 Good morning, everyone. On behalf of the partner organizations that have taken part in the convening of this meeting, I would like to extend a very warm welcome to this public event, presenting the final report of the Commission for the Clarification of Truth and celebrating its legacy to heal the perfunda wounds in the Club and Society. We would like to express thanks for you being here, those who are here in person at the Institute of Peace headquarters, as well as those listening in online. A special warm welcome to the groups of victims who have traveled from a number of states, the United States, to be with us here today. I'm Steve Hagee. I am the Assistant Director for Latin America here at the Peace Institute, USIP. For those who don't know this Institute, the Peace Institute is a public institution, yet autonomous, that does not fall under the executive branch with a congressional mandate, going back to 1984 to promote the prevention mitigation and conflict, the resolution of conflict, violent conflict throughout the world in Colombia. The Institute has been working for 20 years, offering support for a number of peace-building initiatives at the national level and the different territories, so it's my privilege to head up the Institute's office in Bogota. Now, from our main headquarters in Washington, it's a true pleasure and honor for us to have with us three commissioners from the Truth Commission, Dr. Saul Barranco, Commissioner Alejandra Miller, and Francisco DeRue, Father Francisco DeRue, who presides over the Commission. We hope that your presence here and your thoughts can shed light on this process and inspire all of us who humbly seek to be peace advisors in Colombia and elsewhere. It's been a privilege for us to be partners among many other international partners in the support that we offer and in following through with the Commission's mandate. The Commission was created under the PISA Accord signed in 2016 between the State of Colombia and the FARC movement to define causes and responsibilities for the armed conflict and to make recommendations for non-repetition and non-continuity of what happened that caused so much pain and trauma to Colombian society beyond drafting a report which is very valuable. The Commission has also undertaken an even more challenging task of facilitating processes and opportunities for reconciliation and healing, including a number of very moving encounters between victims and responsible parties, such as leaders of the FARC and of law enforcement. So, we thank our partners who have taken part in convening this. We've got the Washington office for Latin America, the working group on Latin America Law, the Colombian Committee on Human Rights, the CROC Institute of the Notre Dame University and Humanity United before starting with the presentations by the Commissioners and then to open up the floor for any questions from the audience. I would ask Jimena Sanchez, the director for the Indian region under WOLA to offer some introductory thoughts on behalf of their respective organizations. Kimena and Lisa Hoggart have been partners of the PISA Institute over the years and have followed closely the work of the Commission here in Washington as well as in Colombia. Jimena Sanchez, please come forward. Thank you very much, Steve. I thank the PISA Institute for organizing this very important event today. It's an honor for me to be here with Father Deru, commissioners of the Truth Commissioner, Christina Spinell and victims and the Ambassador of Colombia. Now, on behalf of WOLA, I would like to commend the Truth Commission for having fulfilled this task and the words fail me. This tremendous undertaking of producing a report which brings together a coherent narrative of abuses in the country during the internal armed strife of nearly more than 60 years. This is a very sophisticated report on point which gathers witness testimony of victims and also thousands of victims of the country. I would like to underscore how important the methodology used with ethnic groups was with prior consultation to engage them and to gain their participation. And this was something that was done during the pandemic with all the attended restrictions. The Truth Commission also had to work under a post-conflict political climate which was not very conducive to it. It was a hostile environment when from the government and other sectors there was disagreement with moving forward with the peace process and which on the occasion they actively tried to undermine the peace process, the concessional peace process. It wasn't easy but you did fulfill your obligations vis-a-vis peace, reconciliation and victims setting off a platform, setting in motion a platform which will serve as a jumping board for reconciliation and non-repetition. The result of your effort is a manifold thesis that looks into the prolonged conflict in Columbia from the standpoint of victims and all the other armed actors focused on the humanitarian and human impact leading to internal fissures within the Colombian society. The report focuses on presenting the truth to victims underscoring the cost that this entailed in a differentiated perspective toward women Afro-Columbians, indigenous groups from the gender perspective and LGBTIQ showing the consequences of structural racism, discrimination, historic discrimination and classism comes together with class strife contributing to violence and conflict. The report also underscores the role played by the United States in the internal armed conflict owing to the close relationship between the United States and Columbia in the area of security and the fight against drug trafficking. Its recommendations focus on promoting peace using all of the actors with the justice approach and to fight corruption and implementing a transforming reform of law enforcement with the right focus. Now that this report has been focused it falls to all of us within Columbia and outside of Columbia Colombians and allies alike to help to mend the Colombian society to transform it to avoid repetition. It's absolutely important for legislators and other stakeholders in the United States to receive this report with seriousness. A debate needs to be held on how the United States contributed to the crimes committed during the conflict and what it can do toward peace. Our legislators need to draw lessons from how to reform police in Columbia and its anti-drug policy changing them to help build peace to bring human security or safety and to build sound solid institutions and to provide a framework for addressing structural problems long-standing structural problems that victims and the people of Columbia face there are 17 macro territories now where the armed conflict is focused which requires that those recommendations made in the ethnic part of this report is addressed be undertaken. Hopefully President Biden is going to prioritize these topics and also to undertake the efforts to mitigate or deal with racism. We have yet to thoroughly consolidate peace throughout the territory. We all need to work together to take into account these conclusions and that they be used to achieve this complete peace. Voila is working toward this total peace and we underscore the voices of ethnic groups and of women and we are more than willing to continue working and pushing forward on this agenda following through on this report in both countries that you can count on us. It's an honor for me to be here with the members of the Truth Commission and the members of the Community of Victims in exile who are here in this room. A Truth Commission offers an opportunity which is granted once in a generation for us to reflect on how a society found itself enmeshed in violence and suffering, plunge in violence and suffering and it's an unusual opportunity as well for us to try to correct the errors of the past and to build the path forward of better future. The Truth Commission of Columbia is precisely that a unique opportunity for us to halt the cycle of violence which has cost 450,000 lives. This report should not be viewed as a bunch of tomes that get shelved for only those studying the conflict would read but a living document that will guide our path toward change. When you look at the heart-wrenching testimonies in the analysis by the report you'll see that all of the armed sectors from the guerrillas to paramilitary groups and the armed forces themselves of Columbia all committed terrible acts of violence and cruelty but you'll also see many other actors, some members of the national government, operators of justice and local and regional governments as well. Columbia and the businesses and multinationals as well as international donors played a direct role or at least by omission contributed one way or the other to this violence. The Columbia Society must reflect on this and change and also the United States must reflect and change given that it offered so much support to the government of Columbia and the armed forces of Columbia during the period in which the human rights violations by many different armed groups including the armed forces of Columbia were ramped up and reached their peak We also must reflect on the very positive role that the United States played and hopefully will continue to pay in building peace in Columbia in recent years. With the publication of the Truth Commission's report at this historic juncture in which a new government is coming into office in Columbia this is a true opportunity for progress it's not just a time to listen but to act on the recommendations issued by the Truth Commission to broaden the implementation of the peace accords of 2016 including the Ethnica chapter on reforms of your reform The time has come to go back to negotiation negotiating with ELN for peace to reach the territories and to achieve more complete peace it's a time for us to undertake more energetic actions to dismantle the paramilitary networks and have organized crime that continue causing deaths in communities and undermining the rule of law it's a time for us to reflect and to transform the drug policy of the US that affected negatively Columbia and to undertake these structural reforms within the armed forces and the police of Columbia to make law enforcement security more humane and to protect human rights defenders and social leaders whose lives continue in jeopardy and it's time for us to truly hear about the victims of violence and to recognize their dignity the trauma that they suffered the resilience that they have displayed and the visions that they have for a peaceful Columbia Thank you Thank you Jimena and Lisa Now, in representation of the victims in exile who have played a proactive role in the commission's activities we have asked the founder of the Columbia Committee for Human Rights, Christina Spinell to collaborate with us by moderating today, Christina is a very close friend of the Institute of Peace for many years and has been a renowned fighter someone who's fought for human rights and peace in Columbia for three decades now after having, after hearing her words and those of the commissioners we're going to learn more about the process that was facilitated by the commission for the victims, you're on the floor Christina, thank you very much I would like to ask Steve if you would mind if I were to talk a bit about what our experience was as volunteers for the commission your perspective and that of the U.S. as we started doing this work so the experience with the Truth Commission has been very enriching and I would like to share this experience with you on one of the trips Alejandro Valencia did who at the time was a commissioner said that they were seeking an organization that could support them for the commission to come and tell us what their objectives were what their mission was immediately I responded Alejandro Columbia Human Rights Committee I said is an organization that has been working with the victims of the conflict receiving them and so it has been a pleasure for us to take part in this very worthwhile effort in June of 2018 we received the first visit of the commission led by Carlos Bernstein who is charged with working with victims in exile for that visit we held a number of meetings with NGOs and in the afternoon we held a meeting with the victims and that meeting was very moving because here in Washington that was the first time so many victims gathered and sat down to tell us what their experience had been and this is something that you will always carry with you in your heart and mind so Father Pacho as we call him was with us from 14th and 14th of November working with Adam Isaacson they helped organize his visit that visit was quite extensive we had meetings with NGOs with the U.S. State Department with congressmen with U.S. AID universities such as Georgetown and George Washington we had to go to George Washington it's a Georgetown university rather it's such as with university and they wanted to receive this visit at the meeting with victims there were victims that came from New Jersey, New York and from the metropolitan area of D.C. after all of these different activities between 21 and 23 of February of 2020 Commissioner Carlos Bernstein started training those people that we wanted to whose witness said testimony wanted to take that training was done in Philadelphia people came from different parts of the United States to that training session such as again New York New Jersey, Philadelphia people from North Carolina and we after receiving that training we're close to starting this effort it was very moving to put into practice what we had been preparing for we were ready to start when the pandemic hit and of course we were thwarted and that was very frustrating because we had to change the methodology from in person to virtual and the victims were a bit wary and rightfully so but little by little we started to gain their trust and we assured them that it was going to be safe and there would be no problem interviewing them virtually now just a personal note my personal experience I was a victim only of being followed by state security agents in Columbia now why did they follow me I was a volunteer and I was sympathetic to political prisoners in Columbia they caused trouble for me but I had the good fortune those who guided me enabled me to leave Columbia without any difficulty to arrive here when I left Columbia I had in my heart and in my mind the face of those political prisoners we had seen them suffering for so many years in the jails I carried them with me in my mind and that was what gave me strength and what still gives me strength today to continue onward to be able to do something with them from here in the US okay upon hearing the testimonies of the victims my heart shattered I couldn't have on my mind so many people suffering at the hands of all of the legal and illegal armed groups in Columbia and with these testimonies that were given we have managed to create a truth in the country but we also learned that there are two Columbias and there are two stories what was the role of the Truth Commission the Truth Commission's job was to unite these two stories so that we could make one Columbia again and that has been very brave we thank the Truth Commission for that and for their work in exile the Truth Commission has ended its period but it has not ended its work there's still much work to do we must spread the information contained in this report we are going to spread it to every corner of the earth there won't be any corner left in this earth that does not know about what happened why? because there is a future if there is truth thank you very much I ask for your forgiveness now we are going to go into the presentation of the commissioners here we have Father Pacho as we call him Father Francisco de Roo he's a Jesuit who has worked with local and international peace groups in Columbia for three decades he also has studied philosophy and Father de Roo is also a master of economics he studied economics at the University of Paris he wrote several books about ethics and social development among other things Father de Roo 15 years ago founded an organization in Magdalena Medio for peace and development this was an area that was highly affected by the guerrilla and paramilitary activity Father de Roo it is your turn thank you very moved to see all of you here with us today thank you for coming and thank you because your presence reaffirms something that we feel in Columbia this is a very special moment for us it's a moment of truth telling we all are feeling this bravery emerge and we all need to work together to make this future possible thank you of course to those who are here who are victims who are living in exile and who have had to face the tremendous difficulties of living in exile because they don't have a home in Columbia because in Columbia they could kill them they came and built a new life in difficult conditions thank you for being here because you are doing what we have been working towards in the commission to determine the truth to tell the stories of the victims we have presented all of this with great passion the victims of the paramilitary groups of the guerrillas of the Colombian state itself there are six different groups of victims that we are supporting one of your friends Steve another fellow father has been working directly with these groups when the victims arrived there the first thing that they did in front of everybody and these were victims that had never even spoken to each other before victims from a completely destroyed village destroyed by the paramilitaries and then speaking with a the victims of a town destroyed by the guerrillas and everybody was working towards the same thing and we saw how far we had gone as Colombians to destroy the other we saw how far we were able to go to use this ability to completely destroy but without even reaching an agreement one after another the victims who were there managed to come out of their own skin and say that Colombians are not just that we're here because we're willing to look each other in the face like once more and to move forward hand in hand together and to build our country in a different way there was an indigenous person from the Cauca region who spoke about her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend who were assassinated by the paramilitaries in a party in the town on a Saturday night and what happened afterwards it showed up in the newspapers the next day and this indigenous person took a large receptacle and raised it and said we're here to continue Colombia's night please come and join us let's sit down together and let's raise a glass to our children who have passed on who were murdered I am really grateful to all of you who are here today thank you of course to Jimena thank you for being here with us and thank you Lisa for presenting the report you left us without words you did such a great job and of course Christina the fight your work the work that you guys are doing is so special I would just like to say to you I look forward to hearing our companions here today and I'm happy to be here with Alejandra who has been with the commission since the very beginning and she's provided the female perspective to this entire situation she's made sure that that has been well established here she is a very important feminist in Colombia and we are happy to have her presence as part of this mission there is a lot to say about the women in Colombia and this is very important one other important thing was to insist upon listening directly to people there are many second-hand reports out there and those are great but it is especially important to hear first-hand testimony here today of course Alejandra insisted that it wasn't just women but it was everybody the entire gamut of people who suffered and then we also have Commissioner Sal Franco here I'm not going to get into his resume but for us he has not just been the heart of this organization and this effort but his presence has been especially important in a very important and challenging region on the border of Colombia and Venezuela and he has thoroughly given himself over to this task and he has connections to the academic world which has been helpful we appreciate the rigor and conceptual clarity that he has provided to us he's been a great colleague to work with and then we have Maria Prada please stand up Maria is our Chancellor thanks to Maria we were able to get tremendous international collaboration I wanted to call your attention to this because it seems very important to me thank you for being here with us you don't know how happy we are to know that you will be our ambassador of Colombia here in Washington I'm happy to see the presence today of the Afro-Columbian groups in Latin America the strength, the intelligence, the passion for life and for us that has been tremendous and other extraordinary leaders who are here I would just like to say to you that something that profoundly affected me in this entire process I've spoken about this in the past that was to discover that the vast majority of Colombians who were affected or died in this process were civilians the vast majority of every ten people affected eight were civilians and possibly of the 450,000 people who perished in the conflict at least 370,000 were civilians this was not a civil war this was a war against civilians or against more than the hundreds of thousands of women and their children and lastly I just want to say that I was also impacted by hearing from paramilitary kids who were fighting and the guerrilla kids who were fighting I don't know how many there were but somewhere between 80,000 and 90,000 young Colombians who were all Colombian citizens Christian or Catholic all from the same country who killed each other in this useless war when they came into conflict and they went out to kill and that's all for now thank you sometimes the role of moderator is a little bit cruel but we would like everybody to listen and then we'll have time for questions it's very interesting Alejandra Alejandra Miller is leading the feminist movement in Colombia she's a journalist and she's studying politics she's from Escalera but she's been living in Cauca for quite some time now she works for the local government the Truth Commission she has been working on the issue of gender and the territorial issues in the Cauca region Alejandra we're listening to you with great anticipation thank you so much thank you Pacho for being here thank you all of you for being here at this meeting it is an extremely emotional moment for us to be here with you and this is in person, not virtually very special to be here to tell you about some of our achievements very quickly I would like to tell you that there's more than 900 pages and just part of that is the Truth Commission and that is a very extensive report telling about all of the years of war there we have the voices and testimonies of the people of the victims that the commission heard more than 30,000 people these individuals and groups of people who told their stories for the report in the first chapter we have the recommendations and achievements presented on June 28th and I'll refer back to that later on we have other chapters that I would just like to quickly mention to emotionally prepare you for that reading to see if we can bring you together to get into that reading to delve right into it there is a narrative that seeks explanations it's a narrative to reveal the truth it has many elements to it likely interpretive but that's where we find and analyze many explanations for the armed conflict this chapter is very important it will be published next week on our website and it's really worthwhile because it tells the entire story of the armed conflict and the reasons why it happened because it is really important to know the history behind it there's an extensive chapter on human rights violations that tells deeply we're making much witness testimony in reference to 17 different types of human rights violations forced disappearances, murder, forced recruitment, sexual violence 17 descriptions thorough descriptions of what actually happened to people and the grave human rights violations we have a chapter on LGBTI women and men that captures experience of women but especially not just the pain they suffered but we delve into explanations about what actually happened why women went through this and why these women in particular and so we offered some explanations but this is a chapter that shows as Paco was saying the strength, the unstoppable power and strength of the women now having headed up this chapter and working with women for so long I am thoroughly convinced that Columbia would be much worse off had it not been for what the women did in the war they held up the country they kept it going with all that they did with their resistance, their protection of life and the lands, territories and LGBTI plus persons as well there's the ethnic chapter that stresses the overlap of the structural violence and the armed conflict and the resistance or pushback of the Afro-Columbian peoples and indigenous peoples and there's also a section on what happened to the gypsy community there not much known there's a chapter in Boys and Girls, Adolescents that shows what they went through being recruited forcibly and what their very painful experience was during the war and trying to rebuild their lives another chapter in exile and you being outside of Columbia know all about that and this shows at Columbia that's very important the different regions, territories of Columbia which make it up and how from the outset historically speaking colonization and exclusion are what actually do the lines between these territories or provinces and the great disparities that exist and levels of development as well as participation and building the nation and the life of the country and their differentiated involvement in the war itself so this is a 13 collections of regions regions where the Truth Commission worked and this offers a social political historic account of the conflict in these regions so I think people are going to be very pleased to see the history of their territories are in the history of their territories in this report and also there's a part that addresses exactly what happened to the rural workers and the peasants there's another chapter on the impact on people what happened in nature, society, culture, democracy and that's going to be addressed later on as well and the resistance, the force of the Columbian people to rise again and to rebuild there's another chapter which is really moving that is a curation of a witness testimony of all types of testimony especially of victims of all the different armed parties as well those being held responsible 30,000 witness testimonies that we took at the Truth Commission all very moving and just hearing the voice of the victims speaks for itself, there is no interpretation overlaid over this just the voices of the people of the victims this is very easy to read, it's very moving it's heart wrenching, it's hard to read but as I said that is where you really see the force the power of the Columbian people that just by way of enticing you to read this I have four minutes left and so briefly I would like to talk about our findings the first finding a couple of them have to do with what we call the harmed Columbia the pain patchel give us some figures but the most hair raising is that we had between 450,000 victims people who were murdered during the armed conflict that's 80% of which were civilians and just a couple years of the conflict that itself is a frightening but 50,000 people were abducted in this conflict, 16,000 boys and girls who were forcibly recruited I think that's underreported and that might actually be as high as 30,000 those are based on our estimates but 16,000 documented in case of forced recruitment 30,000 victims of sexual violence women again another underreported case we think given how hard it is for a woman to report such a crime, 8 million displaced 120,000 disappeared so that goes to show the magnitude of the human tragedy here take all the dictatorships that are together in the southern cone and best add up to this dimension of human rights violations another finding on democracy because one asks how could we have kept a democracy going in the midst of the mass of human rights violations and the violence in Colombia so democracy is one of the topics we wanted to stress in this analysis not by way of explaining it but rather just to show how a democratic system could coincide with an armed conflict of such dimension and you will find here many aspects related to what we call the openings and the closings of democracy the most important finding is to showcase how the few opportunities for democratic opening up in the country that we've had in our history resulted from the peace process itself and how war systematically shut down that democracy and so it's a series of opening and closing and restarting of democracy over that time period and during that decade was when we had the when the conflict reached ahead in which 75% of the victims of the armed conflict happened during the peak of the conflict in our findings we have some other aspects just two more minutes if you would allow me this is something we wanted to show it's very important for the commission to show what the paramilitary groups did what the guerrilla did the law enforcement their background the origin their causes what motivated them the dynamic with which they worked it was also very important to substantiate how this wasn't just a war of armed groups that's one of the biggest of findings of the commission this is a war there was a a structure of this war in which vast sectors of society also took part after all of the armed groups there were interests economic interests at play political interests and ideological interests at play but this war entailed a society beyond what was the armed aspect of it the guerrilla and the armed groups military paramilitary groups and the human rights violations resulting from that and the stripping of land rights and other human rights violations Patio perhaps might have a little more to say about the security model that needs to be transformed that was very much rooted in that time period of the Cold War trying to banquish a domestic threat those who had risen up in arms that's part of the war but this also entailed civil society and citizenry this idea of there being an internal enemy spread to other places the communal board and the first the front of the middle line and so this concept of an internal enemy became a model of security based on that and that's not really rooted on protecting people's lives on human protecting human's lives but rather protecting people's wealth protecting wealth and so and that's the milieu in which the whole false positive phenomenon emerged we're talking about people who are massacred and giving response to that and so now I'll conclude talking about drug trafficking there are two other findings I wanted to talk about but drug trafficking is very important because that is one of the novel aspects here and the analysis done by the Commission, the mandate given to us was first to talk about what happened with drug trafficking within the armed conflict and what we identified is that the drug traffic king trying from the persistence of the armed conflict but what we also saw was that it goes beyond the driving force that is it provided resources for the armed conflict of course it provided money and resources for war but not just that drug trafficking has some political facets to it and it's still there it hasn't ended and so we tried to show the deep ties between drug trafficking with political and economic interests in the war itself which is part of what you'll see in our fighting and something that's also really hard hitting is something that we mentioned here and the meaning that it has for the country the failure of the war against drugs, that's a clear message the war against drugs in Columbia just deepened and worsened the impact and the the reach of the armed conflict and the negative effects that it had on people the thousands of peasants who were forced to leave their lands because of fumigation or spring so these findings we have to look at these from a systemic approach with the historic context these are all factors that contributed to the persistence of this conflict there could have been many disarmament processes and re resumption of conflict had we not gone so deeply into these findings without this it would be hard pressed to talk about any type of sustainable long standing peace because it would be really easy for people to rearm and resume conflict unfortunately time is never on our side but your presentation encourages us to continue delving into these findings that you produced Saul Franco is a doctor with a doctorate degree in public health he has 40 years as university professor he has devoted his life to researching epidemiology of violence in the armed conflict of Colombia and in Latin America and its impact on the lives and health of people and communities he has worked at advising international organizations in the areas of health culture human migration and human rights you have the floor Saul and thank you very much for coming thank you Christina I would like to thank all of you for being here some having come from different areas different regions and I think everyone who has made this encounter possible now there are three people not here I would like to talk about two are definitive Lee missing Salazar who is a companion on the truth commission who died two years ago by COVID but Angela Salazar is present she is with us in our hearts and our minds Alfredo Molano our other fellow commissioner who also passed away not because of COVID but going to other problems a few months before Angela died but he continues to inspire our research and our commitment to listen the indigenous people the presence throughout the country and so these two people whose absence we sorely feel we still feel their presence and they still illuminate our path in this process and there is a temporary absence Mr. Bernstein and their commissioner who was the driving force and the soul and the mind of this work with the Colombian exile I was exiled I left in 87 first in Brazil and then here in Washington for two more years but I wasn't devoted to this topic with the same passion, intensity and heart with which Berlus Bernstein did because this isn't just this isn't a true commission this isn't a novel only novel but it's also it opened a door for similar processes to hear and understand the role of those who are in the exile and who desire to go back to their country in peace applause for Carlos in the eight minutes and fifty seconds that I have left I'm going to focus on a couple of topics first under the chapter that's built to me to coordinate within the commission I was focused on the impact of the conflict and people's ability to deal with the war and to continue forging ahead and contributing to rebuilding the peace the volume is called Suffering through the war and rebuilding your life this war caused untold suffering and Colombian continues to do so not just because of the large number of deaths and on that I would like to say we speak of 450,000 from 75 to now 158 to 85 and the whole period in which there were no records and not in the database we didn't include them because we had to be very rigorous but they still died and in the mountains and were committed by the preliminary groups such as what happened in the north of something there and the crematoriums that were there and via the Rosario where are these dead people 450,000 is very modest in my view it's a number we came up with because we could substantiate it but there's no doubt that at least 700,000 Colombians men and women died in this and by far many more than that even and that has led to women being left widows people being orphaned and the result from this much pain was brought by this war changing people's lives you've got the peasants who had lost their land and were forced to leave they lost their close ties relationship with their nature their animals their crops and what about the people who were abducted that's very painful forced at least 110,000 people were forcibly disappeared the most profound pain or wound that cannot heal now if you recover a dead relative you can then bury that person in a given place and that's where you can focus your morning and so this caused a harm to physical and mental health and this is something that we focus on the mental health harm caused not just psychiatric, a diagnosis of a case of depression of any other type of mental pathology no, I'm talking about the loss of joy of tranquility of emotional balance the possibility to enjoy one's life that is what was altered absence of sexual violence for example it's not just physical damage caused by that which does happen but that and it's awful to say that the most part of the harm it's the denial of that that peace that's been taken away from the person who fell victim to that so this is much pain and told pain harm caused to all forms of life and well-being something else that strikes us is the awful harm this war did to democracy was was a hard hit by this how many former combatants of the different peace processes died only the paramilitary group say that more than 5,000 former paramilitary people died now those who signed the agreement of our 300 and 33 of those who signed it were a part of that process that has harmed democracy but in addition to that the social organizations of the young people union leaders who are persecuted stigmatized singled out simply because they belonged and worked for a human rights organization democracy has shrunk it has really been harmed not just the parties of the left suffered the liberal party the conservative party also lost how many congressmen mayors, former mayors, parliamentarians and so forth this war had huge costs for democracy and the armed organizations in many regions decided who could vote they would burn the polling places and so the harm that this war caused to democracy is huge I would also say that nature was very damaged not just the scene of the war but nature was another victim of the war in many ways the bombing that tore the ground apart the anti-personnel minds and most of the victims of these anti-personnel minds were law enforcement agents who also lost many lives and that's also had a ripple effect in many sectors and this commission researched that and recognized this and we've published this we don't have a bias this or that way we have to, with dignity and bravery point out all the different responsible responsibility the parties who were responsible for this and what are ways fishermen who have said they don't fish anymore because they don't think they caught hands and limbs because the rivers became repositories for cadavers so nature suffered what about the fumigation how many years has that been happening and illegal mining how much mercury has dumped into the rivers or stations and so forth so this is a very serious type of damage and also the culture was damaged culture isn't just art and music but also that suffered culture referring to how we live, how we relate to nature our beliefs and the values that we have and people's beliefs values people's rituals were all deeply affected by the war there were paramilitary groups who say that they can't even mourn and cry for the people that they killed, mourning was prohibited that customarily is something that takes place over a couple of days but it was prohibited culture how many indigenous people were murdered and that is an interruption of their culture it's an interruption of their culture so the harm to people's values and culture, drug trafficking which ensured itself in this conflict to change the people's values so that was a large-scale change I'm not going to talk anymore about the impacts but this war did have a real impact it has left stains it has left stains some impacts, trigger others displacements, uproot people forced people to move to other cities a lot of them turned to prostitution to begging and working in jobs that don't offer decent conditions and pay, some people turned to drugs now in this chapter on impact the resistance was something that really struck us not just the pain there was a lot of bravery in this war bravery shown by people, organizations and families much bravery to be able to live under these conditions and at the same time just forge ahead in their lives women who had their eight children in tow who went into exile or were displaced and had to go elsewhere there's an example of a grandfather whose daughter and son-in-law were killed had to raise his eight grandchildren women's organizations, neighborhood organizations organizations of victims this organization in the exile all of this is a testament to columbian's ability to move forward despite the difficulties that's why we have a chapter on rebuilding your life your personal life, victims of sexual violence trying to recover their dignity and move forward but also rebuilding your family life, your neighborhood life community life, social organizations and political organizations with that force and bravery there and creativity as well and solidarity this is just part of the heritage of columbia that hopefully is going to help us move forward if I have two minutes left I would just refer to some of the recommendations that we have I would go so far as to say honestly I think that the recommendations I would put them into one conclusion war is not the way if in columbia we were to accept that and it's a two-sided coin war isn't the way, the other side is that the way is peace, peace is the way and if we were to wager on peace and what that implies negotiation yes you do have to negotiate and hopefully we'll do that with ELN and the other groups that are armed but peace is far more than that it's democracy, we need to reclaim democracy, we have our constitution from 1991 we don't need any others, we need to breathe new life into that and we need to apply the Havana Accords and now those recommendations issued by the commission I would say with these three legs of the stool we can move toward the future but we have to demand this that it be applied or upheld agreements as well and the commission's recommendations this is democracy, democracy is the guarantee of rights, respect for life and we need to take firearms weapons out of politics that was the wrong way, we lost our way that way and that's very clear in the commission's report we need to rethink security, an army should be an army for peace to defend human dignity of all Colombians, men and women especially the most vulnerable to ensure, we're not talking about people thinking that security just means to have their own personal bodyguards 30, 40 bodyguards or to kill those who are against us but a police that isn't an armed police that goes out and kills people but that it be a police for the citizenry, for peaceful cohabitation this is a subset of change in these things and many other things but we have to change the paradigm of how we think about drug trafficking we can't think of a war against drugs it's a war on top of another war and that only is more war so this is an economic problem that's international, transnational in which there are many big shots who are making a lot of money in the world and the peasants are the ones who earn the least as you know between the coca leaf and the finished product of cocaine it's a 100 fold difference so we have to invert that rationale that logic and think of it in a different way the penetration, political penetration of drug trafficking is where we have to think you can't just kill kingpans kill one, ten, new ones emerge you have to hit the snake in the head and there's so many other things that I could speak at length on but let me just conclude by saying in Colombia it's a country of regions, you all know that and the regions are all very different and the region's peace has to be regional peace has to be across the land or it's not peace and so we have to recognize this diversity, ethnic, cultural, political, regional diversity of the country and try to reconcile that is to give life and recognize the dignity of the peasants and their right to land has to be an agrarian reform as the Havana Courts called for and to reestablish the relationship between the countryside and the city otherwise it's going to be a failed peace it has to be something that everyone shares that Colombia with that I conclude thank you Christina, a piece in which the international community plays a very important role as it has and we hope that it continues to do so far more in the future and the factors the United States plays a very important role and we hope that now many things are rethought and that there be international cooperation and a regional peaceful cohabitation that is focused on peace thank you Saul thank you for your presentation like you said at the end Colombia is not a country with one single country with many different cultures as we can see here amongst the people who are represented another motivation to continue reading the report we now have ten minutes fifteen minutes four questions so I'm going to ask the first one and then I'm going to use my authority here then there will be a couple other questions and answers I know you've already been handling the matter of socialization of the final report over the last few days few months how has the report been received what surprises did you encounter I have two questions here let me clarify this please make your question as concrete as possible and less than 30 seconds since I'm the timekeeper here thank you Christina my name is Hernando Rivera I'm from Colombia I'm also a victim I'd like to thank you and recognize your effort here for all the work that Father Roo and his team have done in the past my question has to do with what's coming next we Colombians in exile on many occasions dream of coming back going back to our country however the situation is not ideal as of yet before 1985 what is the proposal for moving forward thank you I am here representing the international peace office in Latin America I would like to thank you for the socialization which I think is so important I'd like to thank the international community for all of this work you mentioned Christina to Colombias could you delve into it a little bit further to describe what those two different Colombias are now I'm going to continue with some other questions let's start first with the Truth Commission's work we learned that there are two Colombias because we took testimonies in Colombia in all of the regions but this is the first time that a Truth Commission is doing this work in exile so by taking the testimonies of people in exile we realized look at all of this that's happening everything that happened to them Colombia came here into exile and that's where the concept comes from why there are two Colombias and why with all of the testimonies and everything that has been gathered we think that these two Colombias have been joined together with this report the truths that were revealed in it everything that we learned from Carlos let me see here okay I think about the question about how the report was received at the commission this has been a very important moment for us where we saw that the report was being heard there's important political information in there about changes it's created a very favorable environment in different scenarios for the report to be well received in different sectors some have not read the report quite sufficiently but I could say that maybe not enough emphasis was placed on FARC victims but the majority of the testimonies heard by the Truth Commission are those from victims of the FARC but we believe that over the last few years Colombia has been moving towards a place that is seeking change to transform and this really facilitates this possibility of hearing the truth of people wanting to hear the truth this is a country that is willing and wants to hear the truth and is even demanding to hear the truth so the report has created this opening so delivering the report to the president elect he received it and promised that all of these recommendations will be implemented on a permanent basis in different scenarios I think it's also important to transfer the discussion to different areas to also the critiques the objections varying counter opinions we have revealed the truth but it's also something that's subject to discussion within amongst the citizen jury and within society we met with the high courts and also with the victims this was like a trial by fire meeting with the victims and hearing about their experiences and their lives and everything that they transferred to us in good faith is reflected in there and we would like to say that it was really gratifying it was a relief and it was quite moving to include the testimonies of these victims in the report we're on a good path here the political climate is favorable and I'm going to give the podium to Saul in a second but I just wanted to say that this is the right time to create a transformation in society it's the suggestions are being well received this is an empowered citizenry that is mobilizing and promoting these recommendations towards a better future okay well I guess it's my turn about the question what's next Fernando I think it was I would go so far as to say that anything technically could really happen but let me tell you about what we would like to happen I'm going to talk about what we want which is where all of Colombian society reads the report and is moved by it doesn't remain static people don't say oh this was this happened to somebody else this is really a marginalized issue if we do all of this together it will have a better result this is very important this needs to be something that's coming from all of us a mutual agreement if we're not all together absolutely everybody then it won't be possible if we're going to continue having a polarized society then we won't find our way out of this we need to see a change of attitude within society to understand what happened assimilate why it happened something that's more explanatory than anything else we need to read the report assimilate the information process it and have a collective consciousness to make sure something like this never happens again we all have a lot of work to do number two the next administrations need not just the next one but the next administrations plural over a long period of time need to be committed specifically to implement the things that we said the constitution from 1991 the Havana Accords and the commission's recommendations if the next administrations really put in the work here then really we will have succeeded this is so important and then another condition people consider is the international community and we want them to react to this and to help us stay on the right track we all need to move out of our comfort zone to look at each other face to face and make a clear decision to walk together in the same direction this is a mass social mobilization movement and we need governments who implement these ideas and follow through as well as the support of the international community one of the truth commission evaluators said something that was really important the tax minister was there too he said not so long ago that don't look for early successes quick success to have a quick negotiation with the ELN we need to recognize what happened in the war and that is the responsibility here because we've had more discussions with the FARC and than the paramilitaries but we need to speak about the public force too they accepted the responsibility in this matter General Naranjo in Bukaramanga said I as the director of the Colombian police as the head of the intelligence agency we see that we did not treat the university well we treated the university as an enemy and we attacked it and that is not right I recognize this and I ask for forgiveness and that was General Naranjo who said that someone who's so high up so the different forces the different administrations the branches of government need to recognize their role there need to be some early victories to give way to future victories I just want to say one of the nice things about the commission is that things in the beginning things were a little bit tough I felt like there was a collective sense of chaos but we all felt like we needed to work together to publish this report and we indeed achieved it there's 7000 pages I think you said it is quite an effort to produce such a work to have produced this amongst the people who are selected for this task Alejandro, Carlos Bernstein, Valencia and some other people but I would like to call your attention to one thing since we're here talking about it now the international community at the security council at the UN amongst all of the members they were saying the only thing in the case of Ukraine which went back to war and that stupidity of war we have this thing that we're building all together in exile and in Colombia and in that we are completely united without a doubt this is an example for the world Colombians are showing reconciliation is possible despite the most brutal pain of the past we can't give up in this effort when the entire international community is watching us the president of Spain was saying I wish I had a truth commission like you have the president of Mexico Venezuela has asked us for our assistance they would like to do the same thing in Venezuela that we've done in Colombia people are going to learn from this so please understand that Colombia served as a paradigm for reconciliation and the other thing I would like to ask you is to please put fear aside leave terror aside we need to move on from that it will take a lot of bravery but now is the time with the ideal political climate to handle this unfortunately we have one other bullet point here on the agenda and we're already running 20 minutes late so the people who came from far away will have more time to speak with the panelists in a few minutes so thank you I'm just going to call Steve up here the interpreter cannot hear the speaker but let me say again you're going to have a chance over there afterwards to speak more thank you very much my name is Yojairo Castro Vallanta I'm a member of the periphery group I'm also exiled here in this country I have respectfully listened quite attentively how you have been proceeding with the report and it sounds like the report that has already been completed especially with respect to violence in certain territories where the indigenous people in the Afro-Caribbeans live in those regions we have not discovered any positive effects of the peace process nothing has been minimized nothing has been reduced especially in the city of Buena Ventura the city where there was guerrilla warfare and armed conflict and the paramilitaries up to this day have not ceased the disappearances or mutilations and rapes and violations of human rights so I sorry to say it like this but it seems like you're finishing up with this process but in our regions the Afro-Caribbean regions it seems like it's something that slowed down and didn't wasn't completed the government's reaction has been quite strong we need to be aware and have a presence the Mexican cartels for example have invaded our regions we cannot justify that today Buena Ventura and part of the Calca and Arillo region have more than five or six groups outside of the law that are engaging in drug trafficking all of these displacements since the ambassador is here for the new government we didn't have the ear of the previous administration but I would like you to please keep in mind that there is a very delicate matter at hand the Afro community is primarily exiled in Chile and now also here in North America is the region of comes from the Pacific region of Colombia in Chile they're killing our citizens our brothers and sisters this is targeting us specifically but this is not something that people are aware of and I think that the commission needs to be aware of this how many Afro-Caribbeans have died in this conflict how many have been affected you're writing a general report but it's not detailed enough directly with respect to those communities Mr. Haydo thank you for that comment and thank you for being so brave to say that you are there is an entire chapter on ethnicity and things that have happened to the Afro-Caribbean community as well as the indigenous population I'm saying this with all of my heart everything that you just said is true the commission went to Buenaventura it went to the esteros of Buenaventura where so many people were declared as disappeared and they today even today are still looking for the disappeared and murdered people like you said this is something that's not over there and quite to the contrary that pain is still an open wound an ongoing conflict the community does not trust in the authorities as you said and that's what's been happening in the Port region this is something that has been very painful for us to see how many people have been displaced because of this Carlos Burnside and Angelina went to Chile and researched the Afro population there and also in Cali the second largest city in Latin America with an Afro population more than a million people we also have found that there are other Afro populations that have suffered greatly in different regions as a result of everything that happened so thank you truly from the bottom of my heart that's why we say what we're delivering is so far from the final there's so much more to do there's so much more to say we hope that once again people can sew their crops and that good things are up ahead there's so much work to do still but we just we just don't want to do it through war because war doesn't bring anything good but there's still a lot of struggle ahead to completely transform our country a way of closing I would just like to thank everyone who helped make this event possible first Maria Prada from the commission who made a great effort thank you Maria to my colleague Miriam Sykes from the Peace Institute Lisa Jimena from the other organizations that have helped make this meeting possible thank you so much for being here I would like to thank Christina of course for her leadership over so many years I would like to thank Alejandra for all of her conviction her courage in the southeast region of Colombia and overall and her complete dedication to the issue thank you so much Alejandra and Dr. Saun for his mental health and human perspective his ability to understand the human perspective and how this affects these open wounds that are still infected in some cases your ability to diagnose them I went with Dr. Saun to the river Auca region and we I saw how he approached those communities who are still suffering very intensely from the effects of the war thank you so much Dr. Saun and lastly Father Paco you reminded us and took me back 20 years earlier to the Magdalena Medio Peace Process you continue to be a source of inspiration, sensitivity, humility a servant of God as a Catholic being and you work for the entire country of Colombia you continue to be a guiding light for so many you are a servant in so many ways and the legacy is not just this book the legacy of the work is the charisma the passion, the spirit that the father embodies for so many of us so we would like to thank Father Nero for all of his work thank you for your love of Colombia for giving us hope for working shoulder to shoulder with us thank you for representing the United States on this, thank you for your work as the Institute it is a great honor for us to have these allies on our sides the current president is ending his administration but we have allies in Colombia in the victims and participants in many communities there is a follow-up community for seven years but there is a collective task for the entire world to guarantee that the spirit of the report does not die out the Institute of Peace is going to continue working on this I would like to invite the victims to continue on to a private space for lunch and then to speak with the commissioners the press representatives can proceed to the other room thank you so much to everybody have a wonderful afternoon