 Good afternoon. I'm Tara Soninshine, Executive Vice President here at the U.S. Institute of Peace, and I am just delighted that we are co-hosting today's event with the Inter-American Dialogue, one of many partners that we have on an ongoing series of programs on Latin America. Today is really very special for us to have the Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos Calderón with us, and to have this opportunity to talk about human rights. Colombia for us has grown in importance. We now have a dedicated staff person to spearhead our efforts, Dr. Ginny Bouvier, who is really spending a great deal of time on this. She has a new book, Columbia Building Peace in a Time of War, and it draws on many of the insights and work that we have done for many years. I'm also delighted that some place here, if she can raise her hand, is our current Senior Fellow Patricia Vazquez. She's here in the back, who's currently writing a book on oil and conflict in the Andes, which elicited something that sounded like a Jewish oi from our Colombian gift. The question is, does it include Venezuela? Last fall we hosted also a very important event here on the displacement of people in Colombia. We also looked at gender and violence. We've looked at the work of the Historical Memory Commission. We spend a lot of time on community justice mechanisms, the role of diplomacy, the role of the church, and civil society in peacemaking in Colombia. And last month we hosted a series of roundtables for the administration and Congress with leaders of peace and human rights organizations from Colombia as part of our Citizen Dialogues for Peace project. So we are knee-deep, we are committed, we are passionate about the subject at hand, absolutely delighted to let Ginny introduce and make the formal introductions for the Vice President. Would you join me in welcoming all of our guests? Thank you so much, Tara. Before I introduce the Vice President of Colombia, I'd like to acknowledge Tara Soninshine, the Executive Vice President here at the Institute for her support, her leadership, and her vision. Thank you very much, Tara. We're accompanied today by Carolina Barco, Colombia's ambassador to the United States and her team at the Embassy. We're pleased you could join us and appreciate the opportunity you've offered for the U.S. Institute of Peace to host the Vice President. And I'd like to say a special word of thanks to Claudia Cuevas, the Human Rights Officer at the Embassy for her collaboration in the program. I'd also like to recognize our partnering organization, the Inter-American Dialogue, whose President-elect Michael Schifter will serve as a discussant following Vice President Santos' remarks. We have biographical statements on each of the speakers available outside. We're joined today by representatives of the diplomatic community, including various OAS missions, Sweden, Uruguay, and Guatemala, among others. Representatives from the U.S. Congress, the Executive Branch, the military, the private sector, academia, the media, and non-governmental and human rights organizations. So we have quite a range of human brain capacity in this room, and I hope that we can tap into it in the question and answer period. As we might note from the overwhelming turnout today, the topic of today's discussion, Human Rights in Colombia, is of enormous concern to the international community. It's integral to discussions about U.S. foreign policy in general, U.S. policies toward Colombia in particular, and the future of peace and stability in Colombia. The role of the international community in fostering human rights is directly related to creating a more peaceful world. From the time of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights more than one half a century ago, U.N. member nations have sought to define international human rights standards and to establish mechanisms of accountability to those standards. At the United Nations, member governments have agreed to protect and promote human rights and to be accountable before their populations and before the world for those commitments. The U.N. has designed an architecture that has evolved over time to include a range of four primary mechanisms for this purpose. Treaties and conventions, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, special rapporteurs to appoint to report independently on human rights in particular countries or to focus attention on particular human rights themes, such as the situation of human rights defenders, minority issues, torture, internally displaced persons, and violence against women. The U.N. established the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights to provide oversight and support for these efforts, and it established a Human Rights Council, which replaced the Human Rights Commission a few years ago with a mandate to protect and promote human rights. In 2006, when this council was founded, it instituted a new state-driven process, which will be reviewed in 2011, known as the Universal Periodic Review. This process engages each of the 192 member states of the U.N. in an assessment of the status of human rights in their countries. Under this process, states voluntarily or by lottery report to the international community on what they've done to fulfill their international obligations to protect and promote human rights and to address human rights violations when they occur. Columbia voluntarily engaged in this process in 2008 under the direction of Vice President Santos, today's speaker. We're delighted that Vice President Santos is here to discuss Columbia's experiences with the process. In addition to being the Vice President of Columbia, Vice President Santos is the coordinator for the Presidential Program on Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, and it was in that capacity that he led the recent Universal Periodic Review process. Mr. Santos was elected Vice President on the same national ballot as Colombian President Ávaro Ríbevelis in May 2002. He's no stranger to human rights issues. He was the founder of País Libre, which spearheaded a massive movement in Colombia in the 1990s to bring public attention to the plight of kidnapped victims in his country. Vice President Santos is well known to many of you in this room. I will merely note that in addition to being a public official, Vice President Santos has worked as a journalist and was editor of El Tiempo, Colombia's largest daily newspaper. He received the Paul Harris Medal, Rotary International's highest award, and has spent time as a fellow at Harvard University and studied journalism and Latin American studies at the University of Kansas and the University of Texas at Austin, and we're grateful that his English is fluent enough that we don't need to provide translation services today. We're delighted to have Vice President Santos with us today to reflect on the UPR process and to discuss the status of human rights in his native Colombia. Just a few housekeeping items before I turn the microphone over to the Vice President. First, today's event is a public session. It's on the record and we welcome the members of the media who have joined us. We look forward to a lively discussion and have structured the session to allow for a maximum of interaction with the audience. We'll open with the presentation by Vice President Santos of about half an hour to be followed by comments by our discussant, Michael Shifter, President-Elect of Inter-American Dialogue. Vice President Santos will then respond to questions from the floor. Second, since this event is being webcast live, I'd ask that everyone please turn off your cell phones and any other electronic devices so they won't interfere with the sound system. And finally, I'd just like to thank the team at USIP who assisted in the logistics for this event, especially Stephanie Schwartz and Jeanine Saar, standing over by the door, as well as the staff in the Office of Public Affairs. And now Vice President Santos, the floor is yours. Thank you and hello everybody and good afternoon. Let me just start by thanking the Institute of Peace and the Inter-American Dialogue for helping us further discussion regarding human rights, now with the anxiety of the free trade or of specific issues but something that looks more into a systemic view of how human rights and how a government can work in terms of creating a system of protecting, guaranteeing human rights. I think the partisanship that sometimes exists hasn't allowed to see the full picture and I have no doubt that in some years an academic study of what has happened in the last seven years is going to show a more positive attitude of what the situation was seven years ago, what's going to be left afterwards and how a system regarding these issues was developed. It's been a process of learning, a process of confrontation and dialogue. It's been a process that hasn't been easy, especially in a government that is very tough against crime, a government that was elected to recover security in Colombia but I think that systemic view is going to be overall and in some time seeing more positively than it's in now. And one of the most critical elements and I would say a central element in terms of recouping all those experiences and leaving something for the future is obviously the UPR. And this is why we think this is such a critical element in the juncture of where Colombia is moving in terms of human rights, how it can be measured in the near future and how it was built, what its successes are and what its challenges are in the near future. Let me start by giving you a little bit of context. I went to many, many sessions of the former commission of human rights in Geneva and it was a very, very frustrating to say the least scenario with selective. While some countries had a huge spotlight, many others had none at all even though you knew that horrendous things were happening in those countries. The ideological fights and the alliances between groups to protect each other, et cetera was the main focus of the debate in most of those sessions. It was permanently just name and shame and it was here and there and you saw that the religious of human rights were in the backseat of a political ideological confrontation. So when the process of changing from the commission to the council of changing the system started, we worked very hard so that we could achieve a system that had certain conditions, one universality. We thought that it was very important to get that issue on the table. Second, that it would become part of interactive dialogue, a dialogue that would produce some results that would be and would generate some type of cooperation that in the end it would have elements of cooperation that it was accountable and that there was a certain reason of a certain equality to it. We worked very hard for a year with many of partners, the Europeans, the Americans, the Latin Americans, some African countries, some Asian countries and we think that in the end the system in our perspective had many, obviously not 100% of those issues that we tried to push forward in terms of the creation of the new system. So we were satisfied with what came out, obviously. It can be greatly improved but as a country that has commitment to human rights and accountability towards it, we decided that Colombia would present itself voluntarily to the UPR in the first batch of countries that were going to be reviewed. Only two countries did it in the whole world regarding the UPR, Colombia and Switzerland and to be very sincere, it has been a very, very positive even though difficult experience. The first thing when we presented ourselves voluntarily was what type of report are we going to do. You can write the report as a government and forget about it and we decided we wanted a more interactive process. We took some choices that made the job more difficult but I think more enriching. The first thing is that it wasn't going to be just a government document. It was going to be more of a state, involve all the agencies. Therefore we created a steering committee of nine persons, three from the vice presidency, three from the foreign ministry, three from the minister of interior justice to work with the elaboration of this report. The second choice we did was we wanted to make it a report that had participation of civil society. We invited around more than 130 NGOs to participate. The only block of NGOs that did not participate was the hard core NGOs of human rights and they said, you know, this is a government report we're going to participate. We don't want to, and they out excluded themselves and obviously that's their right but more than 110 organizations from civil society participated. Some were NGOs, women NGOs, Afro-Colombian NGOs, human rights NGOs in the regions. Many, a very diverse type of organizations. So it was a very important participation of civil society in the process of the elaboration of the report. The other element is that we got involved 31 state agencies, not only from the executive branch but from the legislative and especially from the judicial branch. We sent questionnaires to the persons in charge of human rights in the 1,100 municipalities of Colombia. Obviously many of them didn't respond it but we didn't effort to get as much information from the regions as possible. We worked with the human rights authorities. We had very frank and open discussions with the office of the High Commissioner in Colombia regarding other recommendations before, et cetera. We had discussions with what is called the G24. It's a group of 24 countries in Colombia that where most of the European countries, most of the Latin American countries are there, the U.S., Canada and with their specialists in human rights to also have feedback and have more, make the document more beefy, let's put it that way. And we opened a web page with questions and with possibilities of answering and opening the door for the general public to respond to it. We received more than 100 views and documents that were part of the whole process. With this report in December of 2008, we presented it into the Human Rights Council. I personally did it even though the methodology required it. It's like a six-month process. And this report had three main elements. One was the methodology. We spoke about how we built it. We thought it was something that other countries could learn about it and improve it. And it was a methodology. It was worth discussing and put it up front. Second, the context of our judicial and our constitutional laws. So they could understand what type of judicial framework we had. And the third element was the good things, the mediocre and the bad things in terms of human rights. And in that sense, the content, the content regarding human rights had five basic issues. The first one was the fight against violence. What was being done in terms of reducing violence and combating the different groups that were some of the main violators of human rights. The second element was three of the most difficult but also the hardcore topics regarding human rights and extrajudicial killings, torture, and forced disappearance. Those three elements and what the situation was, what we were doing, et cetera. And third was the fight against impunity and access to justice. What was the situation and how, what was needed to improve the situation in that sense. Fourth, discrimination and protection of vulnerable populations and by vulnerable populations were indigenous, Afro-Colombians, displaced women, kids, gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals, prisoners, people who have been incarcerated and obviously a very important part of vulnerable populations was the regional leaders, human rights defenders, journalists, social activists. And the last element was the economic, social and cultural rights. So that was the component of the presentation we did in Geneva. In the discussion with all the sectors, civil society, state sectors, the document had 69 recommendations that we voluntarily imposed ourselves with measurements and with goals that we wanted to achieve. And during the discussion we had 65 recommendations that were put forward by the countries that we accepted. Eight that we didn't. Some of them were repeated regarding issues like a program that the army has where they go to schools and show what the army is or they do civic military helping kids, et cetera, things like that. But 65 were accepted and we compiled those 69 that we had voluntarily put forward with the other and we generated a new package of goals that we set up. And we created a permanent working group within the government to follow up those recommendations. And the five main elements of the recommendations were we packaged in five different groups. One, international cooperation and accountability. Second, the national action plan regarding human rights and international humanitarian law. Third, civil and political rights. The fourth one was impunity and access to justice. And the fifth one was vulnerable populations and the protection of the rights. With this, within the presentation of the UPR, the government of Colombia took a unilateral decision of doing reports of advancement every six months. We have already, this is the report I'm giving today, it's part of the second report that we put forward in December. We put a yearly bulletin of advances. It's all on the web page so you can see how we're doing, what's working, what's not working, where are we in terms of compliance with those recommendations. So it's a very transparent process that we think it's very important, especially because it goes after some of the most difficult issues and it shows a root for working and improving many of them. This team, this permanent working group right now it's in the middle of putting together a workshop with all the persons in the different ministries and in the different state institutions. So the compliance with the recommendations and with what we put forward in the presentation of the UPR gets better. It's still a learning process. It's still, in some issues we're better than in others. But we think that overall it has been a process that it has generated conscience within the state. It has created a reflection. We've done many, many, many seminars regarding what is our role in terms of guaranteeing rights at each of the institutions. There's a bigger awareness of this compromise and how important this is in terms of public opinion, in terms of the international community, in terms of how the difficulties affect other issues regarding the functioning of the Colombian state. For the first time we have an inter-institutional coordination committee that is working. So it has been overall a very, very, very positive process. What results do we have so far? And let me just give you some of them. They're all in the web page of the human rights program. Or vice presidencia.gov.co. There's a link called EPU, you get all the information that's needed there. But let me give you some advances that I think are quite relevant. For example, in this year regarding cooperation, accountability with international organizations and accountability, we had the visit of four rapporteurs. The rapporteurs for indigenous. The rapporteurs for judicial impartiality. The rapporteurs for defenders of human rights. And the rapporteurs of extrajudicial killings. So we beat the bullet. We didn't close the doors. We opened the doors to the toughest of the toughest rapporteurs. And it just shows the disposition of having this accountability and this open process. We had a visit by the normas, the comision de normas of the ILO regarding rights of workers. We presented last November a report in the committee against torture. We presented a report regarding a resolution 1612 of the council of the Security Council regarding child recruitment. We had a revision conference of the Ottawa Convention in Cartagena in which we also presented our own test. We created a two-year program with UNHCR regarding displacement. And we had three mechanisms of dialogue in place. Two mechanisms and a memorandum of understanding. One of them with the European Union in which very frank discussions with European unions are put forward. In 2009 we had three sessions in which we discussed all the topics relevant to human rights. We have a mechanism of dialogue with Canada. We had one session in July and we have a memorandum of dialogue and dialogue with the Canadian parliament regarding human rights. Many of these types of dialogue were in cooperation with human right. Other results in terms of some of the issues that were put forward, I think one of the most important is to do with the mechanisms to eradicate and eliminate extradition killings. In 2009 we put forward I don't know how to translate that. We had a directive regarding rules of engagement. For the first time, there's a very clear disposition regarding rules of engagement. We have the permanent directive from the Joint Chief of Staff regarding 15 very clear measures with goals. And we have the Office of the Human Rights Commission is following those 15 rules, so that from training all the way to the use of intelligence, you have very strict controls. We have another directive from the Armed Forces, the 040, regarding the inspection function of investigations, regarding violations of human rights and how it's going to be independent from the chain of command, et cetera. Regarding forced disappearances, we eradicated installing Congress the convention against forced disappearances, even though a lot of it has already been included by different laws that Colombia has approved. We created a, we put forward and it was approved, a social policy document with money, et cetera, regarding the mechanisms of finding and identifying persons who are disappeared, which is one of the big problems that we have. We're finding many corpses, especially regarding cases by the paramilitaries or by the guerrillas, and it has been very, very difficult to identify. So we have now a program with budget, et cetera, to strengthen state institutions to do that. Regarding something that is very, very, very important, which is the DAS issue, the Departamento Administrativa Seguridad, there's right now a very, there's a review of all their intelligence archives. As a matter of fact, next week a group of members of the government and of the procurador are going to go to Germany to the Czech Republic and to Letonia to look at how they did in terms of cleaning the archives or the intelligence archives. We have established various, there was, for the first time, Colombia has a lot to regulate intelligence, very clear dos and don'ts, very clear accountability and very clear checks and balances of the use of intelligence within Congress. There's a decree that regulated the use of intelligence in judicial process, et cetera. So there's big advancement in many of the issues. Regarding displaced people, there's new directives in, for example, kids, giving them priority access to health, to education. Regarding human rights defenders or members of unions, there's a law of 2009 that raises the terms for prescription and the penalization of the law to anybody who kills a member of a union 30 years. There has been new memorandums and directives sent to governors, to mayors regarding interlocution with human rights defenders, with social activists within the chief of the Army Center Circular, which is a directive about how to deal in terms of respect and protection with human rights defenders, social activists. So it's something that even though the norm is there, there's still something that has to be done regarding applicability, accountability, and results. But we have the legal framework that will help us improve the situation. And in terms of results, not only norms, but in results, well, in terms of violence, even though in some cities has risen the result of this year regarding last year was another decrease in the number of murders, a dramatic increase in the number of kidnappings. In terms of massacres and victims of massacres, there was sort of the same. And unfortunately, last year we had many massacres done by the FARC, which increased the number, especially to indigenous populations. In terms of displacement, even though there's a disparity in numbers, we for the first time or in a couple of years saw a decrease. The combat against the new criminal gangs, which is something that is very important for the government, which is following very, very closely how those organizations are transforming itself, what type of threats they become has produced more of their leaders being captured, more of their members being captured. But there's still a transformation. The ability of drug trafficking and creating the conditions for recruitment to those groups is still something that is very worrisome. Regarding extrajudicial killings, CNEP, one of the most independent, it's not an NGO. It's an NGO, but they did a report regarding extrajudicial killings and showed that there was almost a total elimination, a decrease from around 106 cases to two cases in a report of 2009. Two is too many, but I think the work we had done and all the decisions we took regarding that have produced the results. So far, there have been 130 members of the military condemned in jail. There's 300 of them who are being tried. There's 800 more who are now under investigation. Unfortunately, there has been some problems with the Attorney General's office, but we think they will be solved. The chief of human rights in the Army is a general. When we got there seven years ago, it was a captain. So you're getting more and more and more and more conscious regarding the importance of this issue. All the elements of rewards and reserve, the use of reserve funds are now controlled by the Contralloria General. I have something. For the first time, Army units have operational advisors with understanding of the law and limits of the use of force. We have 60 of them. Right now, there's 100 of them. 60 of them were activated this year. 45 more are being activated. So there's a lot of results that can be shown and can be followed up in terms of what the UPR is putting in terms of it's looking or setting goals. And in that sense, this has put us on our toes to understand that you have to move forward, even though in some elements or in some sectors, it's not as aggressive or the results are noticed as aggressive as in others. Peace and justice, for example, we have more than 1,200 free versions have been finished. There's 14,000 crimes related to 16,000 victims that have been totally established who did it. 18,000 more with 31,000 victims are in the process of being cleared. 2,700 years, something that is very important. 2,778 bodies have been exhumed. 700 of them have been returned to their families. Regarding reparations, this 2009, with administrative reparations, the government paid around $100 million to 26,000 victims. Next year is going to be $150 million. The National Commission for Reparation Reconciliation has produced, in terms of memory and historic memory, two reports regarding El Trujillo and El Salado with the vulnerable population like indigenous and Afro-Colombians, all the mechanisms for consultation, for special protection, for differentiated action are moving forward. There's a document that the Intersectoral Commission for the Fight Against Discrimination against the Afro-Colombian population put forward some very, very radical recommendations. There's a law now that's going to come forward to Congress to start moving forward in terms of very aggressive affirmative action policies. And also, there's a national social policy document that is going to put some money, a very important amount of money in terms of special actions to work attending the recommendation of this commission. There's a lot of work, and I don't want to keep just a rather half an interactive dialogue. But it has been, I would say, a very fruitful exercise. Obviously, we're still not there. There are many problems, and we understand there are resistance. But I think when you look in these two years what has happened, you can see a state working more closely in the same direction, being more accountable, having more interactive dialogue, opening doors, and measuring itself. And I think in that sense, the UPR, as I said in the beginning, which was part of a process that started in 2002, is a crucial element that has helped us get the House more in order, show more results, and have goals that we have to pursue. We hope that we will leave that total institutionalized for the next government. It's a state compromise. It's not the government pressing to leave its compromises. It's the government of Colombia. So we hope that we will keep following up those recommendations and be very transparent regarding where we are improving and where we are not. And I think that's a very good guideline that we have out to impose and impose ourselves in the manner that human rights should start working with states that want to insert themselves in the international community, be accountable, like Colombia is, and is a manner of, as I said before, interactive dialogue, cooperation, and measuring the results. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Vice President, for the debates and discussions in Washington. Thank you, Michael, for your willingness to provide some insights on this topic of today's discussion. Thank you very much, Ginny, and thank you. A very nice introduction. It's a pleasure, first of all, for me to be here. And on behalf of the Inter-American Dialogue, I would be delighted to co-sponsor this event with the US Institute of Peace. It's a particular pleasure to be here and honored to be here with Vice President Santos. Good friend for a number of years. I'm very impressed that, since he arrived in Washington, his effect was immediate since President Obama mentioned Colombia favorably last night in the State of the Union speech. And the only conclusion I could reach was that Vice President Santos had already arrived and had shown that he's very influential. So it's amazing how he operates. I see a lot of people, a lot of good friends here who are on the edge of their seats dying to ask Vice President Santos some questions and have a good exchange. So I'm going to be very brief and just say a few comments and reflections on the very interesting remarks made by the Vice President. The first is that the UPR, I think, is an interesting, innovative instrument that emphasizes an approach towards dealing with human rights questions that is much more cooperative, non-confrontational, let's say, than other approaches. It has a number of advantages. I think the main one is that it does provide, as Vice President Santos said, a global framework. The debate about human rights in Colombia often has the problem that people tend to focus on different violations. Sometimes people talk past each other because people point to different things. This provides at least the common framework that everybody can operate from. And the second thing is that in Colombia, there are often debates about the many Colombias that exist. Things get better in some place and get worse in other places. This gives a national sort of global framework. So it seems to me that that's a very useful, valuable mechanism. I also think just to underscore something the Vice President said about Colombia, its openness to the rapporteurs, as he mentioned, the Organization of American States into American Human Rights Commission, the court, whatever one thinks about the situation in Colombia, I think there's little question that the government has been open and receptive, which I think deserves a lot of credit for that. This whole exercise, I think, raises a broader question, which I'll just pose the question and not answer, but about human rights work and shedding light on human rights situation in a country like Colombia, which is extremely complicated, extremely challenging. And does one go about it in a way that just tries to be more political in a sense? In other words, to try to, how does one reduce the number of violations in the country, which I think everybody wants to do? Is it a more of a confrontational approach? Is it more of a cooperative approach? What works? And here, I think we at least have an we can at least sort of examine another exercise, another experiment. And I'm not sure what the answer to that is, but it seems to me that that should be part of the debate of what is most effective in achieving the goal that we all want to achieve, which is to have a better human rights situation in Colombia, which I think everybody wants. The second point is that the sense here, I think in most of the reporting that's done, including by a lot of people in this room, is that while things did improve considerably after 2002 on issues like kidnapping and homicides and other dimensions, that in the last couple of years, the last year or two, there's the sense that at least these gains have not been completely consolidated and that there are a number of indications that the security situation in Colombia remains difficult despite the advances that were made in five or six years ago. So that I think is something that we should be concerned about. You take the city like Medellin, for example, which had made remarkable, very impressive progress. And today seems to be going back, if one looks at some of the figures, again becoming very problematic and very troubling in terms of the security situation and obviously the human rights situation. So I think in terms of just tracking the trend, there have been clearly some gains that deserve to be recognized, but also some signs of perhaps backsliding that also deserve a lot of close attention. A lot of these violations, this is not a matter of state policy in Colombia. This is primarily violations committed by illegal groups. And this is my third point, third and final point, which is that a lot of the illegal armed groups, mafias and the FARC primarily, are obviously financed by the drug trade. They buy arms. There's money, a lot of money. Criminal activity, illicit activity. And this raises the whole question, which Vice President Santos did not mention, but it's an issue that he's talked about a lot. And I'm going to mention it because I think it's appropriate in this conversation, which is core responsibility. There is an international dimension of this problem to the extent that Colombia is trying to address the human rights situation. It doesn't help if there isn't any effective cooperation internationally to try to control the sale and flow of arms, money, and the drug question as well. Now, Mexico, the situation in Mexico, I think has created more awareness about this in the United States. And there are some initial steps that are being taken. But I just want to say that I think it's very, very important to include this aspect in this discussion as well, because I think it's the logical conclusion of what do you do to help Colombia and other countries that are going through this very difficult period, this question of core responsibility. So I'll leave it there. I just want to congratulate, commend Vice President, Government of Colombia, and thank Jenny again for this invitation. And I'm sure you'll have a lot of interesting questions for the Vice President. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Let me just say a word about format for the Q&A period. We have not only a packed room here, but we have a packed overflow room down the hall. And they are seeing us, I assume, magically through the television outlets. But if they have questions there being handed index cards and we'll be funneling them in here, if any of them would like to come and stand in line, they're also welcome to join us in the main room. We have two microphones on either side of the room. I would ask folks who have questions to please line up on either side, and we'll alternate between the two sides. I'd like you to please identify who you are and if you represent an organization to let us know what organization. And while you're all getting situated, I'll take the moderator's prerogative and just open up with a couple of questions for Vice President Santos. The first question I have is how you see this new UPR process in relation to the other existing international human rights mechanisms. Do you see it as a complementary kind of process that can enable you to engage better in other human rights processes? Or do you see it as a potential substitute for previous processes? And the second question has to do with follow-up. What happens once you've reported to the UN Human Rights Council? Is there any mechanism then for civil society? You've consulted civil society all the way along in producing this report. Is there a presentation to civil society and an opportunity for civil society to then engage in discussion about how the recommendations might be implemented on the ground? So I'll just start with those two questions. It looks like we have quite a lineup. And maybe I'll moderate and direct the questions from a seated position and give Vice President Santos the podium, unless he prefers to sit. No. The UPR, I think it's in that after seeing how the system worked before, I think it's a good advancement for those countries that really want to cooperate with the system. The countries that don't, whatever system you put forward, it's not going to work. And there are some examples regarding the UPR. In some cases, some countries, the first 45 or 50 countries that sign up for questions and for recommendations are the ones who speak during the process. And in some cases, those countries were able to feed the lot with countries that were favorable to them. And so it was a session in which everybody spoke wonderful things regarding the country that was being reviewed. Those type of cases, whatever system you want to put forward, it's not going to work. For a country that's accountable and that thinks that this type of engagement is important, this system has provided a mechanism that help us in terms of creating accountability, designing advancements and follow-up. One of the things that no country so far has done it, like Colombia has, is the whole follow-up process. And this speech here and others that we have given in Colombia and in Geneva speaking of all our follow-up process shows that for us, at least for Colombia, we take this very seriously and we think this is a type of engagement that works for us and that works for human rights in terms of measuring advancements, showing problems, and creating solutions. But the process is more inclusive. The report that the government puts forward during the UPR comes together with two reports that the human rights, the High Commission of Human Rights puts together. One, regarding other recommendations that the system has put forward for that country, and another one that they build with civil society and NGOs in a visit to the country. So this UPR, in terms of the government, it's complementary to the rest of the system. What's going to happen now that in 2011, there's going to be a reform of the system? I don't know. I think more countries than before are seeing this in the way that Colombia sees it as something positive, but some other countries that have the ability to manage the system and to manipulate it are going to try to put a fight in terms of restricting the ability of having criticism and having constructive but frank discussions regarding human rights. And civil society, we are having discussions with the G24 countries in how can we get involved civil societies in the follow up process. Those who were engaged during the build up and how to get them involved. So I think that's going to be a step that we're going to take forward this year. Thank you very much. Let's start on the left side with Mark, and then we'll go over to you. And then I have some questions that have begun to come in from the other room. It just depends where you are, whether I'm on the left side or the right side. First, let me thank the vice president. And I think that everyone clearly agrees that the kind of process that you're talking about does seem to be a step forward. I would note two things. One is previously under the Civil and Political Rights Convention, countries did have the opportunity to present in an obligation, I believe, over every couple of years, their own assessment of their performance with respect to compliance with that. That would have also been an opportunity to do something of similar nature. The other is whether the permanent working group that you mentioned, which is following up, whether they include at the moment civil society representatives, and if not, whether there's an opportunity for them to be a sense to the community to select their choices for those individuals who might participate in that. My question, though, goes to, as you know, the crisis, oh, by the way, Mark Schneider International Crisis Group. We put out a report last year, which is outside now, which points to the question of one of our concerns about the conflict not coming to an end, is that, in our view, the lack of sufficient progress with respect, in terms of respect for human rights, undermined to some degree the government's ability to bring that conflict to an end. And here I would just, it's sort of a reflection. Why has it taken seven years for these kinds of actions to be taken by the government with respect to many of the issues that you raised, extra judicial killings, forced disappearances, going after the issue of impunity. And I just would note that these are not old, these are not issues solely from the past. You mentioned your report to the commission, the UN commission on torture. Last November, they issued their report, I think around the 20th, which they criticized the Colombian executive branch for actions which threatened judicial independence. The end of October, you mentioned, and I think it's correct, it's very positive that Colombia has cooperated with the work of the special rapporteurs. This was Phillip Alston, special rapporteur on extrajudicial summary or arbitrary executions. He concluded, and I want to start this way, that he said I found no evidence indicating that the killings were carried out had been directed, no evidence indicating the killings had been directed from the top. This is extrajudicial killings. But he went on to say, the sheer number, their geographic spread and the diversity of military units implicated indicate that these killings were carried out in a more or less systematic fashion by significant elements within the military. So the question is why it took seven years when it was viewed, has been viewed as systematic for the government to take appropriate actions to bring that kind of systematic violations to an end. Thank you, Mark. Can I answer? Okay. Let me start by saying that I disagree totally with your premise that human rights issues undermine the possibility of eliminating the conflict. I think what's eliminating, what's not allowing the conflict to be eradicated is drug trafficking that fuels the possibility of those illegal groups to survive on the one hand. And I think on the other hand, the extra breathing room that the FARC has gotten due to its ability to have extra territorial areas under which they can get some breathing air. And I think the third element is that they still, you know, when you look at what? Seven years is nothing for a guerrilla that has been there for 40 years. And that only seven years ago, seven and a half years ago had 42,000 square kilometers of free territory where they were doing, I think they saw only seven years ago that power was right next, you know, was around the corner. I think they still don't understand that this is it, that it's better to negotiate a peace process. And the government has understands very clearly that the end of it has to do with negotiations than to keep, obviously, not the negotiations. They thought they were gonna have in the year 2002, 2001, very different ones. But I think it's a combination of those elements and not human rights. Why seven years? No, we've been working since the beginning. We have actions regarding judicial hearings in 2006 and in 2007 and 2008 when we start finding the problem to grow. That's when we decide, and the government decides to create a commission to look into the problem with the military. It finds out to be a very great problem. It starts taking most more radical steps. But if you look from 2005, 2006, and 2007, the Human Rights Program with the Attorney General's office with the Chief of Staff Command has certain directives and was moving in terms of locating where the problem is, getting the judicial system to work. Many of those 300 persons who were convicted are convicted of cases between 2005 and 2007. The dimensions of it was seen clearly only in 2007 and that's when the decisions were taken, yeah, 2007, 2008, and that's when those, the more aggressive decisions were taken and that's what has permitted it to stop. So it's not something that we were not looking to see and only saw it in the latest years. Impunity, the government promoted a national social policy compass regarding the fight against impunity that put $30 million of Colombian or $25 million of Colombian money, of Colombian budget for the fight against impunity in human rights cases and that's a program that we've been working since the year 2004, it was approved in 2005 and the money is being spent because it's a five-year program to get better results in terms of access and fight against impunity regarding human rights cases. So even though you might see only those results here in the UPR, there are many instances in which those issues were being worked from 2002, from 2003, 2004, any time we found the problem that needed to be tackled immediately, we did others, our policies that just take time to get developed. Okay, we have quite a lineup of questions here. I'll let you, why don't you go for the next one and then I think we'll try to go. Thank you, I'm India Global Asia today. You have given a very good analysis of the human rights problems in Colombia. My question is two-part question. One, have you given this report what you have given to the UN, to the United States State Department because they also issued yearly report on human rights and not very good Colombia's record last year. And second, Al Qaeda and terrorists are looking at Colombia as far as drugs and making money and US is worried about also how big problem you think Al Qaeda and terrorism in your country, they may cross the border in the United States. We work very closely with the US State Department, most of this information, they have it. This exact presentation we haven't and I think one of the things that we're learning how to show many of the things we do regarding human rights to a certain extent, the fight has been so looking at the trees and not at the forest and that we have been able to show a system that is being put into place, that has worked, that is working better, that obviously needs improvement and I think that's something that needs to be done more aggressively. Regarding Al Qaeda, we have very little evidence but some evidence of radical Islamic elements in Colombia. I wouldn't say it's smoking gun but there's a little bit of evidence of radical, of some radical elements, radicalizing some and creating a madrasas and things that we didn't have in Colombia. In some areas of Colombia, we didn't have them. It's something that obviously worries us but so far the evidence of what they're up to, we don't have very clear information regarding the presence of Al Qaeda in Colombia or work by Al Qaeda in Colombia. We don't have any evidence, clear evidence about that. Okay, a couple of questions from the Annex. Kelly Nichols, director of the US Office on Colombia has two questions. First, we've been very concerned by the continued impunity for cases of alleged extradition executions and cases against human rights defenders, especially recently due to the fact that many soldiers allegedly involved in the Soacha case have been freed. What is the government doing to address this situation? And the second is a concern about the privatization of the protection program for human rights defenders. She says, our Colombian colleagues have requested that the Ministry of Interior and Justice assume this program. This was rejected. What is the government's plan for this program? Regarding the recent decisions by a judge of freeing from jail, not freeing from the process, the members of the military who are being investigated for the Soacha and other traditional killings. I think it has to do a little bit, it has to do more with inefficiency of the Attorney General's office. They changed the people in charge which I thought was a mistake that they're an independent branch of government. What we have done is maintain those members of the military constrained to basis, to the basis, operational basis. And we hope that the government cannot do anything. We can't do anything. The executive branch cannot do anything. It's a problem that it's in the hands of the Attorney General's office. We've given them all they needed. They fast for more investigators. We gave them the money. They fast for more fiscalists. We gave them the money. And it's just a, I would say it's a matter of time before they're able to fix those problems. And the judge acted according to law. As you know, we changed the law to give more guarantees to those who are being processed. So before that reform, the Attorney General's office had the ability to investigate and to capture and to order somebody to be put in jail. Now that's, now the Attorney General's office asks a judge whether a person can be captured and put in jail preventively during the whole process. And it's a judge who decides, an independent judge, a judge, as we call it, guarantees who decides what happens to those persons. It's 12, I don't understand. No, no, no. They're free from jail, but they're not free from the process. They're still, the process of investigation is still and we hope that the Attorney General's office will improve the inefficiencies. And the privatization of the protection program, first of all, it's not being privatized. The government's still gonna pay for it. The problem is that many of some sectors of civil society are allowed to put what they call trustful bodyguards, which means in some cases parents, in some cases people who are not the most efficient in terms of protection. We decided to eliminate that and create a system that is more accountable, either give it to the police or to a company pay for that protection to a professional company with auditing by the Colombian government that can give protection. So it's not privatization. There's discussions regarding how that protection program is gonna work. I think this next week there's gonna be a meeting with NGOs, with labor leaders to decide finally what's going to be the decision regarding the protection program. But anyway, it's not privatization. The government pays for it. We pay for the security of them. And obviously what we need to do if it's gonna be a private company, have very good auditing process so that the protection is maintained at the levels that are needed. Thank you. Why don't we take a group of three questions on this side and then see how we do, kind of wise. My name is Carlos Quezada. I'm the director of the Latin America program here at Global Rights and we are a capacity building a human rights organization. As you know, the UN independent expert on minority issues, Gail MacDougal is gonna visit Colombia next week for two weeks in order to assess the human rights situation of Afro-Colombians in Colombia. What would you say are the major achievements by the Colombian government in order to improve the situation of Afro-Colombians? And linked to this, there's a statement that has been said around that there is a disproportionate impact of the armed conflict within Afro-Colombian communities. And if you can comment on that too. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Felipe Estefan and I'm a graduate Colombian student in public diplomacy at Syracuse University. I had a question regarding technology innovation and the use of social media for the protection and promotion of human rights. Last week, Secretary Hillary Clinton gave a policy speech on this and highlighted that link and in her speech she mentioned Colombia. And I was just wondering, Mr. Vice President, whether the Colombian government is thinking of ways in which it can use social media like Facebook and Twitter and technology innovation in the form of SMS short codes, crisis mapping, use of mobile platforms to promote the protection of human rights in Colombia. Give me your card. Okay. Hello, my name is Ian Campbell. I'm with the AGA group. Mr. Vice President, thank you very much for your presentation. I think the government of Colombia has done a great service to its population by securing the cities. But unfortunately, the result of that or inadvertently result of that is the armed forces or armed groups went out to the remote areas where Afro-Columbians and indigenous live, increased displacement population. What is the government doing to make sure that there's a security presence, a state presence in those remote areas which will then allow for a more protection to the citizens, Afro-Columbians, indigenous women and displaced individuals to make sure that their human rights are not further violated on top of the current situation that's happening now. Thank you. And let me tie in one relevant question from Andy Hickey of American University's Peace and Conflict Resolution Program. He asks for more information about specific government programs that are in place for education for displaced children. Okay. Afro-Columbian achievements. There has been a lot of investment in many Afro-Columbian communities, especially in the Pacific, but I think we're still in debt to be very, very, very sincere. That's one of the reasons why we, the government created the Intersexual Commission for the advancement of Afro-Columbian and Rai San population. I headed that commission to be very sincere. It was quite an experience to see the difference of the Afro-Columbian communities by regions, to see the discrimination, the blatant racism that they suffer. For the first time, I think at the highest level, the president, the vice president, the recognition that Colombia had, that there was racism in Colombia society was accepted. The recommendations of that commission, we can give you the document are very, very aggressive. And right now, they're being put into place to very specific things. One is a national social policy document so we can put goals in terms of advancement, money, where we wanna go and how we're gonna get there. And the other leg of the critical recommendations is a very aggressive affirmative action program regarding access to universities, regarding privilege to access to social programs, focalized incentives to many of the social programs that the government have directed, specifically measurement of impact. So we hope that with those two issues that we think will be in place by either the middle of the end of this year, we will start moving forward in terms of eradicating or reducing the inequality and the social and political debt that Colombia has with Afro-Colombian. Without a doubt, right now, one of the biggest and most problematic elements of the violence of Colombia that it has been displaced to the Pacific coast where basically it has Afro-Colombian population. We are changing the whole disposition of how our troops are being placed, where are they going? There's a very big military operation in the northern part of Chocó. We are redistributing and rethinking the whole process of actions in Nariño. There's the creation of a unified command for the southern part of Colombia that has Nariño and basically it's Nariño and Putumayo. But our main task right now is Nariño, but certainly with our success in most of Colombia, the displacement of drugs and the displacement of that violence has had a disproportionate impact on Afro-Colombian population and with the security, we think that we'll be able to at least solve of that problem. The rest of it has to be solved by social policies as I described. Education for the displaced, there are many programs right now. For example, any displaced kid has immediate access to education wherever they land. It's an obligation by mayors to open spaces to kids who are being displaced. There's special programs that the ministry has in place to, you know, when somebody is displaced, they lose two or three years of school very, very quickly. And so you need to reduce that hole in education quickly so that desertion doesn't become another part of the problem. I would, if she wants, I can contact her with the person in charge of vulnerable populations in the Ministry of Education can explain in big detail how that system and how those special programs for displaced people are being implemented and how successful or what problems they have. Thank you. All right, why don't we take a couple of questions over here? Thank you, Mr. Vice President. My question. I forgot to answer one. Social media had, you know, no, I don't have any idea. But I'm willing to listen and I'm willing to see what ideas you guys have, you know. So, really, if you give me your card. It's not serious, of course. It's a business. If it's a business, it doesn't matter, but if it's for me, it's for the government. Okay. My name is Daniel Burrito from the Office of Congressman Raul Grajava of the Seventh District of Arizona. And Mr. Vice President, my question pertains to rule of law and justice in Columbia. According to this document here, which is a drug enforcement administration document in the federal register in August of 2000, according to this document, Mr. President of Rebase Chief of Staff or Secretary of Government and Political Altar Ego when he was Governor of Antiochia was the president of a company which was the single largest importer in all of Columbia of a chemical which is critical to the processing of cocaine, potassium permanganate. This document was produced after three shipments totaling 50,000 kilos were seized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. And according to the same document, from 1996 to 1998, 200 metric tons of potassium permanganate were imported into Columbia by GMP chemicals, which Mr. Morenovia was the president of. Now that's a very interesting finding there. It becomes rather disconcerting when you put it next to the Defense Intelligence Agency document which the National Security Archive found which listed President De Rebe as Associate 82 and described him as a Colombian politician with close ties to the Medellin cartel who cooperated with them. Now I have raised this issue with representatives of your embassy and received no substantive response. I actually was able to put this question to President De Rebe himself and he noted that Mr. Moreno died in a tragic helicopter accident as if that settled the matter. But as far as I know, the other main industrial use of this chemical is processing computer chips. And as far as I know, there's not a significant. Okay. Well, so that's one other use. But so we have to... Okay. So my question is to what legitimate and would Mr. Morenovia be importing these large amounts of this list to controlled chemical? Well, let me just... There's many, that question has been answered many, many times publicly and privately not only by President De Rebe but by Moreno when he was alive. Unfortunately, to a legitimate, I would have to die, go to heaven and come back and be reborn to answer that question since he's not able to do it. But I'm just gonna, by the insinuations that you put together in your question, just give you a little bit of answer not regarding speculations of a DIA intelligence report. No, this is not a speculation. This is a DEA document. The importations have happened. But if you had asked your own government, you would have seen the answer by the DEA agency regarding that report. So I would encourage you to go to your own government and to ask it to the military intelligence what that report was, what that report means and how they said that that was a mistaken report and how it had no, no reality to it. But don't worry, you know, I hope if not, we'll help you with your government. Get all the information that is needed. We have a little bit of access with your government. I hope you'll have better access. But let me give you a couple of... There's been no more, you know, how many people have re-estratized drug traffickers around a thousand? In these six years, so seven years, we have, I think you will not find a government that has fought drug traffickers as tough and as hard and as consistently as the government. So my answer to your question is, you should look at the facts of what we have done against drug traffickers in these seven and a half years of government. You should check your sources and find how a lot of the information that you put forward in your question has been discredited by your own government and the same agencies you put forward. And I think that the relationship between the Colombian government and the US government regarding the fight against drugs has never had a better ally as and a better results in the past seven and a half years as the ones we have had and shown very, very clearly to the world. As a matter of fact, the results in terms of fumigation, of extradition, of property assets, a seizure of these seven and a half year governments have no comparison, no comparison with what former governments of Colombia or other governments of the world have done. So our results in our fight against drug trafficking are very, very, very clear. And I would encourage you really to ask those agencies that you put forward to send you all the information that they sent to us and that they have made public. Okay, administration. My question was what did Mr. Moreno do with 200 metric tons of potassium and permanganate? I don't know Mr. Moreno. I still have not heard an answer. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Jim, why don't we take the next two? Yeah. My name is Jim Jones and I have been sporadically involved in Colombia since the 1960s during the last four progress years. Compiled, numbers are crunched, whatnot. And then some decisions are taken with regard to where Colombia stands with vis-a-vis several dimensions of human rights. However, it so happens that there are non-governmental agencies in Colombia, some of them well-respected, whose figures don't square very well with the public figures. In some cases, the discrepancy is alarming. So I just, my question to you would be what, whom should I trust and why? And in the same context also, you mentioned that in this process of gathering information, okay, the UP, our process, that civil society institutions participate in it, okay? NGOs, you said several participated, but there were a few that I think you refer to as hardcore human rights NGOs who didn't wanna participate. I'd be curious to know what are those hardcore NGOs and why do you think that they didn't wanna participate? Okay, that's my question, thank you. Thank you, and the next one? Well, Vice President Santos, thank you so much for coming and taking the time to speak with us publicly. My name's Annalise and I work with Lutheran World Relief, a development and relief organization that has programs in three regions of Colombia. And we do use social media so your answers will be on Twitter this afternoon. And I'm sure the young man can give you a lesson in how to read this. I need one as well. We work in 30 different countries throughout the world and as I said, we work in three regions of Colombia, largely with displaced communities to plant food, stimulate local economies, build homes, and basically generate more secure rural communities. For the first time in our history of programming in Colombia and related to all of our programs throughout the world, every single one of our partners in Colombia is under threat. Last year we had partners that were murdered, raped, received death threats, and some that were displaced for the third time. So our programs and development have turned into peer relief programs. We're not able to advance in growing food, establishing local economies and increasing access to markets and so forth, as we would like. What we're seeing is that generally communities that are suffering these abuses are having their land taken over or they're losing it because as farmers in America and farmers in Colombia know, they're unable to pay off the loans and they lose their land as a result, despite protections under the law that are supposed to provide some relief for IDPs. So my questions for you are two and they're not related to the UPR, so I hope you'll forgive me and indulge me. One is, what is the government doing to help protect the land of rural farmers that are displaced, particularly in the North and Cordoba and Sucre, where we have programs? And second of all, what do you suggest for a mid-level organization like our own that wants to work along with the government and communities to develop rural Colombia but is unable to do so because of the human rights abuses? And I would like to say that in all cases, those are perpetrated by reorganized paramilitary groups from the reports we've received. Thank you. Okay, we have here the person who was in charge now his ambassador at the OAS of protecting the whole land protection program which from the beginning of the government, we took that idea from the World Bank and we have been able to implement it. Maybe he can tell us more about how much land has been protected and how that works but I'll give you an example. For in Montes de Maria, a lot of the, most of the land has been protected under this provision. So there can be no transaction of land and it's a committee of peasants and the local and the regional government with the president of the state government that decides which land can be sold legally so that land that has been acquired through a forceful displacement doesn't become part of the market and doesn't become entangled in commercial in the market. It has been, I think I would say, a successful experience. Obviously not all the land in Colombia that has been taken over by legal groups from the extreme right to the extreme left to the drug traffickers has been able to be protected but I think in that sense, the protection of land at Colombia has been able to do through Acción Sociale and its projects, it's an experiment that I think due to its size is the biggest now, the biggest in the world. But one of the problems of the land in Colombia is that the whole institutionality of land titling, land protection is very, very, very weak and in many cases, a lot of lands have no titles. People moved into those lands 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years took away the jungle and the property of it. It's not consolidated and it's many of those areas that have been under dispute. What is the government doing? The government has created with the National Planning Department and with the Ministry of Agriculture and with social organizations including the biggest campesino organizations created a scenario, una mesa de tierras in which we're looking area after area, what to do, how to work, what is the best approach because the approaches are different region from region and we hope that in the new victims law a provision for land resolution of conflicts of land in which victims will have, will be a lot easier, will be implemented. Right now somebody whose land has been taken away will take years through the judicial process to get its land back. We're going to create a system that is different. So we're moving in the right direction but obviously and I would agree with you one of the biggest problems that we have has to do with land tenure. Regarding threats, please tell me which of the partner organizations, where are they, we will give them protection, our protection program. Right now the Mexicans are looking to see how they can put the protection program like the one Columbia has. I would have to remind you that the protection program that Columbia got and started in the year 2002 costing five million dollars I think and now it's 80 million dollars a year. We protect labor leaders, we protect social leaders, we protect the members of human rights organizations and members of the organization that feel threatened. So if you can get your people down in Columbia to visit me in my office we will arrange for special security so that they can work freely and work protected. We're doing it in many, many, many areas. I'm surprised at the extent of what you put forward in terms of saying all of them are threatened but my job is not to ask if it's right or if it's not or if it's to get your organization to be able to work in Columbia without fear and helping Columbia and so that's part of my job, that's a job we have been doing since the year 2002 in my office and if you can get in touch with me afterwards we will work with your partner organizations in Columbia to get them all the protection that they're needed. Regarding your questions, what are the numbers, what are right? I would say most of the numbers are sort of the same. I think the numbers that have the biggest discrepancy has to do with displacement. That's the biggest, but to us it's not a number game. As a matter of fact when you look, Columbia now spends every year more than $700 million to attend displacement. We have probably the most modern legislation where but still we haven't been able to reduce, not reduce but to see the, we're not even near the end of the tunnel in terms of stopping displacement and of the whole process of resettlement. In most of the other figures we sort of agree, so I would say that is not which numbers do you believe but what the problem in its essence is and the hardcore human rights organizations why did not participate. They, you know, there's a problem with interlocution to be very sincere and I'll give you an example. For the first three years of our first government, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005, early 2005, my office worked to get a national election plan on human rights and international humanitarian plan developed. We worked with state agencies, we brought experts, we put forward this national election plan to be concerted with the social organization because that's, we've been waiting since 2005 for them to accept, to have that interlocution to get a national election plan that is not a government of Colombia, it's a societal program that I think it's going to, that we're gonna miss and we're gonna miss an opportunity to leave Colombia with a very important national action plan that compared to the ones that we compared and the experts from those countries said it goes way beyond in terms of measurement, conditions, capabilities and sophistication of the plan. So it's, I would say it has to do with mistrust, it has to do with them not participating. They said, you know, this is not something we don't want to be co-opted by the Colombia government. We said, okay, we accept that. But what's really unfortunate is that in something as important as a national election plan, we haven't been able to get them on board to start discussing it with, not only with the Colombian government, but with the rest of Colombian society and the regions so that program, which is very important, is still on hold. One last question, I have to go. One last question. I could assess. I think he was here first. Those two were done. Yes, Garciano, thank you for being here. Thank you also the Institute of Peace for putting this event together. My name is Humberto Garciano, I'm from Colombia and I'm the director and co-founder of the Manolsa Patolivella for Latino Development Center, which is a non-profit that promotes visibility voice and cultural empowerment among the African descendants from Latin America and the Caribbean here in the DC area. My question is related to the question that Jan Campbell did on Afro-Colombians and also Carlos Quezaflo from Global Rights. I think as an Afro-Colombian, I think that the displacement of Afro-Colombian in the Pacific and Atlantic region in the areas where Afro-descendants are located is tightly linked to the drugs and the biofuels and development. A lot of the politicians who are in jail are strongly related, connected politically with the current government of Colombia and of course the mafia, the narco-traffics and the multinational corporations have interest in those areas. I would like Vice President to answer sincerely the question about how the president of the U.S. is gonna work to address these issues. How concretely are you going to work to, because I don't know how to put this together back. The disproportionately increasing of the displacement in the Pacific region has to do with drugs and multinational corporation interest in that particular region. So I would like to see how are the concrete actions that the government is gonna take because we is gonna come four more years and I'm sure that we're gonna see more Afro-Colombians on the streets of the main cities of the country. So this is my question and this is also I'm sorry just to finish, this is also connected with the free-through agreement and the development of those corporations. So thank you very much. You're excellently, sir, ma'am, it's an honor. My name is Claire Siobhan Moran. I'm originally from St. Martin's University. I'm currently enrolled in American University, Washington Semester in the Peace and Conflict Resolution Seminar. My question is this and please take it in the spirit of peace building. As Columbia volunteered to be one of the first nations to undergo the UPR, will Columbia assist its neighbor nations as well as foreign nations in assisting and correcting human rights violations and issues? Let me start with your question. We, as a matter of fact, we are working with the High Commissioner to see how the Colombian experience which in Geneva was considered in a seminar that was put forward in an evaluation of the UPR was considered one of the best UPR processes to work with the High Commissioner and see what other countries we can assist in terms of how to build that process, how to follow up. So in that sense, the answer is yes. And we have been cooperating any government that wants to learn from our positive and negative experiences, which we have to, and many of them, after seven and a half years, of protecting human rights, where the resistance are, how to improve conditions, what type of programs work, what types of programs don't work, and we're more than open to help any country that asks for that assistance. And regarding your question, as I said before, I think the biggest threat to Afro-Colombia communities in the Pacific is without a doubt drug trafficking. I wouldn't put in the same context what you call biofuels or multinational corporations. There are very little multinational corporations in the Pacific. The only project of Palm Oil that was being, there was a built, taking away land from the Afro-Colombian community has been returned to the, in the Curbala de Oji, Guamiando area. They, the Afro-Colombian community has that land back. And other than that project, I don't know of any other instance in which that has happened. If there are, we will work as we did in the Guamiando and Curbala de Oji process to return the land to our rightful owners. The problem of communal titles that we're giving in the 90s and later is that they gave the titles of the land and they did not map who had rightful titles before. So there's been a conflict of ownership that in some cases has been abused by legal groups, by delinquents to try to increase the amount of land that they had, which is exactly what happened in Curbala de Oji, Guamiando. But the policy regarding that is communal lands by Afro-Colombian communities is theirs to use as their own governmental or their own institutions decide to be used. Any external influence wherever we can find it and wherever we can stop it, we will. In some cases has been the FARC that has pushed Afro-Colombian communities to cultivate coca as we saw it in Nariño through threats of getting killed. And in other cases has been illegal parameters that took away land from the Afro-Colombian communities in the Atrato Valley, which fortunately so far the rightful ownership is back. It's still a matter of time before the latest decision by a judge will give a full possession to the rightful owners. So thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'd like to say a special word of thanks to Vice President Santos for spending the afternoon with us discussing this important topic and to Michael Schifter for his willingness to comment and to all of you for coming. I'd ask you please to remain seated while the Vice President exits the building and then we'll dismiss you all. Thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. No problem. Thank you.