 Good morning, everyone. My name's Steve Hage here at the US Institute of Peace. It's an honor to welcome you all here this morning. On a Monday morning, a lot of rain, a lot of other activities going on, so we thank everyone for their interest. The majority of this morning's program will be in Spanish, so give a couple of seconds for anyone that hasn't taken advantage of the headphones. But please feel welcome to ask any questions in English. Some of our commentary will be in English, so please feel free in either language. We'll have simultaneous translation throughout. So muy buenos días a todos y a todas. Good morning to all of you, those who are with us this morning, both in real time and through the internet. My name is Steve Hage. Together with Maria Antonia Montes and Rosaritucci, I'd like to give a very warm welcome in the name of the US Institute for Peace. We're very pleased to host once again these forums that we have called Forums for Peace in Colombia. For those who aren't familiar with the US Institute for Peace, known as USIP, it's an independent entity, programmatically, of the government that reports to the Congress and that works for peace in 51 countries all over the world. I am part of the team that leads the USIP Colombia team, which began when Virginia Jenny Bouvier turned over the position to us. Unfortunately, she passed away last year and she was very well known for her courageous and constant commitment over the years to those who are building peace in Colombia. Even in the most challenging moments for not speaking about peace was unthinkable for Jenny. So we have a legacy from Jenny, and we're following in her footsteps, trying to support the transformation of living conditions of those affected by the armed conflict in Colombia. Today, it is a great honor to have the presence of our two speakers and two commentators. The speakers are Alejandra Barrios, Director of the Electoral Observation Mission, Moe from Colombia, Juanita Goberto, who is the primary legal advisor for transitional justice for the President's High Commissioner for Peace during the conversations with the FARC. And Jonas Gleis, who's a representative from the, we also have Mark Schneider, who's a senior advisor to the Americas Program and the Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And Jonas Gleis is a senior program officer at the USIP, where he is in charge of the program on electoral violence. This select group of colleagues who I will introduce in more detail shortly will share with us their perspectives, expertise, and firsthand experience on the current electoral moment in Colombia. Very full of uncertainties, but definitely a decisive time for building peace in Colombia. Today's forum is designed around two primary aspects. In first place, a reflection about the challenges and achievements of the current Colombian electoral process, looking through the lens of civil rights in this period of time. Secondly, an analysis of the implications of this electoral process, and of the possible results as related, on one hand, to the implementation of the accords with the FARC, and on the other hand, to the fragile negotiations that have begun with ELN in Quito, Ecuador. Before turning over the floor to our invited guests, I'd like to contextualize our presentation, talking a little bit about Colombia at now. A year and a half after the signing of the peace accords, Colombia finds itself as one of the most critical points in its efforts to try to leave behind more than five decades of armed conflict that has left approximately 8.5 million victims in its wake. Frustrations surrounding the mixed results and the implementation of the peace agreement are now exacerbated by the uncertainty over upcoming May 27th presidential elections and its impact on national policy. While legislative campaigns have been marred by sporadic incidents of aggression and hostility, the legislative elections in this last March 11th were the most peaceful in Colombia in more than 50 years. The impact of the disarmament of more than 90% of more than 10,000 combatants and militia members of the FARC was clear. In contrast to the high levels of violence that have plagued past elections, these last elections only had two minor incidents. Moreover, the National Liberation Army, the ELN, the country's second largest rebel group, upheld a temporary unilateral ceasefire, bolstering flailing popular support for its own peace talks with the current government. The results of these elections for Congress favored primarily the Democratic Center Party, the right-wing party led by former President Álvaro Uribe. Traditional parties like the conservative and liberal parties, as well as the party of current President Juan Manuel Santos, lost a number of seats while the political left and centrist candidates outperformed expectations. Plagued by limited access to banks and hostile protesters at many of its campaign events, the FARC's candidates received few votes as expected. However, as part of the peace accords, the former rebels are guaranteed 10 congressional seats for two terms. With the composition of the next Congress set, jockeying and coalition building among the main presidential candidates has now been in full swing. According to recent polls, Uribe's protege Ivan Duque and the former mayor of Bogota, Gustavo Petro, are ahead in public opinion. In this context, attempts to build a centrist coalition to overcome the country's polarization have yet to come to fruition. Most presidential candidates are divided on their support for continuing talks with the ILN in Quito, where delegations are racing against the clocks to design a new indefinite bilateral ceasefire and cement the parameters for public participation before the next president is sworn in. However, with the exception of Duque, nearly all candidates agree to continue, in one form or the other, efforts to implement the increasingly vulnerable FARC peace accord. Over a year and a half since its signing and nearly a year since the FARC's disarmament was completed, general mistrust in the capacity and will of the state to fulfill its commitments is mounting among ex-combatants and civil society organizations. The patterns of clientelism that traditionally plague government institutions are coupled with a skeptical and reticent segment of politicians and the population, which has been emboldened to resist the accord's implementation by the failure of the October 2016 referendum. While the rebels handed in more weapons per combatant than any insurgent group in modern history, in addition to extensive properties and stashes of gold, the former combatants are deeply frustrated with the significant delays and the implementation of the structural reforms outlined in the agreement and the near absent practical support promised for their socioeconomic transition to civil occupations. Thousands have deserted government and UN monitored Cantonment sites because of limited services and infrastructure. And despite all the expectations that the collective cooperative style agricultural projects would receive funding, no land has been set aside for such ventures. And only one such project covering approximately 60 ex-combatants has been approved so far. Meanwhile, 625 FARC members remain in prison due to bureaucratic delays and the implementation of the amnesty law. And many former rebels have still not been fully accredited to receive their promised monthly stipends, even though that assistance is slated to expire in less than two months. Despite the mechanisms to fast-track peace accords-related bills through Congress last year, no legislation was passed regarding the political and agrarian reforms painstakingly negotiated during the first few years of the peace process. A proposed law to establish the 16 special peace electoral districts agreed in order to enhance the representation of the victims' groups was voted down. The rural development programs that have been launched have been plagued by poor planning and important structural governance challenges engendering weak coordination and limited effectiveness. Not only has this resulted in public resources assigned for the implementation process expiring and going unused in certain cases, but in the past weeks, the Attorney General has opened investigations into allegations of corruption in management of hundreds of millions of dollars donated to the Columbia Peace Fund. Significant progress has been made in setting up special transitional justice courts and accompanying truth commissions, reducing police and military casualties, expanding the demining program, and the number of internally displaced persons has dramatically fallen from annual averages. Nonetheless, while homicide rates have remained on a steady decline for the past 10 years, there was a dramatic increase in violence in post-FARC territories in the first months of 2018, in comparison to the same period over 2017. Though the FARC rebels withdrew from their historical rural strongholds in October 2016, it was not until early 2018 that the government launched a new security plan to deploy 63,000 new soldiers and police to 67 prioritized post-FARC municipalities. With new structures of rural local power emerging in the absence of the FARC's dominant parallel administration, organized crime groups and the ELN have been largely responsible for the alarming surge in targeted threats and assassinations against community and social leaders, which increased by 45% between 2016 and 2017. FARC leaders have also decried the fact that 51 of their members have been killed since the signing of the agreement. Finally, the arrest and extradition of San Trish last week sent further shock waves through the proponents of a tenuous implementation process. Slated to take up a guaranteed seat in the next Congress, San Trish is alleged to have conspired with Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel to traffic 10 tons of cocaine to the United States in exchange for a payment of $3 million. Although the arrest demonstrates that Colombian institutions have not been handed over to the FARC, as former President Uribe has alleged, it has only bolstered suspicions that the former rebels are not fully committed to their disarmament and transition to legal civilian lives, despite overwhelming evidence against San Trish. Many former FARC rebels view his arrest as further undermining their legal security and, thus, their trust in the peace agreement. Candidate Duque has stated that upon taking office, he would restructure the peace agreements, including changing the amnesty provisions for drug trafficking carried out by FARC leaders prior to the signing of the peace accords. Such a measure would put hundreds of former FARC commanders in legal peril and likely lead to flooding the ranks of dissident factions, which are already over 1,000 men and women, and would sadly drown even further any momentum in the peace agreement's implementation. So the stakes are higher than ever, and therefore, we must follow very closely what is happening. That's why I would like to leave you in the company now of our presenters. After their presentations, we'll ask our two commenters to share some of their reflections briefly in order to enrich the conversation with their points of view and to ask some of the first questions. I will introduce them before their talks. So without further ado, I have the honor to present our two speakers in more detail. First, we have Alejandra Barrios. She is the director of the Electoral Observation Mission and has been since its founding in 2006. The MOE is a platform of civil society organizations in Colombia that promotes the exercise of civil and political rights and the international standards of free, fair, and transparent elections. From 2010 to 2013, Mrs. Barrios served as general secretary of the Lima Accord, a regional coalition of Latin America and Caribbean, which conducts nonpartisan electoral observation. She has also been the chair of the Global Network of Domestic Elections Monitors, which brings together more than 140 organizations from over 60 countries. In 2017, Mrs. Barrios was named to Colombia's high-level special electoral mission, which developed legislative recommendations on political reforms outlined in the peace accords with the FARC. Thank you very much, Alejandra, for being with us here today. You have the floor. Thank you very much for the invitation. And I'd like to thank the entire working team of the Institute that has made Juanita's and my visit here possible to talk about some of the most passionate topics of Latin America, which is peace processes and the dream of peace, in this case, in Colombia. I was almost going to talk about everything that Steve has done, and we could talk about the history that the three of us have. But I think I'll go on to say that the presidential elections that are upcoming are going to be some of the most interesting elections that we've had in the country, because they are the least predictable in terms of electoral results. Since 2006, when we began to do electoral observation, believe me, never, never have we seen an election process that is now just weeks away where we have not had any idea among a number of candidates who might end up being president of the Republic. Normally, and by tradition in the country, there's two candidates, and you can look at them, and you can say one of the two is going to be the future president of the Republic. And I'll say that in masculine, he will be president of the country. But for the first time, we have a number of candidates that we could look at, and we can say any one of them may surprise us. So how did we get here? Tell you, too, that this is a desirable state of democracy. This is not a criticism. If we don't know who is going to be elected according to the rules and citizens are going out actively to participate in the election. This election process began in 2012, and it's had a number of different benchmarks. In 2012, we began the peace negotiations, and that began to align on a political agenda and a very strong debate about the kind of power that we need in the country, the kind of political power that the country needs. So there's an entire process of negotiations. We get to the very last elections in 2014 for president. And Sulwaga is the candidate from the Centro Democrático, and then the current president, Santos, for his second mandate, they go into the second round. And that was predictable. We saw it in the polls, and Sulwaga won most votes in the first round, but in the second round, President Santos is re-elected. And these details aren't really details. They end up being very important, because when we talk about the future in terms of peace processes and negotiations in Colombia, we've had a number of elections. And various times, the country has shown that we are not in agreement about how we are going to reach peace. Are we going to do it through negotiation, because that was the decision of President Santos? Or do we still want to defeat the other side militarily? Now, the Centro Democrático, after a successful government of the former president, Uribe, has one point of view. But there are two very different tendencies in terms of how peace should be won. And those positions have been present in different parts of the presidential campaign. And the first round, Dr. Sulwaga got most votes. And what that meant, that even though the peace negotiations had been going on for quite some time, Colombian citizens, at least the majority of those who went out to vote, which is less than half of the citizens of the country, thought that the armed solution to the conflict was still the way to go. Now, in the second round, things changed completely. But there was a big difference. The balance of power changed. And for not a very slight majority of Colombians proposed the idea that we can reach peace through negotiation in an agenda that is strictly a peace agenda. And President Santos was elected. So negotiations continue. And then we reached maybe one of the key moments that defined the electoral debate that we have nowadays. And it's the plebiscite. In 2016, we had a plebiscite. And something completely incredible and unforeseeable happened. A country voted against its own peace. And that's unthinkable, unheard of. That a country would say no to their own peace. More or less, the difference was 50,000 votes. The no voters, nay voters, won the plebiscite. And after that, the content of the accords had to be reviewed. The winning no, even after the signature of the peace accord, continues to be the framework. So we had an agenda that was leading to the signing of the accord. And the peace had to be taken out of the agenda after that. But right now, security is still in the backdrop of the country's reality. So 34 million Colombians voted. Only 37% voted in the plebiscite. And that's the second message that we can gather. It's not only a country that votes against their own peace. But it seems like peace is not such a priority when over the last 50 years, peace actually seemed to be the most important thing. After the plebiscite, we started the electoral process. And that led us to the May elections. So between the plebiscite and March of 2017, the country changed tremendously. There are different reforms, political and electoral. First of all, there is no presidential re-election. Whatever happens will happen in four years. And one happened in eight years, because re-election is not an option. And here I want to say that the peace process would not have taken place if Santos would not have been re-elected. But right now, we're going back to the political tradition of Colombia, which is a single mandate. No re-election whatsoever. Other reforms start taking place, and they modify the Congress's composition. Our Congress in Colombia had a total of 268 congressmen and women. On March 11th, we chose 279. What happened there for you to understand? Because that will help you understand the political situation in the country. 10 members of the FARC got a seat on their own right, not by vote, and then a decision that will potentially be very interesting for the opposition in the country. The presidential formula with the president and vice president that gets the second place will have access to the Senate and to the lower chamber for the one that is in second place. So one goes to the Senate, and the other one goes to the lower chamber. 279 congressmen and women, therefore. And then those were the elections with the highest participation or turnovers since 1991. So compared to the elections or the plebiscite, where Colombians did not go out to vote, we could compare the plebiscite with the elections in 1993, 1994, where one every three Colombians actually voted. Then a year and a half later, almost 50% of Colombians for the first time go out and vote, cast a ballot for the first time to decide on the composition of Congress. And then two cycles of elections happened that were very important in order to understand the first round of the presidential election. Multi-party consultations took place for a left-wing proposal, which is the one that took place with Petra and Carlos Caicedo. And then also right-wing one, where we had Duque from Centro Democrático, Marta Lucia Ramírez, who comes from the conservative political party, and then Mr. Ordoñas, who was general prosecutor. Why did this happen? Well, because the left-wing parties had already come out of the closet. But those that hadn't and came out very strong were the candidates from the right, a right that defended being on the right, their ideology, or right-wing ideas. And they have a political agenda based on order and family and with a security policy that is very strong based on combating drug trafficking, illegal armed groups, and also an economic agenda that is based on neoliberal ideas. So in this way, we basically really understand the political struggle that is taking place in the country. In the past, it wasn't as clear. Colombia was divided into liberal and conservatives. And the nuances were very blurry, basically, between one and the other. So we have between 43% and 46% of the population that voted for the Congress. But we can't forget the rest that did not vote to elect our congressmen and congresswomen. Now we have presidential elections based on multi-party consultations and other round of consultations outside political parties. And those are candidates that are very strong, such as Marta Ramírez or Vargasieras or Ordoñes, Pison, Fajardo. Any of them could actually be elected as president or vice president of the republic. And this shows something else that is very important. And it's that political parties in Colombia are undergoing a deep crisis. And there's two sides to this crisis of the political parties. On the first hand, there is a very serious crisis of representation. Internally, political parties are in crisis because of the democratic methods to select or elect their candidates. So when Vargasieras starts collecting signatures when he was part of Camilo Radical or Marta Lucia Ramírez withdraws from the conservative party and becomes an independent candidate and so on and so forth. It says that political parties have to review their base. Clientalism has permeated all political parties. And the second issue that is very clear is that political parties were not messengers of the interests of the citizens. They started representing just certain sectors of society, elites, vis-a-vis citizens that were expressing different types of demands. Therefore, we have a Congress that has changed tremendously. And we see vis-a-vis the last Congress, the powers that Juanita will have to face for the upcoming elections. So if we wanted to have a look at the Congress in a very simple manner, if we look at the seats on the right and center right, a very powerful group of congressmen and women. We have 51, both in the upper chamber and the lower chamber. This is the largest group or coalition out of the total of the Congress. 49 are liberal. Therefore, we cannot forget that one way or another, we are starting to find some balance about the different powers within Congress. We have 46 from Cambio Radical, who we will place on center right. 36 from the conservative party center right. And here, the balance starts tilting towards one side. And then in terms of left center, we have the Green Party with 19. We have the Au Party, which is a pivot party. Some of them are center right. Some of them are center left. It depends. We have Polo Democrático. We have the FARC, who are minority parties, but that basically add on in order to bring some balance to Congress. In terms of gender representation and the participation of women, they represent 30% by participation and not election. We have 25 women. In the past, we had 23. In other words, there is an increase of two women only. But what we saw is that if we don't move towards parity, the women's ceiling under a system of maximum 30%, minimum 30% in the list, has already reached its maximum. So now we have this backdrop. We have a different Congress with certain equilibriums, a majority that's clearly towards the right and center right. And then on the left, we see a lot of fragmentation divided into many different small parties, different agendas, even peace agendas, different peace agendas. The FARC, since 2012, up until March, when we had the legislative elections, the question, the connecting thread through which we analyze peace and political reintegration, that basically was about what was going to happen. Colombia is going to become a Chavista country. Communism or death, there's going to be no solution to this. The situation is going to be impossible. Huge crisis. The FARC got very few votes. We have a candidate, a single candidate, that got 500,000 votes. And then FARC got only 50,000 throughout the whole country. So that goes to socialism, communism completely disappears. And once it disappears, we have on the table the real discussion about what will happen with different agendas vis-a-vis the peace process. But now it really evolves around the capacity that the FARC has in order to define a political agenda. Doesn't really have any type of capacity. They didn't even reach the threshold to receive the five seats that they have in the upper chamber and lower chamber. Those two 10 seats are because of the peace accord. There was an agreement that if they went above the threshold established in the peace accord, they could get more seats. But they didn't even get to that threshold. Therefore, their influence is very much affected by the number of votes that they received. Even though they received those 10 seats that were guaranteed through the accords. 30 or 32 candidates could be submitted to Congress from the main capitals. This is a very interesting strategic decision. We have Ayel Cauca, Antiochia, Atlantico, Santander, and Bogota are those five municipalities. And then the votes or it was said that the FARC was going to force campesinos or farmers to vote for them. They were going to go to the most remote areas in the country and they were going to vote for the FARC. But surprisingly, most of the votes came from these main municipalities, first Bogota, then Cali, then Antiochia, then Atlantico, big cities. In other words, that perspective of having a guerrilla group controlling the country completely disappears. But what are we left with? Well, let's have a look at what actually happened when we started having the political debate. We have a fragmented country. We have a country with very deep sentiments of hatred, of wrath, intolerance, and intolerant country, and a country that regardless of the existence of the FARC or not, they have not found a path towards reconciliation. The reconciliation agenda is not on the table since 2012 when the peace negotiations started. What has happened ever since? The different political and electoral decisions that we've been making ever since have been built on a political discourse that is based on intolerance and the denial of the opposition, basically. That has been the basis ever since of the electoral decisions that have been made. So what do we have ever since? And let me share some data with you. Nosotros hicimos. OK, when we had the plebiscite, we developed a whole matrix of the potential risks that we would encounter in an election process. We have risks of electoral fraud, of political violence, other risks that have to do with unclear rules with different interpretations, financing of political parties, purchase of ballots, and so on and so for different risks that could affect the elections. And what we realized at the end as we move forward in the plebiscite is that the risk, in reality, as it happened with these last elections, the real risk was intolerance by citizens. During the plebiscite, we were there as we were also in March and as we were during the first round of the presidential elections in 2014. In the past, we had kidnaps, killings, attacks, threats toward candidates during the three electoral processes. And I'm not talking about run-offs of the presidential run-off in 2015 because the ELN decided to sign a ceasefire at that time. And that's why we had different results in the Chacoa and Guaviare. The electoral mission started monitoring. And we started finding that the violent actions were given mainly because of citizens. They were not the illegal armed groups carrying out that violence. It was the citizens themselves through social network, so social media were having an impact on electoral processes. We did the same follow-up for the plebiscite and for the electoral process that just took place. Very hostile elections. There were threats through social media. Elections were their sabotage to different electoral campaigns. So some people were saying, let's look this way. And we said, yeah, maybe we could find an explanation there, but we're going to look at the social media. We found 8 million tweets since January until the 4th of March of this year. We gathered all the data. We filtered it. And all this has to do with electoral information. Candidates, out of those 8 million tweets, 20% 1 million and a half were messages that had to do with intolerance, threats, hatred, how you could hurt the other one, messages where you would call on the opposition and harass them. The other million and a half was only 20%. And we started wondering, at what point that 20% started happening. What triggered that other 20%? Or what does it trigger? Well, this is very important. I don't know if it happens in the United States, but we're seeing it happen in Colombia. What's happening in social media does not stay there. It's not a parallel war. Basically, there is a fact. It takes place in real life that ends up developing hatred, stigmatization, intolerance through social media. And then immediately afterwards, you have another fact take place in real life. So one feeds on the other and so on and so forth. So for example, there is a bridge that was being built in Bogota, the Chirajara Bridge. And it falls down. It collapses. This is part of one of the most important projects of the ex-President of the Republic, Vargasieras. It was part of his policy. The bridge collapses. And the social media starts talking about corruption, about killing people, about the fact that they kept all the money. And on the other side, you have, oh, it was badly designed. He's an excellent vice president. He's the only one that actually did something. You'd have happened to anyone. And then you have a lot of violence that verbal violence starts happening through the social media, through social media. Different coalitions are defined and become public. And then that triggers the second milestone, which is 62,000 tweets or mentions on social media. Talking about the different political parties that are coming together that are carrying out different multi-party consultations, insults start on both sides. And so far, here we have insults from one side to another. Then when does that become real and not virtual? When does it happen? Well, in Armenia, Tim Ochenko is the presidential candidate from the FARC. He has a public event. He starts walking on the street in the city of Colombia. They is located in the coffee growing area. People start screaming at him. And after screaming at him, they start insulting him. And after insulting him, they start shooting the car. And then he has to leave the car. And he has to be taken out. The candidate has to be taken out. Then the next day, the media starts saying it's understandable. People are very unsatisfied. These people have been killing for 50 years. How can you tell people to understand this? And we start justifying the unjustifiable. Basically, everything that happens in a political party takes place again in the next political campaign event. What happened legitimate, because it was Tim Ochenko and it was from the FARC, starts happening again in other political events. We start elections for the legislator with actions or attacks against the different candidates in the different cities. The media would start launching messages. Then there's a public event with stones, with eggs, with tomatoes, with creams, to the most serious event that takes place precisely against Petro on the border with Venezuela in Cúcuta, where they start throwing stones to his car, shooting. Also, there is broadcasting being carried out through Facebook Live. And it reaches its maximum point. If you have a look at the data on the screen, you see an increase. It goes in Cretenda. We start with 57,000 mentions, then 62,000, 84. And when I say mentions, it's basically messages where the other parties attacked from 84. Then we have 117,000. The campaign for the legislature culminates at the highest point of intolerance, hatred, and so on and so forth. And it's not symbolic anymore. It's symbolic in Twitter, but it's happening in real life. So reality reflects what's happening in Twitter. The last campaign event, basically, is an event where the candidate has to be taken out, escorted. And basically the message is, please be very careful with any public event that takes place. Then elections take place. And we have a society that is completely polarized. And given the events that took place, we can see that peace building or how peace is built is not only an accord. It's not only political discourse. It goes through different facts or events where we have candidates who maybe did not reject certain attacks that had to do with intolerance and so on and so forth. Quite the contrary, they tapped into those. And they took advantage of those to promote their messages, their electoral messages, their campaigns. So when we analyze a conversation between the different candidates, we see that we have different candidates that are joining conversations that have to do with intolerance and so on and so forth. And there is a great deal of citizens that are those that repeat the intolerance messages and hate messages. And when we analyze precisely what we're talking about here, this is the slide that I was looking for before. This one. What do we hate in Colombia when we talk about politics? What do we use to insult each other, to attack the person in front of us? Well, we express our hatred against the FARC, 34% explicitly said something against the FARC, kidnappers, killers, guerrillas. 34% of the conversation was around that. 26% had to do with corruption. You are corrupt. You are corrupt, basically, because you receive money from the government in order to make a decision that will favor a specific person within the government. Then 24% has to do with Chavez. For example, to say, Steve is Castro Chavista. What does that mean? Well, nothing, really. It doesn't say anything. But for sure, it's something very, very negative. Someone calls you Castro Chavista. And then something that has to do with paramilitary is 7%. You're part of the paramilitary. You have to do something with them. You're related to the paramilitary. So we have three different discourses, three different discourses that show the political agenda. And these are the three different discourses. One about Castro Chavismo. There is something undefined that is going to affect us and put an end to our lives. The 50,000 votes of the FARC showed that Castro Chavismo was not represented by the FARC, but maybe another candidate that could take us to a country, undefined country, that is Castro Chavista. And it is really going to affect the political, economic, and social relations in the country. The second discourse is the one that has to do with corruption. Candidates that say, here are the most serious problem that we have in this country's corruption. And after the PISA court is signed, what you see is a series of scandals, corruption scandals that were used as a smoke curtain to cover the war in order to be able to tap into public funds. And then the third discourse that you can hear is the one that has to do with inequality. And that one is a very strong third option. It's not Castro Chavismo. It's not corruption. It's a discourse that says that there is inequality in Colombia that needs policies in order to have equality. Each one of those three discourses are very clear. During the first presidential round, we'll see that maybe two of those discourses will be elected, because that's basically what the candidates are presenting very clearly. So whoever gets chosen will have the capacity to define an agenda, an agenda that, even though the peace negotiation has come to an end, it's an agenda that will tell us how we are mentally thinking about peace. What type of peace we're thinking about? Here, there's no peace. There is going to be shattered. No one is going to take the peace accord and tear it apart. No. They will think, what am I going to do and what am I not going to do in order to bring greater inequality, in order to comply by the content of the accord, in order to see if the content is still valid and reflected in public policy or not. That is, at the end of the day, the type of dispute that we have. It's a dispute among different types of discourse, and I hope it overcomes hatred. But whoever wins in the next presidential election will also win a political agenda, basically, for the next four years. Either no corruption, no inequality, or Castro-Chavismo. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Alejandra, for these brilliant reflections and very deep reflections from a historic perspective, looking both at incidents of violence as well as mechanisms in the Colombian electoral systems and looking at the current discourses of these presidential candidates. I can say that there are very few people in Colombia or in the world who know the electoral system and the Colombian electoral processes, as well as Alejandra does. Therefore, it's a great pleasure to have you here and to listen to your reflections. I hope they are generating a lot of questions that we can ask here in a short time. Now, we also have our next speaker, who starting July 20th in this year, we can now say that she's a congresswoman, Juanita Goberto, she was recently elected in March to represent the City of Bogota in the House of Representatives of Colombia as a member of a centrist Green Party. From 2012 to 2016, Juanita was the principal legal advisor on transitional justice to the president's high commissioner for peace, where she helped design and draft the legal framework for peace. And she spearheaded the government's efforts on victims and historical memory in the negotiations, which culminated in the historic November 2016 peace accord. Previously, Juanita had worked for two years as a senior advisor to the National Security Council in three years at the Ministry of Defense on public policies related to international humanitarian law and human rights, intelligence reform legislation, and the judicial strategy against organized crime. Before her campaign, Juanita was the deputy director of the Institute for Integrated Transitions. Juanita, you have the floor. Good morning to all of you. And thank you to USIP for the invitation to speak here today, and thank you for all of you for joining us. And of course, thanks to Alejandra. It's an honor to share the panel with her. As Alejandra was saying, I think we can build this history together. We have seen where we've come from, the scenario, what's the electoral scenario right now and the kinds of discourses that are being used. And I'd like to talk a little bit about the challenges for implementation of the peace accords. I am convinced, as Alejandra has shown, that we are facing elections that are going to be decisive for the history of the country. And if you look backwards at the statistics on all the different scenarios in health, education, economic growth, I think this historic benchmark, the end of the war in Colombia, has the potential to be the turning point where our indicators for economic growth, which are stable, but frankly, mediocre in spite of enormous efforts to improve conditions of education and health in the last 20 years. Very difficultly, but in many scenarios, we're looking at positive indicators. But we have the potential to be at the point where we really unleash the potential of Colombia with growing productivity, struggle against inequality and poverty. And this may be the time when we are able to look backwards and say, this was the turning point. However, in order to get there, I'm convinced that we need to really close up the past well. We need to close up the armed conflict. We can't continue with business as usual in the same public policies. If we do, we'll have the same indicators of going along little by little, making small improvements in education, but it's not going to be the turning point that I think we can get. I think in order to reach the changes we want, I think we need to implement the peace accords. And for this, the elections are decisive. Now, I don't want to repeat too much, but there's something very important, and that is that in Colombia, it's very easy to fall into the narrative of negativism. And this is a big drama, and we were able to sign a historic accords, but it's terrible. And I think it's really important to highlight the positive indicators. Of course, the historic elections and the lowest levels of murders in the last 40 years that we've been seeing. Now, there are some specific municipalities where there is readjustment of the drug trafficking business where you do have spikes in violence, but it's not affecting the overall national statistics, which is very positive. There were many thousands of weapons that were taken out of the country by the United Nations in containers. We've had a demining of 66 municipalities where there was indications of anti-personnel landmines, and Colombia has been able to say that they have 225 municipalities that are free of mines, and that's very positive. Last year, Colombia, in spite of not very encouraging indicators of petroleum prices, Colombia was still able to have a 1.9% growth in the economy, but the highest level of increase was agriculture and 4.9%. And so this, because of the peace accords, Colombia may be able to really empower its agricultural capacity. And as a result of fast track in the Congress, they were able to produce rules for implementation. The 97 laws came out of various mechanisms that generally allow transitional justice with a special jurisdiction for peace and some of the basic laws for disarmament and amnesty. But the big issues of transformation, the things that are going to allow the conflict not to happen again, have to do with rural development, transformation of the political system, transformation of the way in which we fight against drugs, all of those things are still pending and yet to be implemented. So I want to talk about four big challenges along these lines. I should say that this is work that we've done together as a group, and we call ourselves the Human Capital Fund for Transformation in Colombia. It's, I have a technical role in building the peace accords. Our group has had this role and we're working in the public and private sectors and we decided to try to make sure that that knowledge that was created during the negotiation would not be lost during the time of implementation. So you can, you look at the Human Capital Fund for Transition in Colombia. You can see some of the information that is important for implementation. So there's four big challenges for implementation. The first is the challenge of territory, stabilizing territories. As was mentioned, there's a very slow process of trying to make the adjustments necessary in security and the peace accords decided not to talk about security with some important arguments. The government said, well, we don't negotiate security policy with our historic enemy. We're not going to talk about national security issues with them and I think that makes sense to a certain extent, especially if there's an argument about legitimacy in the country, but that doesn't mean that the security sector doesn't need to be reformed. Historically, the military forces and particularly the army in Colombia have been responsible for rural security, security in the rural areas and the police have been restricted to the municipal capitals. What this means is in the first stage of reinsertion of the FARC, when the FARC begin to give up their weapons, the army says we're not going there because there's no enemy and the police says we're not going either because that's a rural area and it's outside of our jurisdiction and so we ended up with areas that were very unprotected without capacity of presence of the state, even for basic guarantee of security for people. And so the big challenge ahead of us in Colombia, I think is that we need to have cooperation between Colombia and the United States to strengthen our ability to administer justice in various territories. Colombia's done a first part of that, the rule of law to make sure we can have a capacity for security but in terms of administering justice in the rule of law, we have not made the transition we need to make yet and I would like to see a plan Colombia for the justice sector to be able to really ensure security and strengthen the justice sector in Colombia. Today, we don't even have judges, prosecutors and technical investigators for each 100,000 in Colombia. So this is a dramatic understepping of these kinds of things. Reforming the security sector is still pending, we need the rural police needs to be strengthened as well in their justice administration capacities. And of course, there's an essential component that Steve mentioned, which is the challenge of re-incorporating members of the FARC. In parentheses, the PISA Corps is in spite of being a very strong accord and 300 pages falls very short in terms of the reinsertion of the FARC members. That topic hadn't been discussed until the very end and then there was a huge pressure at the end to reach the PISA Corps because the political pressure was such that the results had to happen now. So there was just a small paragraph with a series of adjectives that the re-incorporation had to guarantee, collective re-incorporation and open paths for individual re-incorporation with socioeconomic components and psychosocial attention. It was just a paragraph with some characteristics but no details of a plan. And so that was postponed for the next phases after the signing of the courts in terms of how to build a policy of re-incorporation. There was an agency of re-incorporation that was established but for over a year has passed we have not been able to reach an agreement on what the policy will be. And so guerrillas are now disarmed and not exactly sure what the road ahead looks like with more than 300 members of the FARC have been trained and there have been trained to be like security escorts and so on, so it's about 200 or 300 members who've been trained for that. But the 12,000 FARC members who were certified as they gave up their weapons, there's not really a clear vision for the future about how they're going to be re-incorporated. Is it going to be done in groups? Is it going to be done individually or should it be done in both ways? And if so, how? And if it has to be a program of the Colombian administration or is it going to be a program administered by FARC? So all of those questions have yet to be answered. I think in terms of stabilizing territory, those issues are priority and they're priority that have to be taken care of very soon. So beyond your position on the peace accords, governments is going to have to be able to provide order in various territories. They need to have a security policy for the territory and a policy for re-incorporating the former FARC members. The second challenge is socioeconomic development and there are a number of programs of implementation of Plain Colombia, many of them administered by USIP and they have showed that various struggles of against illegal drugs are only sustainable if they have socioeconomic development components. If you go only with security capacity and there is no capacity to offer people on the ground other opportunities for making a living and other possibilities for moving ahead, those policies will fail and you have new cycles of violence and that's why the peace accords has as a central component rural development and there are a number of challenges in these areas, the provision of goods and services, roads, infrastructure, rural education, rural health, all of the priorities that have always been left for the last priority because governments are looking for where the votes are and in these zones usually there's fewer votes, why? Because there's fewer Colombians there, many of them displaced to urban areas and also because they're remote areas and don't have as many services and so the different candidates need to say what their positions are in terms of rural development and in order to quit leaving these Colombians in the last priority. And even now the government that has signed the peace accords has a very small budget for implementing the peace accords, it's less than the budget for fishing, it's ridiculous. And so in terms of consolidating the state and the state's presence in the territory, there's a lot of work to be done. The peace accords also talk about formalizing land titles, there's about 70 million hectares that are supposed to be formalized and many of them are supposed to go to rural farmers who have not had sufficient access to land. And this situation has not been taken care of yet. And so development is stagnated, you need to have the ability to have land, the access to credits to be able to move forward in rural areas and have opportunities and of course the land survey. Today Colombia is very far behind compared to other countries in the region including Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru in terms of the possibility of having a real rural survey of saying what the perimeter of the lands are of the various rural properties and to me it's really shocking to see if they're going to increase or decrease the budgets but it seems to me to be priority to have a reliable survey so that people pay taxes on the actual land area that they own. Erogarian jurisdiction to be able to resolve property conflicts is also very important because that's been at the center of many conflicts in rural areas and of course crop substitution and I would include that in part of the socioeconomic development challenge. In Colombia we now have a challenge that in spite of the assessment that was done in the process of building the peace accords where it was prior experiences of crop substitutions were evaluated very clearly the conclusion in the peace accords was that this can't be done by writing people checks and so there's no place in the peace accords that talk about writing checks to growers. This is the government that has signed the peace accords but I suppose they want to be very efficient but unfortunately they are repeating the errors of the past that if you don't do rural development first then people receive their check and they go plant the same plant somewhere else but we really need to be able to figure out how to get them into legal and productive agriculture. So we must also ensure the articulation and coordination between eradication and substitution strategies. Today what's happening because of the U.S. pressure on reducing the amount of acreage where COCA is being grown and that's a strong pressure because it's true the acreage is going up but if the process on reducing those indicators as opposed to going to the communities like the peace accords says looking to see what kind of voluntary agreements can be made and if not then you have forest eradication those who will not change crops voluntarily but what the state's trying to do is to respond very quickly in order to change the indicators and so they're destroying any possibility of building trust with these communities. Instead of the carrot first and then the stick they just come in with the stick and then they're breaking up, destroying any opportunity to be able to work with other incentives and to work more with a carrot. So we also have an immense challenge in terms of satisfying the rights of the victims of the conflict. Colombia made a decisive step in terms of the accord on justice and reparations and that makes me very proud because outside of the country we are recognized as the country that in a peace accords has been able to have two parties sit down at the table and to accept that what's happened is so serious that people must be held accountable and that's a significant step and it's not something that is taken for granted. The rest of the world recognizes it as a big achievement but in Colombia everything's very nice on paper but to turn that into reality is much more complicated and so that's another challenge in terms of how to satisfy the just demands of the victims. So I think any government that takes in serious, takes seriously their role in satisfying the demands of the victims is realizing that they must do that. Now all of the sectors politically are saying that they wanna satisfy the demands of the victims but if a government really has a right, really has an interest, must put their money where their mouth is and really include a budget. The truth commission, a special jurisdiction for peace, the fund for reparation of victims need to be well funded, they need to be transparent and they need to have autonomy with respect to the government and there's an immense challenge for these institutions to work together on the matter of what are the functions of the truth commissions that are different from the special jurisdictions of peace in order to not duplicate functions. This is open for discussion because the peace accords did not resolve this and what this has done well or not will depend on the ability of these institutions to coordinate their work. There was a decision last week to arrest Santrich, this creates a very interesting scenario which is to make sure that conditionality happens that there's special treatment whether it's amnesty, an alternative sanction or reduced sanction but any of these sanctions is conditioned on telling the truth and contributing to reparation to the victims and of not repeating these crimes. So if you don't tell the truth there will be negative consequences and that's why the Santrich scenario is so sad and we need to see what kinds of evidence has come out beyond what we've seen so far but what we've seen in the media so far if what they're saying is true then certainly he needs to be tried with everything that the law allows. He needs to be judged and sanctioned in Colombia but it seems to be that the government is sending a message that extradition is a possibility so to guarantee legal security and not taking away any kind of benefit from someone who is complying with the conditions but if he is not then certainly there needs to be some consequences. I'm very anxious that the presidential debates don't really talk about these issues very much about what should be the government's position of responsibility in this situation. Anyone who is elected is going to have to recognize the responsibility of the state in the crimes committed during the conflict and what kind of information is going to be turned over to the truth commission and to the special jurisdictions for peace. What is the state's commitment to taking away the illicit goods that armed actors have gained in order to give them to the victims? Alejandra has talked a little bit about this last one so I'll be brief but everything that has to do with strengthening the Colombian political system is also a challenge. There was the electoral observation mission did a study about the reforms that need to be made to the political system and there is a text on electoral reform and some of what's happening is already very far from the recommendations that have come out and the electoral debate in the legislation has been terrible. We have sort of a Frankenstein legislation at this point in terms of reforming the electoral council conversations about the importance of reducing and controlling the resources that are given to election campaigns, having a cap on election spending, what you do with minority parties to make sure that they don't disappear, what kind of legal status will they have and there's an aggravating factor that I'm sure you've seen in the news that the 16 seats that were supposed to be the additional representation from territories that were specially victimized in the armed conflict, these are the zones that have participated very little in the national conversations about representation and so the Congress also says let's make sure that we emphasize that these are victims, it's not just anyone who gets the special seats but let's incorporate the victims on all sides. So stabilization of the territory, socioeconomic development, satisfaction of the rights of victims and reform to the electoral system are all pending and I think these are the four biggest challenges that we have today. As Alejandra said, and I'll just add a little bit from the experience of the last year of looking at these things comparatively is that I believe that successful transition policies are those that incorporate different sectors. The sectors that have been farthest away from the center in South Africa, the experience shows that it's precisely through in cooperating some of the representatives of apartheid that allowed Mandela to be able to govern. I'm afraid many Colombians think we're going to one logic of exclusion to another logic of excluding the other side. And so how we deal with the peace accords and making, we're going to figure out, those of us who were in favor of the peace accords are going to have to figure out how to incorporate into the political discussion those who voted no in the plebiscite. I mentioned these four challenges because I think in these four challenges it's important to build narratives of consensus. I think it's possible to talk about rural development. I think it's possible to talk about satisfying the rights of all victims on all sides because I think it's possible to have a serious conversation about strengthening security, policy and various territories. And of course the road ahead is very complex but I would like the candidates to talk about these types of issues about how we can really make sure the peace building process in Colombia is sustainable and how can we really turn the page of from war to peace in Colombia and generate better living conditions for all Colombians who are fighting against inequality and poverty. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Juanita. As I said, it's just as is for Alejandra. It's also a privilege to have Juanita here. She knows so much and hasn't been involved in the peace process but has also been a participant in the electoral processes. And now that she is a congresswoman it's especially a process, sorry, it's especially a privilege to have her here with us. We're gonna have just some brief responses from Mark and from Jonas. We'll start with Mark so that he can give us some brief reflections about the two presentations and throughout the first questions for debate. Mark is a senior advisor with the America's Program and the Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He served as senior vice president and senior advisor of the International Crisis Group, ICG, from 2001 until March 2017. In government, Mr. Schneider served as the director of the Peace Corps from 1999 to 2001 and as assistant administrator of the US Agency for International Development for Latin America and the Caribbean from 1993 to 1999. He was also the chief of the Office of Analysis and Strategic Planning of the Pan-American Health Organization and deputy assistant secretary of state for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs from 1977 to 1979 and a foreign policy advisor to Senator Edward Kennedy. Mark, thank you very much. I'm not sure whether I should do this in English or Spanish. I probably can do it faster in English. But how do you feel most comfortable with it? Well, first of all, thank you. Second, the presentations were really excellent. Okay, I'll do it in Spanish. I have a few questions. You can have a look at that slide on the screen and that shows basically information about the polls that were published after the legislative election and that's a poll from Envamer. There were three polls that were carried out in March that showed that Ivan Duque had 40, 42, 45% of the votes in the three survey polls respectively. Gustavo Petro got 24, 26, and 27% respectively and Sergio Fafardo between nine and 12% in those three polls. And then the one that suffered the most was Vargasieras from the first poll to the third, his share actually decreased. What I would like to highlight is that the only age range where Duque didn't win was in the group of 18 to 24. Duque had between 31 and 41%. That's an interesting piece of data. Second, another important piece of data has to do with Bogota, Petro won here too. Something interesting is that in terms of the congressional vote, everyone said that traditional parties have decreased tremendously but I would like to say something. While in the lower chamber we saw a decrease of four seats, the liberal party is still the largest one, they still have 35 seats. In the Senate, in the upper chamber, Uribe's political party received many votes but they still lost one seat. The one who won the most was the one from Cambio Radical of Vargasieras and another one that won was the Green Party in the Senate as well as in the lower chamber. So I think that what Alejandra said is right, there's a balance in the Congress who wants the presidency will have to govern together with a Congress that is quite balanced and people will have to make compromises. Now, something that I see will be a challenge is the following, crime, corruption, labor or work, employment, those three are three important things for people, peace accords and their implementation basically permeates everything that has to do with the elections and I think it's actually a negative pressure from the campaign standpoint and this is kind of bizarre because what Juanita said is truly important. Since the signing of the peace accords, the homicide rate has decreased more than in the last 42 years. 225 municipalities are now land, mine free. Before the process started, Colombia was number one or number two in terms of mine victims in the world and right now Colombia ranks 10th. These are important things to take into account. Then Juanita said something and I would have said the same thing and I'm talking about the following. In my opinion, something that is not understandable has to do with lack of peace and security. In the past, this was the biggest challenge if you want for the peace accords to succeed. Extended investment or public services to consolidate the rule of law in those municipios de conflicto. And that's what I don't understand. That's the biggest obstacle to everything that has been said regarding reintegration of ex-combatants, regarding the benefit for those that suffer the war for 50 years and I don't really understand why the government has not been able to address this. Something else that is relevant that I would like to mention. Where the FARC in the country were the social activists that have died. Well, if you analyze that type of information, you'll see that it's the same areas where you have coca growing, where you have the social activists that have died, where you have the social activists that have died, where you have coca growing, where you have more activism, so you need to bring security to those areas. Something that someone hasn't mentioned is that the peace accord was passed or approved also by the constitutional court. And I don't think Duque could actually renegotiate the agreement by himself because the court has says that the court is the law now. Then something else that has not been mentioned here is the one million Venezuelans that have left the country and have crossed the border to Colombia. In my opinion, Colombia has been very tolerant and has welcomed these Venezuelans. Now, we need to do much more. There are many issues that have to be addressed. Health, education, but all this, I believe, has an impact on the campaign. And a final point, the six weeks to the election in the United States, in six weeks, those six weeks in 2006 were at the end of September, and a lot happened between the last week of September and the first week of November, in 2016. And I think the same thing is going to happen with Colombia. Thank you, Mark, for your comments. I think this opens up the great deal of reflection now regarding what's at stake in this peace process. Now I would like to offer the floor to my colleague, Jonas Kles, from the U.S. Institute of Peace, so he can share some ideas based on his experience. He's been leading the prevention, the program on the prevention of electoral violence. He's a senior program officer of the U.S. Institute of Peace where he conducts research and analysis on the prevention of electoral violence and mass atrocities in this capacity. Mr. Kles coordinates prevention projects and consults senior U.S., U.N. and EU officials on fine-tuning prevention practices. In 2016, he worked from the European Institute of Peace Office to continue his work on election security from Brussels, where he tried to integrate the work of USIP and the EIP. Jonas, the floor is yours, rather. Apologies in advance. My Spanish is not good enough to proceed for the remainder of the presentation, so I'll prefer to speak English. Good morning, everybody. Thank you, Steve, for the kind introduction and to all of our guests from Colombia for sharing their experience. Considering USIP's mandate in this field, election violence prevention, and also our work in this field, I think Colombia presents a very interesting case. I think, fortunately, what we'll see is that the upcoming presidential elections will not see the levels of violence in most of the countries that the U.S. Institute of Peace works in. I think it's a very interesting case because you have an upcoming presidential election that is organized amidst the final stages of what has been a long-standing conflict and peace process, and this makes it particularly difficult to distinguish election-related violence from ordinary political violence. So, on the one hand, the election can certainly worsen existing tensions that remain, and depending on the outcome, as our previous speakers have indicated, can have some serious repercussions on the peace process. But at the same time, each phase of the election cycle presents unique risks of violence as well. We've already seen a rather polarized campaign period, and as Ms. Barrios mentioned, a very unpredictable campaign, and unpredictability is usually one of the best and most significant risk factors of a very tense and potentially violent campaign. And in the future, we may also observe worsening threats and possibly even further violence against some of the candidates or frustrations, ones that the results are public. So, each phase of a long election cycle started with the nomination process campaign periods, awaiting the results, and an immediate aftermath presents unique risks that usually justify taking certain preventive measures, and that's what USIP tries to do. So, when you look at global figures, most election violence usually seems to occur in the long run-up before Election Day. Election Day is typically quite calm and post-election violence, if it occurs, tends to be the most intense. But my colleagues are certainly better positioned than me to determine whether Colombia is expected to follow this pattern or not. So, let me keep my comments very brief and raise perhaps two or three questions while offering some observations from our research that may be relevant to the Colombian context. As Steve mentioned in his introduction, our research tries to look at what works to prevent election violence and what does not. A recent USIP study drawing from elections from around the world shows that the security sector and the election commission really hold the key to peaceful elections. And similarly important, we see that the involvement of election observers like Moe and civic education really stands out as being very promising preventive practices for peace. On the other hand, we were not able in our research to find strong evidence conferring the impact of youth programming and peace messaging on the levels of election violence specifically, particularly given the way that these prevention instruments are commonly implemented with short implementation cycles. My first question relates to the role of observers, both international observers and domestic. So, we already understand quite a bit about the validating role that observers can play and how they can strengthen the integrity of an election process. But I'd be very interested to hear in perhaps the opinion of Alejandro specifically of how observers may help mitigate the risk of election violence in the Colombian context by perhaps detecting instances that allow for response or other forms that you may be able to help identify. And secondly, election violence can take many shapes or forms. The recent report by Moe that was on the slide earlier highlights the prominence of online hate speech, which is a common predictor of physical violence. But in other countries around the world, violence can take different forms. We see often targeted assassinations, potentially violent street protests like we saw in Honduras, excessive use of police force in Kenya, intimidation of the opposition in Cambodia and often there's a lot of violence against women specifically, women voters and candidates, as well as the destruction of materials as one of the more common forms of election violence. But in Colombia it was mentioned that intolerance is a significant challenge by our speakers. Now at USIP we've observed an increase in intolerance and hate speech specifically in many elections that are out there. And there's really two different schools of thought about how hate speech and intolerance can be connected to violence. I think that Alejandra made a very compelling case drawing from the example of Timochenko and his speech and the response that his presentations gave into how hate speech or intolerance can be an incubator of election violence and trigger actual violence. There's another school of thought that says that the type of violence and speech you see on social media can almost have some type of displacement effect and offer people for them safe space to mention some of their grievances and frustrations on online platforms keeping that violence away from the streets. I think the jury is still out on which dynamic is the most prevalent or where I stand. Perhaps from Alejandra about how that dynamic may play out. But I think the most critical question is how do we prevent it? What do we do about it? So how can hate speech, how can intolerance, that level be improved, is that through broad scale public campaigns, type of peace messaging, what type of efforts may be the most beneficial of addressing this. And then in conclusion, based on your observations and those of Moe, I was also wondering what have been the other most prevalent forms of election related violence in previous elections in Colombia and what types of violence are the most anticipated in the upcoming presidential elections. I'll leave it here. Thank you all. Thank you Jonas for your comments about lessons learned based on the studies carried out by USIP, especially about electoral violence prevention before offering the floor to the audience to ask questions over to speakers. I would like to offer the floor to our speakers so that they can answer some of the questions posed by our two commentators in whatever order you want. First of all, thank you, Marc and Jonas. Your comments are truly relevant and the questions you asked are very relevant. I will address a few of them. First of all, I do believe that the way Congress is, it is possible, especially when it comes to peace, to develop a coalition that will include sectors of the EU that play a role of a swing vote, also liberalism, sectors from the conservative power, which are also a swing vote, and then Vargas Llera's discourse over the last weeks kind of changed a little bit. Duque is leading the no, and now he's starting to say that based on the decisions of the constitutional court, he's actually in favor of implementing the accords. That's what he's saying. Something very different that he will do, but at least we saw a change in his discourse. And behind that, I believe that there's a negotiation that showed that EU and certain liberal sectors will also support the implementation of the accords. So we do have a possibility of having a coalition in Congress to address peace issues as well as others. Regarding your question about security, it's extremely complex. I worked on the defense in the past, and I think that beyond political tensions that of course might exist, the institutional challenge here is humongous. Colombia has never had the capacity to have for example a carabinery type of police force to cover the whole territory, and that's why the conflict affected the country as a whole. So when we talk about having the government bring rule of law to the whole territory, it's because we've never had rule of law covering the whole territory, the whole country. And that's an institutional challenge. There was a lot of discussion during the referendum. They were talking about how resources were going to be redistributed, and I think within the security sector, certain resources have to be redistributed. For example, equipment, procurement we need different equipment compared to equipment that was used for international wars or bombardments or things like that. That's our priority anymore, but in terms of investment, I think we have discussions that have not taken place. For example, retrain military troops, police forces, discussions that have to do with change of the rules of engagement and so on and so forth. That was mentioned at some point in 2017 and over the last eight years we've moved backwards in terms of changing the rules of engagement within the territory and the military forces will have had to adjust their role and they became almost law enforcement agents. We haven't had a discussion about the change of equipment. For example, non-lethal armament this is all pending and here the discussion has actually focused more on redistributing security resources to social aspects as opposed to all their security priorities in the country. Third comment, I do not agree with your interpretation of the constitutional court decision. First of all, the decision has not been published. We just have a communique. Unfortunately the even though the sentence says that the peace accord has to be implemented it said that the accord itself is not a law. What does that mean? Well, right now we have a constitutional reform developed at some point about the next congress and the next president can immediately carry out the same type of constitutional reform and put an end to the accords. There's no prohibition to do that. Tomorrow a law could be passed and the truth commission could be eliminated. It's basically a legislative step that changed the rules so that the FAR could participate in politics. That can be changed too. I don't want to be a pessimist. I don't think we're moving in that direction but I don't think everything is safe at this point because the accords are not a law yet. Then in terms of the Venezuelans that have been displaced, this is a key factor in Colombia. There is now an increased xenophobic sentiment. It is present. It exists. I personally believe that Alejandra is the expert and I believe that part of the potential is in this xenophobic discourse that is increasing based on that hate discourse. This is the new they are the new enemy in Colombia and what I saw was Venezuelans attacking Petro's campaign. Venezuelans, sellers that are everywhere saying you, Petro will turn this country into another Venezuela. So you can see the same on the street and that has actually fired up the whole electoral process. You see Venezuelans that are being displaced because of the situation in Venezuela and they are afraid that the same thing will happen in Colombia. We have to make sure that migrants become more productive and not only on education, health, employment we need the necessary incentives so that those migrants that will continue to come into Colombia because the problem will not be solved in a short term are fully integrated in society so that they become productive members of society. Many Colombians that left now are coming back and they don't want to go back to agricultural activities so we need to make sure that we have the necessary structure in place to absorb those people in a productive manner. Another comment I believe that obviously it's important to talk about the hate discourse that we're seeing but that in any case we have a positive scenario in Colombia. For these ideas we killed each other 50 years ago and now we're just screaming at each other on Facebook and Twitter given of course there are very serious situations too. So in stones and that has to be taken into account but we have to be aware that because of those ideas in the past we had real confrontation. Now we have hostility obviously but it's hostility online there is political polarization but people are not killing each other basically so we have the same polarization in the past where we historically killed each other and now we're fighting against each other through social media and we're having serious incidents like throwing stones against each other but less serious than they were in the past. Thank you. I don't know I don't know I don't really know what to say regarding what you said. We're analyzing the hate discourse situation because we believe it's key for those that are Colombians they know that candidates are very wealthy people most of the times in the past we had for example once with the Sargaviria he was elected president because he was the only one who was left alive. Those were very complicated elections people were dying but local elections are those very complicated elections because there is a those are basically a fight over territorial control now if we focus on congress and leaders we see a new phenomenon in the rural areas and that's why I was saying that what is happening in the rural media does not stay there we are saying that then it's being transferred to public events and it could be maybe just throwing a stone or it could be a shot or a shooting it could create also an stampede and that was our greatest concern from December 11th when the electoral process started up until March 31st 30 political leaders were killed 15 were threatened social leaders that have a political role somehow because we differentiate between the different type of leaders some have a political role and others don't so we have to be very specific here though 11 were threatened and 30 of the social leaders with a political role were killed and then those that were clearly supporting a specific candidate 23 were killed or attacked and or rather 23 were attacked and 2 were killed therefore we still we still see that many people are being killed during elections why are people still being killed and this takes me to your question about what happened with the accord that was supposed to be implemented in the country and that the country was not capable of sometimes you find an explanation in the past so let's think back in 2006 when we started our electoral observation mission let's quote Garay Garay was talking about reconfiguration Garay allowed us to have a conceptual framework in order to understand why some regions in Colombia have been captured couldn't quote through the democratic exercise so democratic rules were applied but they were captured by armed actors that wanted to rule over these territories so 12 years later 10 years later we see a government and then we saw certain areas that were controlled under under the control of illegal actors drug traffickers the peace accords talked about equality about giving land to some people but if people continue to be ruled by a vicious circle then we need to look at the news in Colombia from January until now January until now really to see what's happening with food, with health with education and so on and so forth how resources are being managed in the past what was public was not public if I didn't take over it before 2006 with the arms then in 2006 the paramilitary surrendered their weapons and now we have a different situation that's what's happening we didn't have the capacity because those that control certain territories are closely more closely related to mafia to illegality than to the government so if they're not going to become honest are they going to represent a population are they going to implement the agreement well that's a fairy tale and basically what's it's translated into the crisis that I talked about that affects political parties but the peace accords are not written in stone now accords do imply that there's two parties so now what do I do do I I would like to understand in terms of a presidential candidate are you going to sit down and rewrite it no I don't think so I don't think anyone needs to change anything I think what's more likely to happen is that things won't be done in Colombia we are experts in not doing things and we are very successful in that area so there's not going to be a negotiation of the accords I think that's a distraction but we continue to have this problem some authorities of the institution say and it's the same sorry the power in Colombia is the same power that was there during the war and so that's real power when you talk about elections that's that's different so the people who are dying now are dying because who's going to have power next year not who has power now so we have an economy of war right now you have to remember that the FARC that the economy is leaving behind and the territories if we superimpose the two maps you can see that it's the economy of independence and in Colombia what we're disputing is not really a national discourse of corruption inequality and Castro chavismo what we're really disputing are the territories of illegal economy and that's what people are fighting about in local areas so there's the ELN the criminal bands the Urabeños and they have capacity to negotiate with local powers both electoral power and political power unfortunately because of our decision of not doing things the territory is prepared right now to recycle local wars weapons trafficking contraband they're going to happen exactly in the same territories where the war was happening before and when people are being killed so people are going to have to still deal with the same warlords that existed there before so we just have a few minutes left with interpretation we started a little bit late I want to give you the opportunity here if you would like to ask questions to either of our presenters any questions about the current moment in Colombia anyone have a question I have a question for Alejandra in the United States we're having a big debate right now about the influence of trolls and Russia in our social media do you think that any of what you have talked to us about in terms of hate in social media is being generated by one candidate or another illegally or other countries do you think there are other participants in this or is this just purely a local phenomenon two or three questions let's take good morning the question and I have us a little bit more specific to a reform to the security sector it's a little bit specifically looking at national police of Colombia it was national defense and connection with drug trafficking are there people who should stay should they leave are there sectors that are more aligned with national police and local areas etc I would like to ask given what's happened in the last few days with the murder of three journalists in Ecuador how do you think this is going to affect the elections and the peace accords with both the ELN and the FARC any other questions if not I'm going to ask just two or three questions as well and then we'll close a question for Juanita the question is proposed by some candidates you know very well what kinds of implications might these changes or restructurings of the peace accords have the kinds of things that are being suggested by the candidates and for Alejandra the special electoral missions the recommendations were not accepted by congress how might have the electoral process been different and those recommendations had been integrated and approved would there be a significant difference in the electoral process in this cycle so those are the two questions and then we'll wait for those answers and thank you all for your patience in terms of the influence of outside parties and electoral parties through social media we found eight big influencers two are candidates to the presidency of the republic when they write it doesn't matter what they say they create sorry candidates for the presidency they can either one of them might write something that's a nice day outside and people who hate them will say no it's not nice it's cloudy it's going to rain you know you're stupid so oh thank you so much for opening your eyes to see that the day is nice so those are two particular candidates there's also a journalist Petro and Vargasieras are the two candidates there's a journalist who if she says something everyone gets inflamed and that's Perez Cursati there are two people who used to be candidates who are Bolívar and Gustavo Gustavo Olívar and Dr. Uribe no matter what they say you know the day is nice everybody will it provokes reactions and there are three outsiders two Venezuela and one Cuban each time that they write a tweet the social media in Colombia just lights up in opposition to the Venezuelan and Colombian government yes two Venezuelans and a Cuban one is from the United States the other Venezuelan lives in Venezuela I think the Cubans in Miami it's hard to tell but they are outside of Colombia because they talk about Colombia as something being over there and their social media just lights up and explodes and those three have really generated a lot of hate speech but so it's not the same as the Russia issue it's more like they're just using the prescription of patriot that kind of language yes now Ecuador that issue I'm gonna say something that's terrible and I'll just start by saying I'm sorry in Ecuador journalists are being killed and people are talking about it a lot because it hardly ever happens but in Colombia we're used to journalists and campesinos and different people being killed all the time so it could be used for the political campaign but what's happening now is quite extraordinary is that it's just one more number in murders now we do have a situation where we have armed groups that are on that border and it's incredible that there aren't more there's about 1200 I think it's been about a year there where they have been disputing territories you say sit down and play you say you can't have any social or economic options for reintegrating into society there's no other option and there's practically ads I'm looking for an armed man who's willing to go to war and it's really easy why because there's no option for giving land for legitimate reasons or for learning certain things and because there are no programs we are going back to war in that area and I think truly it's because of lack of options we had the best men and women negotiating that piece of cord but nobody was thinking how to best implement it and we don't have a team to do that and in terms of the changes when I look at the correlation of power in congress I think we could end up with a constitutional convention and in a country where you don't have political agreements on very fundamental things it would be a disaster to have a constitutional convention because if you have that you wouldn't reach a great agreement like we did in 1991 but it would be to exclude certain groups so to to leave out half the country so how can we integrate the people who voted no in the referendum that's a great question but we need to really even figure out how to integrate how the no people are going to integrate the yes people because in terms of the balance of power the no people seem to have louder voices I think how things might have been different Steve if they had incorporated the recommendations of the electoral observation mission well it was a lost opportunity the decision of the constitutional court to not allow this to go forward because of that a lot of things that haven't happened haven't happened it was a disaster so I laid the blame at the feet of the constitutional court in Colombia to do a reform to change the very bases of power of course it's very difficult and in the congress you can move little by little if we don't have fast track but if we had had fast track we would have had a great opportunity in terms of international observers in times of war we've had a lot of experience with OAS and other international observers in terms of the murders and assassinations I think it's very important that violence in I think national electoral mission has been much has been more effective than outside observers in the first places that we were able to cover they were the municipalities where the FARC are no longer present but there's very little that observer organizations can do when people are killed you can make proposals for reconciliation and that those who have different ways of thinking shouldn't be killed but there's not much else you can do well one thing about the police I do think that we should think in the future about a ministry of security and take the police out from underneath the ministry of defense because right now we have both military and police forces under the department of defense but I think part of the problem has been that that's only the only discussion as opposed to other discussions that have to do with budget that have to do with transforming soldiers into police officers the use of force, training weapons and so on so I think what you're saying is part of that but I think it needs to be part of a larger discussion in terms of the kidnapping I agree with what Alejandra said but I would also say that from the point of view of security there's a perfect excuse there's one of the reasons that we're not reforming the security sector is because you say well there's still this thing happening in the military and so to be able to make fundamental steps it's really hard because there's obstacles because of the dissidents from the FARC and from the ELN you want to be involved in this part of the conversation and that's part of the reason why we're not able to get more serious conversations on security on the third issue the two main things are that those who are found guilty of being responsible for crimes against humanity, crimes of war have to pay a certain price a certain sanction time in jail and when the NO was renegotiated they said they should at least go to agricultural areas and if you have conditional freedom what does that mean exactly and those who are found guilty for being war criminals criminals or crimes against humanity will have to serve time before they can participate in politics they can participate in politics but first they have to serve the time necessary where other people say no zero political participation even after they pay their time think these are going to be decisions that are coming from the constitutional court and in other courts so what are the restrictions to freedom right now for parole it's not clear but another question is when does the time begin to be counted because right now people have been I'm talking about the main responsible parties are going around very freely and so they haven't really started to pay the price of having those who are going to be found guilty of war crimes I don't think that their time has started yet so I think the first decision that the president is going to have to make is from when do you start counting the time and so then you also have to decide what is this conditional freedom look like so there's going to be people who say what people have to go to jail and they don't want to hear about anything else same thing for political participation you can say alright you can register but if we suspend your punishment that is conditioned on your recognizing your crimes and there has to be non-repetition and there has to be verification that this is true and if not then your conditional freedom can be revoked and so I think then in the recent arrest I think the the condition of conditional freedom could indeed be taken away from him and it will depend on what jurisdiction in which the decisions are made if it's a new government and it's duke then it might be you know you have to go to jail no other conditions with the FARC aren't going to agree with that so then you're going to have a conflict and I think what Alejandra said was important also in terms of the two candidates that are in favor of the polls right now I think Sergio Fajardo however is going to be an important role on this one it's not going to be a constitutional transition it's going to be whatever transition happens going to happen within the constitutional framework so what was the result of losing the referendum that was a symptom of what happened when fast track was taken away and so on thank you very much Juanita and Alejandra for these responses so it seems like that we really have to focus on the process of implementation still unfortunately our time is over we've gone 20 minutes over we certainly want to thank you for coming here today and please follow us on our web page for more information and I just want to thank our invited guests again as I've said on many occasions it's an honor to have you here and we wish you all the best in your efforts and in the rest of the selection campaign and I hope you'll be able to come back to the institute to share your perspectives in the future especially in terms of everything that's at stake in local elections in October of 2019 I think things are going to get even more tricky there we also want to thank Mark and Jonas for their comments and questions that have enriched this conversation as we expected thank you very much I also want to thank Maria Antonia Montes for all of her support and work in putting these forums together we're going to continue to organize these forums throughout the rest of the year so one final round of applause for our panel and thank you again