer Ellen Moody commented years later that post-conflict policy analysts have called the Salvadoran case among the most successful peace agreements in the post Cold War period. So we're here today to reflect back on the peace agreement, both what we can learn from the process itself and what it says about where El Salvador is headed today. The accord was never intended to solve all the country's problems, nor was it possible to foresee everything that would transpire in the succeeding 30 years. Rather it set the conditions for a future of peace, conditions that would need to be continually nourished both inside El Salvador and from abroad. And we have just the right people with us to cover this ground today. Alberto de Soto is a Peruvian diplomat who led the UN peace negotiations in El Salvador, very fortunate to have him with us today. He's a renowned mediator who also led negotiations on Cyprus, served as a UN, a special UN envoy to Myanmar and the western Sahara and as a UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process. He teaches conflict resolution at the Paris School of International Affairs, part of Ciencius Pope. Leonor Artiega is a Salvadoran attorney who heads the due process of law foundations program on impunity and grave human rights violations, leading investigations, advocacy and monitoring on issues related to memory, justice and state violence in Latin America. In February 2018, she was appointed by the Salvadoran government to serve on the National Commission to search for disappeared persons during the armed conflict. Gino Costa is the, is a Peruvian politician who served in Congress as Minister of the Interior, President of the National Prison System and Deputy Ombudsman for Human Rights, among other positions. He was a member of the UN Observer Mission to El Salvador and has been a consultant for the UN and aid agencies on police reform, human rights and citizen security, publishing widely on these topics. He now teaches at the Catholic University of Peru and is preparing a book on the country's political crisis. And Douglas Cassell is a scholar and practitioner of international human rights law. He served as legal advisor to the Truth Commission for El Salvador and has represented victims of human rights violations in Colombia, Guatemala, Peru and Venezuela. He's also filed amicus cura briefs in the United States Supreme Court on the rights of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. He's a professor emeritus of law at the University of Notre Dame. Now, to start off, I wanted to kind of get the big picture of the Accords and what we've learned from them. So I wanted to start with Alvaro and, and ask, spend a few minutes discussing what we've learned in retrospect about the Accord itself and about peace Accords in general. You said in a speech at the State Department in 1994 that the Accord was a pioneering effort, textbook example of successful peace negotiations. You were not touting your own leadership of the process. If anything, I think you were far too humble, but you pointed to the alignment of internal and external factors that allowed the conditions for the peace to take hold. But you also pointed out both there and in an article you published that same year about the evolving post-conflict issues and said that the jury was still out on whether the peace would hold internally and whether an external, the international community that seemed more focused on reaching a proper IMF agreement with the new country rather than mobilizing funding would do what was necessary to secure the peace. So I wanted to ask is you reflect back on the Salvadoran peace process. What are the major lessons you came away with both on the process for negotiating peace and for securing the peace on the other end? And are there things that could be useful to other countries facing similar processes presently or in the future? And how do you view the role of the international community in the Salvadoran peace process? And if you could comment a bit on the international architecture for peace. Thank you, Keith, for this invitation. On your part, the U.S. Institute of Peace as well as the due process of law foundation, founded by a person who played an extremely important role in providing a framework so that the Salvadorans could look back within context on what had actually happened. And I'm referring, of course, to the Truth Commission report. Now, the context in which the negotiations became possible really for the first time during the war in El Salvador occurred at a time when the necessary factors came into play. Now, the moment at which the possibility of conducting a serious negotiation crystallized, so to speak, was actually before the negotiations started, the negotiations proper under the aegis of the United Nations began. That is, during the offensive of the FMLN of November 1989. For that is the moment at which both parties in the conflict realized that they could not win militarily. As simple as that, it became clear to the FMLN that it could not ignite the generalized popular insurrection that they would have liked to trigger. And it also became clear, I think, to the leading forces in El Salvador, including the party and government at the time, that they could not defeat the FMLN. And a key sort of focal moment for this realization was the assassination of the Jesuit priests at the Central American University. On the odd theory that they were the real intellectual authors behind the FMLN insurgency. And that in turn triggered a reaction of indignation in the US Congress, especially in the House of Representatives where the Speaker of the House immediately mobilized an investigation into the assassination of the Jesuits. And now this was an initiative taken by a body which played a key role in aid of the military character to the El Salvador armed forces, which was crucial for the conduct of the war on the part of the military. So all of these factors brought about in the US a reconsideration of its role and its legitimacy. And it brought about what has become known as a mutually hurting stalemate, which is when the parties to a negotiation perceive that the cost of continuing the conflict has become greater than the cost of actually solving it by negotiation. So that was the key moment. And within weeks, both parties in the conflict had come to the UN Secretary General in request of for help, diplomatic help to negotiate an end to the conflict. And it coincided serendipitously with a summit of the Central American countries who had a couple of years earlier taken a decision to take charge themselves after the efforts of the Contadora Group to solve the conflicts in the region. And at that summit meeting, which was sort of the farewell summit for President Oscar Arias, whose term was ending, they came out strongly in support of a role by the United Nations to help the parties solve the conflict. So that laid the foundations for the start. The presidents even asked the Secretary General, whom they saw as having the drawing power necessary to bring into the effort powers from outside the region. And of course, what they had in mind was the US, the Soviet Union, and Cuba in solving this, in sorting out this conflict. And so that allowed matters to begin. President Cristiani came to New York to request the Secretary General's to ask the Secretary General to play this role, to help them facilitate a resumption, as they saw it, of negotiations, which hadn't really begun. They had had a couple of meetings in Mexico and in Costa Rica, after which the offensive began. Now, the importance of it is that the of this and the lesson that we I think can draw from it is try to bring about the right timing for negotiations. Unless you have the good luck that that timing has actually already intervened, such as occurred in the case of El Salvador. I think it was the intention of the FMLN. Well, perhaps they started out with the intention of actually taking power in November of 1989. But when they realized that this was not possible. They turned it, it began became an effort which converged with that of the leadership in power at that time in El Salvador to use it to trigger a negotiation under a single unified mediator. And that was another consideration that was important. Collective efforts at mediation. Well, they're having cases where they have brought about a solution to a conflict. But it is much better in the words of Javier Perez de Cuellar to ensure the unity and integrity of the mediation effort that it should be clearly under the leadership of a single person or entity. Or that even if the effort is collective, there should be a an acceptance that that single institution or person should be in the lead. Now, it became very clear very early that these negotiations could not be simply geared toward bringing about in the usual sort of model or sequence for these things. A ceasefire and then a calm negotiation and to essentially get everybody to who needed to be demobilized to demobilize. It wasn't that simple. The FMLN's objectives in this negotiation were quintessentially political and the correlation of forces was such that they believed. And so they stated very clearly from the first meetings that the government had exceeded to come to the negotiating table because of the military pressure that the FMLN had been able to muster particularly at the time of the military offensive. And they said, therefore, they insisted in their proposals for an agenda that before even considering a ceasefire, there should be at least political agreements for reform in the issues that were identified, which covered essentially the whole gamma of issues that could needed to be addressed at the top of which was the armed forces, human rights, the judiciary, the judicial system, the electoral system, economic and social questions and constitutional reforms that might be necessary to solve these. So you can see that the whole agenda that faced the country needed to be addressed. Now the negotiations actually devoted an enormous portion of the time to the armed forces and in discussions that seemed interminable and they set out their problems with the armed forces in order to make the case essentially that the role that the armed forces played was so pervasive that it affected the entire political life of the country. And that it somehow infused all of the problems that the country faced on all the remaining questions. So they took the position that unless the problem of the armed forces could be cracked and solved, there was no point in proceeding to the other questions. Now, there was very little movement on this for the first few months to the point where the negotiations seem to lose momentum and energy. So we try to make an effort to consider what could be done about this. We at the United Nations. And so we entered a period between negotiating sessions of reflection on these other issues where we turn particularly to human rights and the judiciary. And at one of these meetings in Costa Rica of the negotiators, we proposed to them that we should have a pause, we referred to it, a momentary pause in discussions on the armed forces and turned briefly to look at another issue with a clear commitment that we would be returning immediately to the armed forces. And there we managed to produce a such context in which the parties were able to agree on essentially an article which reaffirmed a set of articles where essentially they reaffirmed obligations that already committed El Salvador, the state of El Salvador in the right to life area. The basic human rights that could ensure this. And this actually was quite celebrated because it was signed immediately there and proclaimed and became obligatory. And on the basis of the commitment that already existed in the first two procedural agreements on the framework for negotiations and the rules of the game, as well as the agenda reached in Geneva and then in Caracas, it was agreed that the compliance with the commitments undertaken in the framework of right to life on human rights would be monitored by the United Nations, something which the had never been done before. There had never been long term nationwide constant monitoring which required when it finally was implemented required the deployment of a large number of human rights observers throughout the country that had a positive effect. However, this proved a bit of a of a setback, because the FMLN, which had until then shown great sort of a tactical resiliency in the offensive, and in agreeing to to switch to armed forces if only briefly had apparently not done their homework with their constituents in who were actually fighting and who had been were fully committed to the idea that armed forces must be solved first before we turn to anything else. And this brought about a bit of a reaction by their constituents against the negotiators and the leadership, and that proved a little bit a bit of a setback in time. I'm afraid it was a setback that led into the autumn months and even into the winter. Now, early in 1991, we what focused the minds of everybody concerned, apart from the war itself, in which there were some extremely serious developments, which included a new offensive by the FMLN, but they came to the realization that time was actually running out. And the time was that if constitutional reforms were going to be required in order to reach agreement on certain aspects of the armed forces in particular, they had better hurry up and agree on them, because the term in office of the legislature was coming to an end on the 30th of April. Now, we gathered them in Mexico early in April of 1991, and there, at almost with three days to go before the expiration of the legislature, they actually agreed on a set of constitutional reforms. Now, the alternative to that would have could conceivably have been the continuation of the war for three years longer, the term of office of the new legislature because constitutional reforms needed to be approved by two consecutive legislature. Now, as it happened, this worked out. And there were extremely important negotiations, which actually had were there to prepare the ground for important reforms in the armed forces, consisting of the need to rectify some flaws in the constitution under which they needed to, which required, were required so that the armed forces central role in the maintenance of internal order could be brought to an end and shifted to a national civilian police. We also took out the sort of a residual role of the armed forces in determining whether the constitutional law could, whether the political order of the country was such that they had to intervene. That was something that, that was something that I know Diana Vieira's Negroponte pointed that out that this all was part of the whole evolution of the country's structure where the military was no longer in that key role in politics, one of the real key things that came came out of it. So, Alvaro tremendous tremendous framing. I guess one just one very quick final question was how much of the, because you framed it in a bid and all of the things that came together how much of this was, was just an alignment and kind of good luck with the different internal factors and how much was dependent on regional leaders, the international community internal leaders how much it was dependent on leadership and how much was just the fortuitous alignment of these different factors and then we're going to move right on to Gino and on some police issues. Very well. The, the, what we were able to do and we, the only people present in the room when discussions took place were the representatives of the two sides, the FMLN and the government, including a senior member of the El Salvador armed forces and the United Nations personnel that was involved in this effort. Now, one of the things that became very clear fairly early is that very little was happening in the face to face negotiations. And therefore we shifted fairly early to more separate meetings between myself and my team, particularly the late great Pedro Nican, who was our legal advisor, with each of the two sides separately, where we were able to make far more progress in assessing what would be viable and what would be acceptable by the two sides. So we had already shifted to a position, for instance, where we, it is we on the basis of what we heard from the parties to make a proposal on the armed forces as we had done on human rights. But I think that let me just emphasize, I've spoken perhaps too long, but let me just emphasize one point, which was that, that we concluded internally, which is that it was necessary as part of solving a conflict that was internal, in which you couldn't, as in an international conflict, essentially make sure that there was a separation where they could be sent home each to their own territory. You couldn't do that. Everybody was already in their own territory. So there was no choice but to address this panoply of issues that would then lead to an acceptance by the two sides that it was possible to separate. Now this translated eventually into what Buttozali, the Secretary General as of 1992, called post-conflict peace building, which he saw the insight that would likely be at the top of the UN agenda in the post-Cold War years. I'll leave it at that. Thank you very much. That's incredibly good framing and that I think sets the stage for all the rest of what we'll do today. So we're about at the halfway mark, and I wanted to move on to Gino. I wanted to open the door for one question and then deliberately another question. One is just about the socioeconomic issues. I know this wasn't your issue in the negotiations and as part of the delegation. But if you have any comments on the socioeconomic issues that were in play in El Salvador at the time, how that was treated in the negotiations. And then mostly I wanted you to talk a little bit about police. That was your specialty. So as a member of the UN advisor mission focused on police and the author of a book on your experience, how do you see that in hindsight? And how do you see the resultant criminal violence that's emerged in El Salvador? How is that related to what was done during the peace accords? And then the question of reform, how is reform locked in in a process like this in what follows? And this is, I think, the main lesson coming out of much of this is there's only so much that can be done in the accord. It sets the stage and then there's a lot that has to follow, as Al Bro just mentioned. So anyway, any comments on either of those two topics? Thanks. Thank you, Keith, for your question and for this invitation. Thank you so much also to Alvaro for sharing that information, which is a foundation, an important foundation for the negotiations. Now you've asked about the socioeconomic issues. And truly, this was not a big part of the negotiation. We did talk about this. And as Alvaro said, it's something that people talked about on the last day of the negotiations in the year 1992. Now, this is something that they could have talked about and considered looking more into the future. I think it wasn't that important for the government or for the guerrilla. And this part was not very important for the forum. They did not make it a priority. So it was not important for the parliamentary. I do think it was fundamental and essential. If the FMLN took to arms, it's because there was no democracy in the country. It was their only option. And that's what the war showed us. Peace allowed this termination of war and conflict while at the same time incorporating this front. At the same time, we could have included these other topics such as the socioeconomic issues and the lands, etc. In regards to safety, Alvaro referred to the importance of the armed forces. This was one of the most important topics because they bore a lot of weight in the country and during the war. We at that moment wanted to walk towards peace and open the doors to democracy and for FMLN to form as a political party. We needed to give those armed forces some power. However, here their doctrine and the armed forces were restricted and limited. Now this is a model that can be applied to El Salvador for Latin America and for the world in general. The military police was responsible for a lot of corruption and violation of human rights. They were replaced by a democratic police force and I think that this model is very comprehensive. And it can serve as a model for El Salvador and many other countries. Now I think the issue was in the implementation of the agreement. I'm an interested party. I was part of the UN observer mission in El Salvador. But I do think that the issues were once this agreement was implemented. First, the commitments that had to be adopted. For example, for the civil police. It would have been nice if the police hadn't been as contaminated, but the needs in terms of the police made it necessary for the military force and representatives of FMLN be present. And those who represented the police ended up being ex combatants. So it would have been much better for the representatives to not be contaminated by the war to rather focus on the old ways of carrying out the police. The police units. This really impacted the professional part of the negotiation. This was a huge challenge and it continued to be a huge challenge not only for the police but for the justice system and for the entire country. A country that has not had a possibility on a state level to face these issues. Now we need a new perspective because to solve this problem to be able to have this piece, which has been, by the way, very violent piece. I also like to mention one more topic in terms of implementation. Now remember before the war, the decades before the war, which was marked a lot by the military and not by democracy. When President Cristianio signed the peace accords, he recognized that this opened El Salvador to a democratic path. Now you have the right wing party with tradition of just a bit of democratic tradition. And then the other side, which looks towards Cuba and the Soviet Union as a model. So to build democracy on these foundations has not been easy and this has marked our security policy. Let's remember the history with the military before having to withdraw the military. This really did not respect human rights. The only thing that we have been able to show the world to be valuable and face these criminal issues are these examples. This has impacted our political culture. It seemed that the accords didn't really implement as well. And then we were able to implement them, but because of the government, it's the same behavior over and over again. And that explains a progressive militancy. Even the agreements point towards something completely different. Now this is the weight of our history, which marks the future considerably. These are issues that nobody could see that were going to happen. And then Salvador, in the end, was impacted by the criminal politics of the US. Now they used the sons of young people in El Salvador that had issues, criminal issues, and these have led to more problems that cannot be solved. Now these are current problems that the new institutions can't solve and the young people of our country must solve this in the future. Fantastic. Thank you so much, genome. I want to move now. We have about 20 minutes left. I wanted to move now to justice issues, which we've touched on a little bit. I wanted to go to Leonor for this. I'm touching on the fact that in the Accord there was so much that was committed to the issue of transitional justice and establishment of a justice system that was going to function. So I wanted to ask you, looking back now, how do you see the judicial provisions of the Accord? What impact did they have on the rule of law? And then what can be done to support judicial independence and the rule of law going forward? And particularly if you could touch on the issues of the Truth Commission, accountability, and how those issues are still playing out inside El Salvador. Leonor? Thank you so much, Keith. And thank you to all the other panelists. It's an honor to be able to talk about the last 30 years and the peace accords and the report that came out on the peace accords. Now, these reports fulfilled their purpose in the moment in terms of the justice system and also the Truth Commission. The reports were instruments that allowed El Salvador to renew itself. It helped the country enter into a new era. And at the same time, being conscious of the fact that the justice system had carried out a very important role. It was a complex of the atrocities and the violation of human rights that both parties had caused during the armed conflict. The Truth Commission, up until now, has violated all credibility. The Truth Commission has tried to civilize these conflicts, but no one has been able to really implement or fulfill the purpose of the Truth Commission. Now, in relation to justice, the Truth Commission made very clear what had happened during the armed conflict. It wasn't about some rotten apples or just a couple of people that wanted to harm the country. Rather, it was really an instrument of power, an organized tool that was used by the state of El Salvador. Its purpose was to carry out human rights violations to maintain the status quo. The commission clearly shows us that the crimes that were carried out were carried out by the system. The justice system was a fundamental tool that was used to carry out the systemic crimes. Now, the peace agreements did not support the justice system. Now, what we were able to do was something innovative for the times, sanctions, administrative sanctions, and others, not only focusing on the trials, but the entire justice system. During that time, the justice system was not the only method. Using other strategies was something innovative. The commission says that the Supreme Court needs to undergo a process to identify all the judges that took part in this system. Well, the Supreme Court, they never really left, but they took on these recommendations in the judiciary. And two years after the commission had recommended it, they designated a new court. Another point that I'd like to highlight is that the Truth Commission, the Commission for Truth designated a different methodology. This was used to identify very significant cases. It wasn't just the everyday cases, but the ones that really highlighted the patterns of the violence that had taken place, the main characteristics for violence, and how this level of crime was achieved in the country. So the commission said, first, we have to clean everything in the justice system, we have to put everything in order, and then we will go to trials. So, what's the conclusion now, looking back these 30 years? Well, the peace accords, along with the report from the commission, was able to transform El Salvador's justice system. Then we had constitutional reforms, new legislation was passed, which changed how the judges and employees of the Supreme Court and other entities carried out their duties. We had the attorney for the republic, we looked into all of their responsibilities, and well, we were able to transform the whole justice system at the end. And that model is currently in place and has been a model for other countries as well. Another thing is that the justice culture didn't necessarily change. So we see how these patterns of impunity continue to take place. But the justice system reform was very useful and continues to be so for other nations as well. Finally, I'd like to say that the commission wasn't as strong or firm as it could have been with the amnesty. It's not an absolute amnesty, perhaps we hadn't thought about that at that moment, or perhaps that topic hadn't been developed. And later on there was an absolute amnesty. But what I want to say here was that the commission played a very important role. Their work and their report was carried out in a moment when El Salvador wasn't achieving a complete transition. There had been a transition from war to peace with the ceasefire, but it hadn't been completely developed. And it was a very complex process. The reports from the commission was rejected by the government. But at the end, the commission was able to set the foundations. And today what El Salvador has in its justice system, despite its imperfections, is due to the commission. We don't want to discredit, discredit rather what the commission did or the peace accords did. But we want to analyze what led to the development of this justice system that is complicit with impunity and how we can reflect the current reality of El Salvador. Thank you very much. So we've got 10 minutes to go. I wanted to get a couple of questions in for Douglas. And one of them is very specific to what you worked on. That was looking back again at the truth commission, its recommendations. What are your reflections on that? And the framing is that so much of this was part of a process that was to set up democratic institutions, which would then move forward. And we see now that those democratic institutions in many cases, of course, have not cohere. There's frustration on the part of the Salvadoran people, only 25% believe in electoral institutions, 10% in the judiciary. So a little bit of what happened there, but also a larger question of this incredible event of making peace, this historic peace that is now seemingly not valued particularly by many political leaders inside El Salvador starting at the top. But also maybe not understood by the youth of the country by the citizens. And how do you recapture something of the magic of this peace process and use it as an anchor and as a guide going forward rather than something to be dismissed and moved away from. Douglas, if you could comment on those two questions, we'd appreciate it. Gracias Keith. Felicitaciones al Instituto. Thank you chief. Congratulations to the Institute for organizing such an important panel. It's truly an honor to be able to share the floor with such important people such as Alvaro de Sota, Gino Costa, El honor Arteaga. I'd like to ask the question in a different way. The great achievements and the success of the peace accords in El Salvador are two sided. First, it ended the armed conflict, which was absolutely terrible and horrific when we consider the well being of the El Salvadorian people. And finally, it opened the doors for political transformation and the political inclusion of the gorilla, which had been completely excluded from political life in the formal channels. So these are two incredibly important successes. We cannot ignore them. And we must recognize the contribution of the United Nations of Alvaro de Soto and all of the negotiators that participated. We also have to consider the work of the UN with Gino Costa and others who contributed. But I think there was a significant failure. And that was, and well, I'm not just referring to the peace accords here, but also to the recommendations that were made in the commission's report. The failure was that we thought that we could create a long lasting peace based on justice system changes and political changes. And just on that, we've heard that they really only touched on some political aspects in the last days of the negotiations. We heard from Gino that the socioeconomic forum was failure basically. And there was an opportunity when we came to the recommendations of the commission to focus on those socioeconomic topics that have to be the foundation in order to have democratic political transformation and for it to be successful. But we let the opportunity slip through our fingers. We didn't do it. Our recommendations were purely political in nature. We focused on the judicial system and well, they were positive. But they weren't enough. They were not enough for building peace, which was what the secretary general wanted to do. So where are we currently in El Salvador? Well, at least a third of the population lives in poverty. There is great disillusion with the democratic institutions. There's rampant corruption. We've seen it constantly throughout all of the different administrations. And we've had four presidents before this current president who've been involved in murky legal matters and corruption. And this is all during this time. And well, the current president is dismantling internal mechanisms as well as the mechanisms of the OAS for fighting corruption. The gangs, the Madas, as Gino mentioned, well, this isn't just the fault of some young people or the lack of success of the penitentiary system in the United States, but it really reflects the lack of economic opportunities for young people and their families. And the need to have both parents when possible at home, they need to work enough to be able to survive and to care for their families. And when that's not possible, young people go to the Madas, to the gangs. So I'm not saying that the peace accords or the commission could have prevented all of these problems. We see that there's a series of interrelated problems related to crime, disillusionment, lack of education. Half of the Salvadorians don't study beyond primary school. We see that there's fear of going out on the streets or sending your children to school. I'm not saying that the peace accords could have solved all of that. But undoubtedly, rather, they should have focused on those topics more. If we don't consider those elemental issues, then the recommendations of the commission or different proposals that just focus on judicial or political issues, well, there's a great risk that we'd end up in the same place where we are 30 years later in El Salvador with an authoritarian government, a corrupt political system, which has led to the disillusionment of the majority of the people. Well, we're at the end of our panel now, and I just wanted to close with a couple of comments. First, I wanted to thank the panelists for your service to El Salvador over these past three decades and for not only joining us today, but for being with the country through all the different things that's been through. For those of us that were involved in the Salvadoran conflict very early and then have been attached to the country ever since, I think there is this community of Salvadoran watchers, Salvadoran supporters that remains very strong. But it's very encouraging, I think, to see that through these three decades of ups and downs, there's still so many people that are committed to El Salvador and to getting to that piece that it secured back those 30 years ago but has not quite realized yet. As we say in USIP, there's no real failed states, there's only unfinished states. And El Salvador is definitely an unfinished state that still has work to do but has the support of many in the international community. And I want to also just pay tribute to those that have suffered and sacrificed during the war itself. I think it's always a good time to remember the casualties of war, those on both sides that fought for what they may have believed in and the many who fought dirty, if you will, and ended up making that war worse than it needed to be. And so all the efforts at peace during that time and since have really been worthwhile and again are something that we should keep before us in the future. But I want to pay tribute to those that suffered during the war and those that have been trying again ever since to bring about a future that's complete with social economic justice, human rights, and institutions that work. So anyway, thank you all for joining us today. It's been a tremendous insight, I think, into again a very important peace process and one that has a lot of lessons for our current environment. And I think as Alvaro helped us to understand, there is a lot of agency in these processes. There's a lot that can be done by civil society, by citizens, by business to push for peace and to bring about the conditions for peace. And then the leadership that needs to be secured to bring it about. So thank you very much and wish you all the best. Thanks.