 Good morning. Buenos dias. I'm pretty sure it's morning though. It says good afternoon. Good morning. I'm Carla Copel. I'm a vice president here with the United States Institute of Peace. As I hope you all know, but perhaps not, the US Institute of Peace was created over 30 years ago as a nonpartisan national institute dedicated to the proposition that peace is possible, practical, and cost-effective. And we're honored to have all of you here today for what I think will be a very rich program. Today's conversation marks actually the relaunch of the Columbia Peace Forum, which our beloved colleague, Ginny Bouvier, started in 2012. And to organize a conversation or a space for conversation around Columbia's internal armed conflict and to discuss challenges with the peace process. Ginny unfortunately passed away earlier this year, so in some ways we view the Columbia Peace Forum as a living legacy to her good work in the region and to our collaboration with the Wilson Center. We are honored to have Cynthia Ironson here today and to be able to share this relaunch with them. The forum itself has varied in terms of its topics. It brings together academics. It brings together with Columbia and specialists, government officials, and others to provide a platform for a variety of voices to talk about the commitment to peace in Columbia. Obviously, this past year has been an important one where we've transitioned from the peace process with the FARC to the process of reintegration and reconciliation as well as the negotiation of the ceasefire with the LN. And so it really is a critical time to talk about how we pivot and transition and find a path forward that leads to durable peace and cessation of violence and peace and prosperity nationwide. Today in particular, we're focused on that recovery from war and we want to cover that both from an artistic standpoint and an analytical perspective. We are honored to have the award-winning Colombian photographer Jesus Abad Calorado presenting some of his photographs that will be followed by an expert panel talking about the challenges to reintegration and victims' rights, which are both critical points in the accord and critical to the success of this peace process long term. I'd be remiss if I didn't thank Lauren Sacks, who's our USAID mission director, for joining us this morning. Obviously, USAID and the US government have played an important role in ushering peace to Columbia and will continue to play a role in moving forward and in making sure that that piece sticks. With that, I want to invite Jesus Abad Calorado up to show us some of his beautiful photographs and meaningful photographs. I should say beautiful is probably the wrong descriptor, but it's a fitting introduction to the conversation of how we transform Columbia into a nation of peace. So thank you very much for joining us. It's a pleasure to have all of you here, and it's really a pleasure to be relaunching the Columbia Peace Forum with all of you this morning. Thank you. Good morning. I'm very grateful to all of you for being here with us this morning, a journalist and a photographer and the son of a family that was displaced and arrived in Medellin in the year 1960. And I lost my grandparents, my uncles, cousins throughout this armed conflict that has affected Columbia, a political analyst. But I would like to talk to you from my heart when I learned how to show you the history of my country through images. I learned to write for the Colombians background through terror from fear of words. I have a lot of images in my head, but at the time those images have become a yell, a scream from my heart. And in this way that I express myself, I look to perhaps let people know what is the story that our communities have lived through. If I'm a son or a grandchild of grandparents that have been assassinated of uncles and aunts or cousins that were kidnapped or disappeared, my heart obviously beats at the path of these victims and not to those that caused them. What they suffered. I'm going to ask if you could lower the lights so you could see the images in a better way. I'd like to tell the story, a particular story. And when I say a story in particular is how we should get to know the history of just one town during this war. It's very difficult to understand that a country such as ours, not with 50 years of war that the war began before the FARC was born, the war began before ELN or the paramilitary came into being. I'm telling you that I lost my grandparents and it was back in the 1960s because they were of the liberal party in a conservative region of the country. And I can tell you this so that you perhaps would have more clarity and understanding. I could come here and have a t-shirt or a shirt and I could go to some manifestation and in front of the t-shirt I could say something like the face of one of my cousins who disappeared through the Colombian military forces. And what was his sin? Basically that he was a peasant and that he lived in a zone with a guerrillas, lived my cousin with an uncle, were detained by the military through the Magdalena Medio in Cimitarra, Santander del Sur. My uncle was given his freedom, but they threatened that they were going to throw them out of a helicopter while they were taking them back to their battalion. My cousin Abelardo at the battalion was assassinated. He had three children who were left faultless. Abelardo Galeán Colorado. But in the back of that shirt I could put another image and present Leon Correal López and those last names are Colorado López. My name is Jesús Abad. Leon Correal was kidnapped also by the FARC guerrilla. We paid part of the kidnapping. He was not a gentleman with a lot of money. He had two cars. Basically he was just taking platano and corn from the state of Meta to Bogota and he would go to the market there to sell his products. He was kidnapped. We paid part of the ransom, but since there were no resources to pay, he was assassinated while he was in capture. But his body was never delivered to us. So I'm talking to you now. I'm talking about my grandparent, my grandfather, my grandmother. I'm talking about my uncle and two of my first cousins. And I could go on. But what goes inside me, what in my mind exists, has made us hate. They taught us to hate, but they never taught us about vengeance because I am the son of peasants. But they are individuals with ethics that are decent that respect life and that carry on in solidarity. And when I talk to you about the issues that have occurred during the war in Colombia, I can mention to you, there is the picture of Bohaya. How long does it take to get to Bohaya, let's say from the city of Medellin, 30 minutes? If you're in a small plane. If it weren't a jet, you'd get there in eight minutes. But in one of these little planes, 30 minutes from Medellin, where there's no communications, no roads, because people basically just use the river or the jungles, you see some of the worst violence in Colombia from 2002. Let me even go further back, 1996. Between 1996 and 1997, we saw a counterinsurgent of operations take place where members of the military, hand in hand with the paramilitary, went there to supposedly get the guerrilla and take them out of this area. But there were so much displacements and murders and murders that we saw in that town. And I'm speaking very clearly about the relationship that the army had with the paramilitary in many areas in Colombia. Because it's something I'm not going to cover over as a journalist. I'm not a globist. I don't belong to any political party. I'm just a journalist. But as a journalist, I have to tell you as clearly as I can that many years, for many years, there were tragedies that occurred by armed groups that were illegal. And you can call them whatever you like, guerrillas, or you could call them paramilitary. But I can say that it is such a shame that in my country, many of the violent acts were done by military and paramilitary. And I'm a witness of those events. And when I have made the testimony, when I've been a witness of all these events, I have to give you the testimony of the truth and leave these images as a memory of what occurred. In these images, for example, you can see that some 96 people that lived here were living through tragedy, tragic times in the area of Chocó or Antioquia. Six years later, the paramilitary with the disputes they were having with the FARC guerrillas arrived at Boyan. I shouldn't get away from the mic so I can keep talking to you. But on the right-hand side, you're seeing Antioquia. On the left is the area called Chocó. And in the lower section is the town called Boyan. On May 2, 2002, the combat between the guerrilla and the paramilitary occurred. They threw a bomb, the FARC actually dropped a bomb that fell inside the church. I was the first journalist that arrived in this town. And as I said to you, it was 30 minutes from Medellín. But I got there three days after the tragic bombing. I couldn't go on an airplane because it was combat that was being carried out for approximately a week at that time. But on the third day I arrived at the city. As a journalist, I would take perhaps the farthest away. I went up to the capital of Chocó, which is Quimdoa. And then I went down through the river. But all the journalists could have come down on the river. Why was I the first one to be able to do it? Because the church and the missionary groups know the type of work that I do. And they knew that I wasn't there to do a show. My idea was not to take images that were sensationalists. That for many years I had gone to many areas to follow the issues that happened. Those that lost their lives. So I went down with the people from the church. I can tell you that I saw dead people being buried. 12 of our Afro descendants were the ones that were supposed to bring out those bodies. They had white gloves on to help bring the bodies out. I'm not taking pictures of feet and hands in the foreground. Many children were killed in this church. Next slide, please. Next slide. I apologize. So I saw the people who were killed in this church being buried. 12 men in white gloves with their mouths covered were the ones who buried these victims. In this canoe or this boat you see the bodies of the victims going down the river. I saw the faces of a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic country, an Afro-descendant country, a mixed indigenous group of people, a classist and racist country, because it's the black people who live under the worst conditions in Colombia, and the same can be said of indigenous communities. But it's even worse for them when war arrives. Now, these people would be perfectly happy if they were just left alone on the river side, but the armed forces arrived there, or sometimes development arrives in the form of mining or the cutting down of the forests that destroys the quality of their waters and their mountains, and it does away with their hope. These photographs were taken during those days that I was at that community and the people would tell me, please, don't leave us, because someone has to stay here to tell our story, and this can't just be an oral account. There have to be images, such as many of the images we see here and in many countries that talk about what this tragedy perpetrated against humanity has been. These tragedies aren't the most important part of what the rest of the country wants to hear. This might be only half hour away from the city, but these are forgotten for lawn regions. If it happens there, well, it's because that's where the black people live or where the indigenous people live, but when the tragedy isn't happening in the heart of the main cities, such as Medina Bogota or other big cities in Colombia, well, people don't really care. Six days after what happened in the church that tragedy, the army arrived and people fled and people couldn't even mourn their dead loved ones. It took a month for them to be able to do so. Now, I didn't see anyone crying. I didn't see anyone with tears in their eyes. There was no time for them to cry or to mourn. A month later, I bore witness to a ritual that the Afro-descending communities engage in. Alavados is a type of mournful, plaintive song that they sing to mourn their dead, but they couldn't engage in this ritual. And the fourth month in September, that's when people were able to come back to their towns and the neighboring towns, greeted them with love and with a sign of resistance to see that the people were coming back to their homeland with white flags that are indicative of peace and respect, honor, humanity, and people greeted the inhabitants of this town that were returning. And among the people, you have Eugenio Palacio with his newborn daughter. They were displaced during that time period and while displaced, Patricio, his daughter, was born. Ceviti was another boy that came on this boat, rather, at 12 hours of navigation back to Bohuia. They came back with their dogs. Dogs are important for the peasants, such as their chickens and their aromatic plants and their trees, all of which are important to them. In the same place where they saw their dead ones, they engaged in a ritual using candles, and this is in Choco, which is a department, as many others in Colombia, that were beset by this strife. Now, this is a map of Choco, and this wasn't only in memory of the 79 victims that died in the church, but the hundreds of people that were also thrown into the river for years in which the armed groups were fighting for the territory and where the people who died in this strife were the peasants themselves. And in that church, they danced that night. I saw them dancing and I saw them celebrate life days later. People were taken out of this common grave and taken to a cemetery where they were identified with numbers. And so they created this mantle with the names of the victims, and what we saw was emergence of nature where this tragedy had happened. Nature is wise and where people cause pain. You see there reemerges life in the form of plants in one of his last books, perhaps the last book entitled The Resistance said that it was sufficient for there to be light coming through a crack for life to emerge anew, and that's what happened here. Life reemerged through the light here in this window. It's not just nature reborn, but the Joko people, the indigenous people and the other peoples of my country who aren't the ones that occupy the central powers of the government. These are the people who live on the margins, the periphery. What you see here, I can't broaden this picture to show you step by step. This is a mural that in January 2013, when the boys and girls went back to their classes in the municipality of Boko Ya, there was a teacher with a social worker of the national university that was with them. And so they created this mural that speaks of the people before the war and then in the midst of the war, the people who escaped in their boats down the river with their white flags such as the pictures I took that you saw and ultimately they see the sun. That sun represents their hope. But the most beautiful thing here is what it says on the mural. It says that this mural gathers and reflects the feeling and the words of the boys and girls who call into question the war, the pain and the abandonment that it causes and they remind us of the responsibility that not forgetting means. I am what others could not become and that's why we don't forget the fourth and fifth grade of the urban school of the municipality of Boko Ya. These photos, I'll tell you what they are of. This is a pipi which is a region of Boko Ya, a small city of Boko Ya. Now you see in the background a home. This is a book that I published two years ago and I would like to offer special thanks here from the bottom of my heart to the U.S. Agency of Cooperation because they supported the publication of some of these books and this book is out of publication, out of circulation. You can't get it anymore and that's why I'm telling you we need to publish more. This tells the stories of our country. Now you see on the front of this book on the cover, Clidio who's holding a white flag. Now I'm going to show you why Clidio is going down the river with three missionaries and a few other people and a woman who died in a fight, five days after the tragedy in the church because the war continued, because war in my country, I must say this, well, there's no longer war with the FARC. There are some dissidents of the FARC that continue, but in my country what is in the news is corruption, but not the fact that the cities are being taken. No one's talking to my country like they did 10 or 15 or 20 years ago of the hundreds of abducted people of the cities destroyed of soldiers who are ambushed and killed and of warriors who are also Colombians who are killed in air raids. Now the important thing I say here is that we all need to talk about Tomaco where seven people were killed because there's a serious problem that's taking place in Tomaco and those other areas in which you see many people who are engaged in drug trafficking but also peasants who need development, not just the army, not just outlaw armed groups. There are peasants who need to produce their product and people who are willing to buy their products, but in regions such as the Choco region, their product doesn't get to Bogota, their yuca. It is more profitable to grow illicit crops which is what the peasants oftentimes turn to as a means of survival in these far-flung areas. I don't want to justify this, I just want you to know that it's a good thing that what we hear in the news is about corruption because if there were more instances of the guerrilla taking over town so that's what would be in the headlines of the newspapers. Now if bullets stop flying, well now the journalists need to focus on the most serious problem that Columbia faces now which is for us to understand that people who make a lot of noise with their firearms, that's just the result of a country that's very corrupt in which oftentimes the leaders of the different traditional political parties are getting rich at the expense of the public coffers which belongs to the whole country, whether it's a Liberal Party or the Radical Change or Conservative Party or the Democratic Center Party or Polo Party, it doesn't matter what the stripe is. What we have to say is that what Columbia actually needs which is ethics and education and a better sense of humanity and oftentimes the peasants, the men and women of the countryside because my parents are more ethical and decent than many of the people who are at the helm governing Columbia, the ones who have fled Columbia and to be a decent person you don't have to go to a university, you just have to be properly brought up, education that you start getting at home or in school. Let's go to Jesus of us presentation please. That's the PowerPoint presentation. I didn't take this picture. This photo is part of the Book of Violence published in 63-64. The FARC hadn't even started yet. This is a picture from a book that, when it was published, Guzman Campos and the father of sociology in Columbia and a lawyer, Eduardo Mania Mendoza. Umania Luna, the father of a lawyer who was a human rights defender known as Eduardo Umania Mendoza who was killed in 1998. This book about violence in Columbia isn't a book that we are shown or taught about in Columbia. Very few people know about this book but it talks about the tragedy more than 300,000 dead and it held up who the responsible parties of the tragedy were as well as those responsible for this tragedy were not the police or the birds or the low class people but the political leaders rather that were exacerbating and stirring up hatred to get people to kill each other, to get, to pit one brother against another. Now this picture is the Peasant Christ as it's called and that's how my uncle died in August 17th of 1960. These are my grandparents, Jose Maria and Maria Dolores. My grandmother died four months after her husband was killed next to her bed and outside of her house. Her youngest son was killed and tied to a post that's why she died of pain, a broken heart and these are crimes and consequences that sometimes we don't even talk about when talking about war. This person that you see next to this woman and this little girl, this is a special girl, my sister, not my biological sister but we were raised together so you see my mother, my father and this older sister of mine. It was June 22nd of this year that my father died while I was working in the field in Colombia in an area in which the Farca guerrillas were concentrated. How many years has this war in Colombia lasted and the hands of the women tell that story but the faces of their grandsons and granddaughters also speak of... This is in Peque Antioquia in July of 2001 where I took this picture and while I'm taking this picture she is seeing the bodies of peasants who have been murdered by paramilitary groups pass by and this was July of 2001 when I took this picture and she's telling me 50 years ago she said I saw this tragedy for the very first time I had to run away from my town with my family I lost our crop of beans and corn and now I'm going through this once again with my children and my grandchildren and I wonder if this little girl who is looking at you here up on the screen looking at what's happening in her country is she years hence going to have to go through this tragedy again or will we be able to stop this war once and for all as this government or administration has tried to do when I speak of this administration the one that we currently have I back the peace process wholeheartedly because I know what war means because I've seen women marching against war this picture which is on the cover of Pasta Ya Boca I worked on this commission and this group of memory and that's where I met Jenny from the Institute of Peace who supported the work done by this group which was preserving the memory and this woman with a yellow flower in her hands because in our country we've never lost hope there are people and there are prophets of war there are prophets who foresee tragedy but if we were to ask the peasants who are the ones who have lost the most in the war the industrial sector or industrial leaders or the leaders of the country no, the ones who have lost the most in Colombia are the families of the peasants because they're the ones whose children work in the guerrilla groups in the army in the paramilitary groups it's their children who fight in these battles they were the ones who were the victims of these massacres massacres committed by the paramilitary groups oftentimes in association with the army massacres in a smaller scale the statistics talk about this as well that were also committed by the guerrilla groups but the peasants are also the ones that whose lands are now in the hands of the mafia of the corrupt powers people who have taken over the land of those who were displaced from their lands peace isn't for people from Bogota to live well or in Cali or Medellin because for many years now in these major cities people don't really have first-hand contact with the war, with firearms it's the peasants who have been hardest hit and these are the ones who for so many years have been waiting for peace to arrive this country that's rich in butterflies, birds, rivers, mountains what is left of the mountains, of the forests rather of the rivers because that is also another trilogy this is the violence that is being perpetrated against nature I've seen the butterflies landing on the weapons of the fighters I've also seen the destruction of the rivers by oil spills and I ask when are we going to stop this war with the largest armed group that strife has already been brought to an end but there is still the ELN guerrilla group and other groups that still persist in their fight but the nature in Colombia has also suffered you can see the trees pockmarked with bullets and the forests destroyed and the anti-personnel mines that sometimes were strewn close to schools 20 years, that is October 31st 20 years ago, today, 20 years ago I was a first journalist to go there to chronicle a tragedy in which the paramilitary groups for five days tortured and murdered people from this town and a friend, a very close friend of mine a human rights defender of the conservative party the non-communist conservative party who was a lawyer in my city and Caramillo reported turned in the paramilitary groups for working with the army in perpetrating this crime and the governor at that time in 1997 said that that human rights defender just as the journalists he said he said that the human rights defender this is a crime said the governor that the army hadn't arrived at but over time it became evident in the inter-American human rights court it was shown that the army was complicit in what happened here but four months after my friend was killed in the city of Mendein his office was right on the opposite side of the street of the tribunal of justice and what did they do to him as a symbol before killing him they put tape over his mouth so he wouldn't keep talking because he was the one who said the governor then and now was harming the institutions of the country and that's what often times happens to journalists now this was 1997 in the city a day just like today I was walking through the mountains to arrive at this town and to be able to tell the story of what had happened in this town to my country now you can see the nature is destroyed here so that coca leaf can be planted our rivers became common graves mass graves in many places of our country or in some places to not exaggerate I don't like to exaggerate what I saw yesterday in the Holocaust museum the crematories that also happened in Colombia in the northern Santander region and here you see an oven or crematory now the peasants were tortured tied to the street before they were sent to the ovens where they were cremated and you can see the signs on the tree of what happened where the peasants were tied the mark is still on the park of the tree and here you have one of the crematories or ovens and close to that tree where the peasants were tied you see a shoe like the shoes I saw yesterday in the museum to the Holocaust this shoe takes on life because nature is growing on the articles of clothing or the shoes left by the peasants at the foot of the tree where they were tied animals were also branded women were branded this picture was taken in 2002 this was a young girl of 17 years raped by four or five paramilitary men and it took me three years to publish this picture because I didn't want to make a display a spectacle of this now Amnesty International in 2005 came to talk about sexual violence against women especially in Colombia in a country in which often times the country didn't want to see what was happening there and so you can see that the guerrilla forces left graffiti on the walls of the buildings and also as a bear witness of their groups sponsored by the state these were schools for the paramilitary operatives now in Colombia many attacks were perpetrated destroying entire towns air strikes of the air force in peasant areas entire forests that were destroyed by oil that spilled and continues to spill and that's another reason we have to stop this war let's go to Granada, image 83 please I want to talk about Granada in Antioquia this is a municipality that in 2000 underwent two different armed attacks in November the paramilitary groups killed 19 peasants they didn't this was November 3rd of 2000 which just happened 19 peasants were murdered little girls little girls who were going to the school in that territory because nowadays the schools are quiet and there were attacks that were occurring people began to flee they were being displaced by the violence they were seeing the FARC guerrilla accused the police that had been accomplices of the attacks by the paramilitary so in December on the 16th and 17th they destroyed the police barracks in the area and at the same time 258 homes in the area 23 people died 18 were civilians 5 were police officers I went down there with some of my friends from human rights organizations from Medellin and we went to go to be together with the people and the people marched with us in Granada the flag that you see for the peace territory something you're going to see in the leftovers of the town and the mountains and what was left to the church that very same day when I went there and this was a day after the guerrilla attack on 7th of December people in Colombia light candles they began to celebrate Christmas because they couldn't light these candles on the 9th of December two days later people here you can see are lighting the candles during the day to celebrate life they gathered at the park so they could hold hands so they could say this area is for peace and they're not going to bend our wills and it's not for the military or the guerrilla but sadly in Granada we saw that the public forces were in complicit agreement with the paramilitaries and that's what the peasants in Granada tell their story this woman here who's crying she's looking at a woman who's about to be married you can see the peace territory flag that I mentioned before is there on the ground and it's at the entrance to the church and at the back you can see the red cross this is Beatriz Garcia going with Oscar Hidalgo in the middle of war to be married people in town murmured is she crazy they didn't point out the man they pointed out the bride is she crazy she's going to be married we're looking for the dead people that are here in the midst of all this madness how could she think about this and Beatriz he married in the midst of the strategy said to me as a photographer please don't take pictures of me fortunately these images are a testimony that picture was taken 17 years ago and you can see what it says there and the sign going into the church that sign was also the ones that marched they carried it the people that went to become part of the town war everyone loses all of us should help to construct a peace process in Granada people held hands to reconstruct their town many of them took out their pigs their horses they sold them because with 22,000 inhabitants it dropped to 5,000 and those that stayed in that town held hands to and actions that were in tribute to life and the mayors from Antioquia together with the government at that time October 14th of 2001 10 months after the tragedy the governor Guillermo Gaviria Correa organized the Marcha del Ladrillo it's a reconstruction of Granada Guillermo Gaviria is the husband of one of my Colombian colleagues who is going to be here and she directed a unit of victims Guillermo is part of the ones here marching and it's this woman here dressed in white you can see that she's going to be married as well and you're a child dressed with her baptismal gown in the midst of about a thousand 1500 people each one carrying a brick so they reconstruct the city of Granada this picture should be a symbol today in my country a country that today is divided supposedly between the friends of peace and people that want to destroy the process and want to tear it apart and I ask myself everyone in Colombia men and women rich and poor businessmen professors peasants and the people in the cities we should shouldn't we each be laying a brick shouldn't we do that when we have to recognize that many other governments are supporting the peace process but I don't think that any other government should come in to stand up for the peace in Colombia but I know that many areas in the territory and many people the cooperation here from the agencies here in the United States is in a lot of places in Colombia trying to work on peace while many people are wanting to basically back the war so very sadly I have to say that the phenomena that we today we're calling the post truth is causing a lot of harm in our country Colombia but in many other places in the rest of the world but in my country in my own country instead of celebrating peace and instead of putting down that one brick each one at a time many people are opposed and they're trying to block the process why Bojaja that town that I showed you earlier they voted 96% yes in a city like where I live in Medellin in a state like Antioquia 400,000 votes voted no and I'm embarrassed by that because I understand that this negative leadership that has basically some fear with contra chavismo they're telling people that tomorrow the FARC is going to be in control as if we were going to vote whoever wants to vote for them obviously they'll be free to do so but throughout the country even though there's so much corruption there's a lot of decent people in Colombia I know decent people from different parties but I would have to say to them that they haven't worked for Colombia they haven't put their heart and soul into the heart and soul of the people they haven't known how to walk in the shoes of these victims in Granada while they were trying to reconstruct the city there was even more tragedy here you're seeing the reconstruction of the town and you see the coffins coming by and they finished reconstructing and I go back to see this peace banner float and people continue planting where they recover the bodies of the dead people the people that came to Granada said it had reconciliation and had marches for reconciliation years ago but it's sad to say that the vote was no and many of these towns in Antioquia voted no because not just the politicians came there to campaign in order to destroy the process but many of the sectors of the Colombian Catholic Church Protestant churches dedicated themselves to sow terror in the population so they would vote no that causes me to be very sad if those leaders in our country would only see Colombia from a plane or from a building if they dedicated themselves to walking in the path of the peasants if they went to the mountains of my country if they went across the rivers if we went horseback then maybe for sure they would understand that peace is the most important and urgent need for our country the couple that I showed you before in that church when they got married in the year 2005 I met them again and I took these pictures to understand that that woman who was married back then in the midst of the war could show that love was stronger than violence but we were very sad very embarrassed to talk about love and to say that we should be loving and we don't want to talk about being human because sometimes we pay much more attention to those who talk with belligerence and with a hard voice in Colombia there is a saying berraco it's a word like real macho man someone who's very strong and that's what we want to hear sometimes we want to talk about the father that's violent that he has his Juana on and his poncho and he has to put things in order but they don't teach us that it's love that it's education that it's decency that is going to make us go forward last year a year before the plebiscite I went to look for Beatriz Oscar again that couple from Granada that were married in the midst of that tragedy they have about a half an acre of land and on on that half acre they have one cow Beatriz works out in the field with her husband Oscar they actually make panela or the raw sugar from sugar cane and Beatriz voted yes for the peace process because she doesn't want this war to be repeated I don't want to go on but I've learned the names of the animals on the farm because a farmer that has 1500 headed cattle for example could care less he only cares about what he makes and how much money he can make but a couple like Beatriz and Oscar they care for each one of their animals the cow is named Bolita so that she could have a calf that she could give them milk so they could make some cheese so they could feed their children they have a small crop area they have a few chickens three dogs coqui lupi and escubidu they have two geese and emelda and a rooster they wanted to baptize them as they said to me two months ago I went back again to bring them a copy of that picture that I just showed you they not only have the picture that I took of their wedding day but they also have this picture we're going to go back to the previous presentation so I can reach close to my remarks today I work with the victims I've met most of the commanders in my country from ELN from the FARC from the army the political leaders but in my pictures I like to talk about the victims of Colombia and who they've been that's why when I'm showing you these images I like to talk about those that were the losers those that we have to return their hopes in life let's go to Jesus Abad and go to picture 76 I can talk about what do people that are being displaced in the midst of war what do they carry with them when I talked about Granada I mentioned Buhaya to you I can tell you that in those towns I like to tell stories of each one of the events that I'm documenting because the story of a people should have names should have lost names we should say that these peasants are the ones that they displaced in the year 97 from Duitango that this child is from San José de Apado from a massacre committed in 2005 by the army in Iparas where the captain Guillermo Mando Gordillo two years later confessed how they had planned the action in which eight peasants were killed in the mountains and that was a crime that was initially said to be part of the FARC the government, the prosecutor's office said it was the FARC if I hadn't been there to document that event if the people hadn't listened to the peasants to a father like Javier Hidaldo an ex-mayor like Gloria Cuartas that crime would have been a part of the impunity that was carried out but fortunately I was there to gather testimony to be able to show what happened and then the years went by so the justice could finally be sought these images they talk about men that also cry because of the war I've seen men cry but you can also see the strength and the courage of the women in my country because they are courageous and now there are so many friends here of the NGOs I want to recognize all of the international agencies that have come and walked with us I've seen the Red Cross I've seen PBI I've seen people walking hand in hand with the communities put in their lives at risk to protect the lives of peasants in Colombia like in San Jose but that pain that's the pain we have to stop so the children won't be crying from the years of 5, 7, 8, 9 years of age because they have to flee because of war I don't have anyone pose I'm a graphic photographer but I've seen people flee from so many areas in the northern area Sienega Grande, Nueva Venetia 40 fishermen that were assassinated by her military and the people flee and how do they flee in my country you can see here in boats on horseback and on the horseback they carry their chickens they carry their children unfortunately if the screen were even bigger you could actually count that she has 4 chickens one of them literally drowned in the river of San Lucas and this is just as easy and simple reflection isn't it for Colombia, for anywhere in the world how much is war worth how much is invested in a war any camp that is set for those that it displays with scents just a few scents you can dress a child in this case a little girl she's carrying a toothbrush with her how much is war worth how much is the gun the grenade launcher the helicopters, the uniforms that's when you start to understand that war is also a business a business for those that manufacture those products that that war causes individuals displaced with families that sometimes even carry their refrigerators on their back and that peasant his name is Misael and he's running away with Karina Karina has her feet up in the air and that man who's carrying the refrigerator is the same man who takes the pigs out and the pig is there and he is crying that the father is hiding each one of these pictures should be just like that just to make a stop and look and think why is he fleeing what happened, what caused this war who are responsible for it because we have to bring peace back to the land I've seen the peasants I've seen them leave with Christ in their hand running with their dogs, their pigs their monkeys their chickens this particular picture is Mapidipan in the Mita area of Colombia there's 23 peasants assassinated there people have 8 days to leave the town because there are accomplices of the gorilla they can only flee with one suitcase in a plane that's used for cargo and a little girl goes up to the man from the red cross and he says can I take my chicken in my arms with me they can only bring one bag and the red cross international cruise gentleman asks her why do you want to bring this chicken with you it's a gift that was given to me for my birthday and he said take it and I'm telling you this story because many people would say you're lying what you're trying to do is sensitize us make us aware about the effects of a war but I can tell you that if you doubt me and people sometimes doubt me there's the symbol of the red cross and the plane and the people and they're at the bottom left after the little child did you see you can see the little girl holding her chicken and her mom and in front there's a man that has a parrot what is war it is a tragedy for everyone involved but not everyone has lived through it and we have to stop war that's why I'm saying I don't care if peace had been carried out by X, Y, or Z today, whomever today it's Mr. Santos the fact that he works for the peace process any president from any place is going to have me decide him because I know what war does my family live through it but I wasn't taught to just look at vengeance I wasn't taught I was not taught that the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, no I was taught to put myself in the shoes of someone else to say I don't want to see these pictures in my country today there's too much violence in areas of Colombia in many others we are seeing the post-conflict we have to support the post-conflict because I don't want to see this again I don't want to see people that are in warehouses with the pain of displacement having lost their land having left their crops piled in these football fields trying to cook a meal because their home is back in the mountains I've seen the peasants of my country so many times that these pictures I'm showing you talk about that displacement these are almost biblical images this one was back in 2005 in San José de Apartado people fleeing to the assassination of eight peasants and amongst those eight there were three little children 20 months, 5 years old and 11 year old it was a horror massacre by the army we don't want to see except the criminality of the FARC that's all we want to see in my country but there are many more criminals in my country but we just want to put the bias on one of them the political parties and many leaders in Colombia wash their hands and what I'm saying is those of you that have stolen the coffers of Colombia didn't they have responsibility in the war as well it's so much easier to point at someone that has a weapon but I know and I've met a lot of the combatants children of assassinated peasants that went into the war for vengeance and I've seen them in all of the areas that I visited we must stop the war it can't be that one brother should kill his brother image 44 please in 92 there are two pictures from Cielos Estrellados I'm not sure how you're going to see it because there's so much light in the room but back in 92 when I was a journalist and starting at the university I saw the first act of violence in my memory is the war of my family I'm a journalist I went to a town where they had seen tragedy outside of a school there was a guerrilla attack where 14 military men were killed and this is where they were killed the smell the pain I looked into one of the classrooms and what was the last one before this event which was the last class between the Veta and Mutata in the Villa Uraba the last class had been a religion class and you can see on the blackboard the story of Cain and Abel a brother that had killed his brother many times I could say that I don't know who Cain or Abel is because for me the soldiers are Colombian brothers the police are my brothers in Colombia the guerrillas as well the children of Colombia and consequently they are my brothers as well I'm part of the party of the mothers is one of my Colombian friends Fabiola Lalinda says her son disappeared the Colombian army took him in 84 and Fabiola Lalinda was dedicated then appeared by the army and the guerrilla and those are kidnapped Fabiola who is right now older and she's forgetting has said to me that I'm her first ally in the party of the mothers if I look at the clothes of the police officers of those that died or the boots of the soldiers of the clothing of the fishermen assassinated by the paramilitaries in so many areas of my country I say that war has to stop the best way to get Colombia moving forward is for all of us to put that brick that I mentioned before for peace to lay that brick and so as not to continue this morning I'd like to show you some faces one on nine the number it says kill and God forgives Colombia doesn't have a religious war Colombia doesn't have a religious war mostly it is a Catholic evangelical country and amongst all of the combatants whether legal or illegal I've seen the very same symbols of religion but sometimes I've seen them where there's been massacres and I've seen signs like these I could talk and make a whole presentation on graffiti during this war I could do the same thing on those displaced, on children on women but I'm jumping ahead just to tell you that this is a picture of an exclamation that was done and I could make a whole presentation on just this issue in Colombia events in my country when you get people out of the burial place in the midst of the mountain the very first thing that we see is usually a rosary an image of a cross a scapulary and that's what I see sometimes on the chests of the combatants to honor the memory of those who died I'd have to tell you that the rosary was on the chest of a woman named Gloria Milena Aristizal that woman and her husband were murdered I know Gloria Milena's mother and I know her children and two months ago I spent time with them but I don't have time today to show you those photographs and how people do survive and resist these events but I wanted to show you these pictures of a country where absolutely every single one paramilitary, soldiers guerrilla fighters, all of them use the same Christian symbol the child scapularies and when I know the face of those children those boys and girls for me it's tears because of a child 13, 14, 15 years old belonging to an armed group why? and what I would like to work on is so that there is education now and that's what I claim to all of the people in Colombia and I ask them and I ask all of you strongly that you have to understand that war is a tragedy for everyone it doesn't matter if it's in the Middle East, it doesn't matter if the war comes here to the United States it'll hurt me as well it has to hurt me what happens in Africa and Mexico as in Colombia I don't know any war other than the one in Colombia my heart would not resist another war my heart tells me and I tell you truly that my life and my heart every day is more and more fragile with the pain of my country and that's why I try to work to understand that war has to stop that we can be a loving country but that we cannot go back and carry these weapons to cause the tragedies that have occurred you're seeing these pictures of a gorilla, the ELN or a guerrilla from the FARC guerrillas also have families they're not devils guerrillas also have the right to live in peace they've carried out a war for many years, yes they have but there are people that silently that have also, politics have created it and I think it's even harder today in Colombia it's even harder today to disarm the spirit of many of those political leaders than more so than these guerrilla fighters whom I've been working with and I say war is a tragedy and it continues making us ill I don't understand how they could put a uniform on an animal that's part of the sickness and part of the sickness is using dogs in the midst of war which have been used in Colombia but nobody believed the peasants and they've used jackwars and alligators peasants didn't believe this is a jaguar they also had a lion different combinations of ways of fighting you've got the armies you've got the illegal groups how people camouflage themselves to blend in with the jungle 2002 after the oligone operation I could talk about being but I wanted to show you a picture like this this could be D-Day and Normandy but this is Colombia I wanted to show you some faces of victims of the disappeared people now 171 171 Evangelina who told me one day Chucho please take a picture of me with my son who was abducted disappeared Carmen told me the same thing I can talk about many places in my country where the same thing happened in Medellin Claudia in Magdalena member of the law enforcement also disappeared in the Magdalena department here's another person who was abducted in April 2002 murdered in 2003 in a rescue attempt that should never have been attempted by the army but I bring these images here today these are images that I show from many regions of Colombia what is it we want in Colombia want to die of old age we want peace these photos are of many years back but the images that we see are always images of war not of resistance of a governor for example that stood down the violent people and said no more no more that's enough and the NGOs who for so many years have done this but these images no one ever sees and that's why these pictures bear witness to this and I want to conclude with these pictures many of these mobilizations these persons who are coming back to their towns you see that with them are friends from NGOs you've got a governor here and people asking in this banner does anyone believe the solution is war my country needs to build peace and I would invite you for each one of you to put your hand on your heart and to understand that the commitment of the government the commitment of a university or of human rights defense groups has to be a commitment to the victims and to people who sign on to a peace agreement and to start a new path toward life these are daughters and sons and as long as I'm alive I'm going to honor what my parents have taught me from the time I was a kid to be to express solidarity and to walk in the shoes of others thank you very much and I apologize if I went over 10 or 15 minutes over my lot of time but understand that every story that I tell of every people whose story I tell I need to cite their names because each one could tell if I were to go on and talk about all the different stories I could go on for weeks and months even thank you very much Am I live? Is that working? Great, that is a very hard act to follow I have to say I want to thank Chucho if he's still in the room for really an extraordinary act of bearing witness to what's going on in Colombia what's been happening in the countryside what as he mentioned what we hear about are the conflicts between political leaders in the United States and in Colombia and I think that this is a very powerful demonstration of the toll that the war has had on Colombian society and on the numerous victims I want to thank Larry Sachs the mission director of USAID Mickey, Camila, his colleagues that have been so instrumental in helping bring this program to us Tonis, I would like to thank you for inviting the Wilson Center to partner with you in this relaunching of the Colombia series we are honored to be with you and to also recognize the work that you have done that Ginny has done over all these years to focus the attention of the Washington policy community on what's happening in Colombia we will continue with a discussion from two of the people who are in the process of helping to implement the peace agreement you have their bios so I won't spend a lot of time doing that to my immediate left is Yolanda Pinto the director of the Unidad de Victimas which was formed not as a result of the signing of the peace accord but rather legislation passed in 2011 to recognize the victims of the conflict one of I think the most important stepping stones on the path to the opening of formal negotiations we also have with us Camila Rojas from the Agencia para la reincorporación y la normalización formerly the Colombian reintegration agency which is on the front line of demobilizing combatants from all of the illegal armed groups now with obviously a principal responsibility for the demobilization of the FARC but before that with responsibility for the demobilization of the AUC an organization with a tremendous amount of experience and I think really a model for the world in terms of how these programs should be carried out so we'll hear from them then we will have a brief discussion and certainly open it to your questions Chucho thank you for joining us for the part of questions and answers so we'll begin with Yolanda we are a little bit pressed for time so with we're going to have to stick strictly to our time thank you very much and good morning I want to tell you that I'm thrilled to be here with you today it's an honor for me to be at the peace institute of the United States I would like to thank everyone who made it possible for me to be here all of the USAID folks who are here I thank you the entire delegation on behalf of my country thank you for supporting us without a doubt your support isn't valuable for us to carry out the work we do on behalf of the victims of Colombia I'm Yolanda Pinto I'm the widow of Gaviria and I really I'm surprised Chucho when you showed images of my husband my late husband and before going on I would like to greet all the Colombians and my companions compatriots who are here with us today the victims who live here in the US a fraternal hug for all of you I am a victim of the war in Colombia my husband Guillermo Gaviria the most important state or department in Colombia was abducted by the FARC guerrilla group after which they were murdered unnecessarily in a military rescue operation that should not have happened it was poorly planned and poorly executed that same day I learned that my life could become hell or I could not let it become hell I had to learn to forgive and I can tell you here today that it made it possible for me to go on living almost happy I can say because I've been able to see my kids grow up and now my grandchildren and today I have the wonderful opportunity that the president of our country Santos Calderón who has made this possible and it makes it possible for me to be in charge of the organization that is assisting the victims of the armed conflict in Colombia to help them come back into society and I would say that the most important decision that we've made over the last six decades in Colombia has been to put an end to this conflict that has caused so much pain, so much harm that has taken away from us the lives of so many Colombians among whom my husband who have been so valuable for this society that would have played such an important role in the transformation process in Colombia have they lived but I am here full of faith and optimism and trust and hope given the opportunity that all Colombians now are presented with to finally have a country for everyone in which everyone fits everyone belongs without any concern for self-color ideology we all belong here and Pope Francisco in his recent visit in my country said that among all Colombians we together can build a country for everyone and in this undertaking we are engaged now and that is what I want to show you the national unit for victims was as the coordinator of this program or panel has said was something that emerged before the Havana Accord the victims were recognized before the signing of the first agreement with the guerrilla group which is the FARC 1448 of 2011 recognized that in Colombia the armed conflict had victims and that these victims needed to have reparations paid to them by the Colombian state this is a task that falls to the national unit of victims in Colombia after six decades of strife leading to thousands of deaths and other human rights violations and violations of humanitarian law the government has finally become committed to bring it into this conflict and to build peace and to pay reparations to victims victims are at the center of this process of negotiations with the FARC and we are at the center of the implementation of the peace accords now the end of the armed conflict and satisfying the rights of victims is the best guarantee of non-repetition we do have a very important task to carry out USAID has always been there helping us collaborating staying side by side with us in this task the land restitution and victim law of 2011 1428 passed by the national congress which by Juan Manuel Santos under his administration set forth a policy to repair reparations to victims this in keeping with the highest legal standards anywhere in the world and a comparative legal study together with 49 other world programs for the purpose of reparations that is the Harvard University did this comparative study and shows that ours is the highest legal standards of all now the policy for paying reparations and carrying four victims of the armed conflict has four fundamental rules 1448 law for the mestizo community another for the indigenous population and also for the Afro-Columbian as well as a decree of law for one more for the rural communities that's far and behind the end of 2017 we hope these will be the figures and even higher by the end of the year 8 billion Colombian pesos 200 this is how much money has gone for reparations in Colombia 2.6 billion dollars which has been the overall amount kicked in by the government for this policy during the period between 2011 and 2021 currently we have records registered 8 million victims of the armed conflict 8,500,000 victims of the different types of crimes for which they were victims 1.5 million are internally displaced peoples 563 collective reparations for ethnic and non-ethnic groups you can see what the distribution is up on the screen according to the different departments of states in our country we also have a model for providing subsistence that is under the first classification and characterization of homes households according to the different criteria that is applied by the state to ensure the effective enjoyment of rights associated with subsistence and thirdly the questions that are asked that make it possible for us to effectively understand that there is indeed a true enjoyment of the rights to health housing and proper nourishment or sufficient food this is the first humanitarian agent of the country this program is the body that provides assistance to victims and that seeks out lasting solutions for the displaced population within our country we have invested 3012 on in humanitarian assistance for victims forced displacement more than 3.9 that is 1.6 billion dollars has been invested that's for billion columbian pesos has been invested in offering assistance to internally displaced collective reparations system brings about political dialogue among the institutions of our country who are being having reparations paid for them to reinstill trust in the state and this is what ultimately will lead to reconciliation this is for all of us in this recovery process and to make whole those people who are a part of these collective groups subject of this assistance that is where we can truly build the social tissue fabric that has been destroyed torn by this strife collective reparation program for each one of these collective groups we're talking about a host of different actions for reparations purposes given the harm suffered by these different communities these actions are called reparation measures which consist of being made whole for damages suffered community rehab and rebuilding social fabric or some type of compensation or reparations paid in monetary terms economic compensation in columbia we have offered economic compensation to more than 700,000 victims through investments made by the columbian state we're talking about 5 billion pesos worth of investments added to what we have already invested in humanitarian assistance as well as collective reparations it ultimately will reach at the end of this year as I just said 9 billion columbian pesos 3 billion US dollars invested in columbia this is the most important task that we have been carrying out lastly I want to tell you that we are in full swing of implementation of the peace accords and the victims again our front and center in this implementation of these peace accords the national unit for victims has been following through and fulfilling the commitments including the participation of the victims themselves who are themselves enshrined in the Havana agreement we have engaged in a broad participatory process more than 3,300 victims were able to sit down with us during 33 different working meetings and that gave their opinions and their contributions were heard in these meetings to ensure that this policy is as best as it can be this is a process that we are making progress in and better fine tuning and defining we're also we've also set up a specific table for the to put together the protocol and the path forward for victims to be able to take part in the development as well as in investigations carried out by the special jurisdiction of justice for peace we the victims ourselves are waiting for this and we are demanding truth that justice be done that reparations be paid and that there be guarantees of non-repetition which is what was pledged by those who decided to put an end to the dispute that's what the national unit for the victims is therefore to ensure that victims be allowed to speak that they be recognized that justice be meted out within the framework of traditional justice in keeping with the Havana peace because we are also demanding to know the truth of what happened with all of those who have gone missing who disappeared everything that happened during this armed strife in Columbia this will be a true measure of reparations for the victims that the truth be known and that's precisely what the national unit for attention to the victims is therefore keeping them to their word in this process now the challenges and implementation of this agreement continue to be huge offering assistance putting standing up the different agencies that were created to implement points one and five of the final peace accord that was signed on to with the FARC I would like to conclude by saying that Columbia is hopeful that we can together with the international community that has helped us the international organizations that have been with us every step of the way the international agencies that cooperate with us chief among them that from the US that has played such a key role what we hope together to do is to build peace as Chucho himself said the peace we all want even there are still those who are not capable of forgiving their hatred keeps them from understanding the virtue of having finally put an end to this war that in 53 years took 250,000 Colombians away from us that have left more than 8 million victims all told and more than 6.5 million displaced within our borders I want to tell you that the statistics tell us that over the last two years we put an end finally to a conflict only with the FARC group 4,000 Colombian lives were saved by virtue of ending that war because in the height of the conflict at least that many people would have died had it continued and as a victim I can tell you that these 4,000 saved lives I already feel repaired just one life saved in Colombia suffices for me to be whole again and I can say that many victims in Colombia feel the same thing that I do we need for you to stand by us to support us to stay with us in this process so that we can continue moving forward that our president Juan Manuel Santos Cabaron has initiated making the decision to put an end to this conflict that will make it possible for us to build a different country for everyone of course there are other participants in this violence there's also the problem of drug trafficking and the bad karma that that brings us that we have to continue to combat and the Colombian state is committed to continue fighting that scourge but as Chucho said as well that gives rise to other forms of violence that we have been dealing with for many years and that affects all of the Colombians it makes us seem before the world as a violent country but the truth is we are a country that unfortunately where coca production has for many Colombians become a profitable albeit illegal business it's a contradiction it's profitable but illegal and this has caused for us many difficulties in those territories where the drug traffickers who live from this have set up shop and taken ownership over those parcels of land but the government is doing its part of trying to eradicate fighting the drug cultivation and on the political side also doing their part to pay reparations to the victims thank you very much for hearing me good morning, first of all I want to thank USIP for this invitation and Yusuf to give us this room and for all of those here it's a privilege for me to be able to share with Jesus and director Pinto regarding the challenges for the construction of peace in Colombia I'm going to tell you about some public policies that are having to do with construction with the peace construction in the last 14 years we've learned about our mistakes it's part of an institutional evolution that began in the 90s it's an entity that has been just technical but they've understood the importance of give sustainability to public policies that actually goes for peace construction it's a public policy that began back in the 90s unfortunately between 90 and the demobilization of the paramilitaries lost a lot of the lessons learned that since 2003 we are now bringing forward we are understanding and analyzing so we don't make the same mistakes again to not construct on what's constructed nowadays we have an agency that I represent to reincorporate and normalize Colombian agency to reintegrate two different processes first of all reintegration of the ex-paramilitaries that demobilized collectively in the promise of reintegration of the FARC members who demobilized individually actually other than escape or divert, desertion, etc and also ELN cooperation also of the people that demobilized from FARC during the peace process to give you a context in Colombia we have two different paths in what we know internationally as a DDR and its individual demobilization is when someone individually decides to get out of the armed group and they go through the defense ministry through the evaluating committee to certify what the individual is part of the group the miners go through the family group for their human rights in Colombia and adults also begin the process of reintegration and there's a collective path which we're experimenting on when a group signs a peace agreement and through the office of the high commission of the peace they send us a list that we started to follow in Colombia since 2003 we've demobilized approximately 60,000 people voluntarily 50,000 have gone into the integration process starting from the last few years we have had more than 20,000 people that nowadays are citizens we have in process about 20,000 or 18,000 to be more exact so one of the lessons learned throughout the 14 years that there's always people that are left along the way and it's a decision that's necessary in its nature therefore we see that maybe about 10,000 people have not become a part of the process but there's other people that are left along the way and this is in the sense that this is not a process it's a process of opportunities and their own will 10 to 12,000 have been left along the line because they didn't follow the rules or the standards set up by the agency and the process would be for reintegration more specifically this process looks to improve the vulnerability of these individuals from the armed groups that wants to promote for them to have the same rights as a common citizen we don't set up any adverse feelings but the idea is to in order to get benefits they need to choose the right things we're setting up people to become citizens we work we work with 94% resources that come from the Colombian government 6% of them are from international cooperation but with that 6% we accomplish a lot the support from the United States USIP has been tremendous in helping us to innovate processes for improvement not only in gender issues in community in productive education etc that 6% has allowed us throughout these 14 years to develop improvement projects it's allowed us to generate different decision making processes if we compare the normalization and re-insertion that there are for thousands of the FARC members of course there's a much smaller universe or the victims, the unit which are a million victims but it has allowed us to have innovations to have progress and that's what we're talking about in the process for reintegration what I just mentioned is we look for people to have the same rights and opportunities as a common citizen and we work with a territorial group we understand and the agency goes to rural areas as well as urban areas to work with them we have a presence throughout there has 32 states in most of these we have 887 municipalities which is where we have a lot of populations our model doesn't promote that people go to the offices we have professionals that are throughout the Colombian territory it's important for all of us that in this process of reintegration we need to look at the necessities of that specific area at work in different roles in different areas it's important for us to be able to reintegrate these people logically not from Bogotá or Medellín or Cali but in the rural areas we organize different areas in different states we understand that reintegration is not our exclusive responsibility it's the responsibility of the local authorities that's why we work on development plans and we do it because we need to have these people have access the model is based on public access we don't have a clinic or we produce offers of health or education but we promote access to the local communities we develop thinking about these international groups where we help with human rights we have a multi-dimensional aspect and we set up eight different dimensions that we consider where it's much more important to work as to the vulnerability of individuals and it's this way that we follow individual that are in the process of reintegration about 93% of the people that come into our process have been affected psychologically 90% of them are able to get over these problems with the social problems we're not saying that they're crazy but we're saying that they have PTSD that they have depression they suffer different illnesses mental and physical 80% of them are able to come forward through some of the professional reintegration group that helps them and it's like a coach it's somebody that follows the person through the point when he starts for us perhaps it's one of the best learning sessions we've had because people need to have someone beside them they don't need a constant monitoring but they do need someone to coach them to help them through we've developed a model as well by the health ministry that's allowed us also to generate different services health services the recruitment 12 years they're normally in the group 15 years so we're talking about people that for one reason or another had to be part of this war that are victims just as we've already said this morning as Dr. Pinter just mentioned but there are also people that didn't have the opportunity that common or normal citizen would have had as far as education is concerned 95% of the people that receive in the process are illiterate as a product also of the fact that they were recruited at such an age with the help of another country we've also developed a model for the adults with the help of USAID that is now going into more areas of the country nowadays we're implementing many areas in the country it's a model for education to the benefit not only of those in the process of reintegration but different communities victims children adults everyone more than 21,000 people have already passed the basic education as a model more than 8,000 have already gone through high school and more than 15,000 have gone into further education and talking about technical issues more than 2,800 have already gone through this type of education as far as the dimensions that we've understood is that we have to understand the logic in the mind of the discombatant not everyone wants to become educated not everybody has a different vocation to become a businessman and obviously this is part of the model that we're setting up to identify which of the people have the ability the potential to go forward to learn and we did this based on the mistakes we made before 2011 the number of business units productive units that survived were very low even though we didn't expect that but since 2011 to 2016 we developed a new model for follow of all those business units we did a fellowship to more than 95% of these business units and today we have more than 61% that have survived of the 5,000 units that were carried out back in the 90s only two survived of the one that were done back in 2003 through 2010 only about 10 to 15% survived so that model let us know that we have to coach these people we have to follow them that project the productive programs cannot only be just at the beginning but it has to be the end one of the mistakes that were made back in the 90s was to understand that for individuals to be re integrated into the citizens you had to give them the age million and that was part of the lessons learned of the errors that were made and this is why we are applying this new methods we also understand that people who are in businesses working have to be followed for example today 70% of the people in the process are working 71 in the informal sector it's only 28 to 29% that in the formal sector business and that is the same situation throughout the country the informal area is much greater than the formal 650 companies work with us we not only do reintegration with these ex-combatants but we also work with a model for community reintegration and also for prevention of recruitment because we understand that if we don't break that violence cycle that lived in different communities then the cycle will continue in the last 5 years the public forces have neutralized approximately 5,000 individuals who belonged to the criminal organizations and only 10% of those were demobilized individuals so it mentions that this recruitment of minors is something that's continuing and my traffic the criminal organizations in areas that are much more vulnerable and more complex and it's usually the young ones that become part of those groups and that's why we developed this international program today we've been a benefit to more than 2,500 people in these models for prevention of recruitment and more than 19,800 people in the models of reintegration to the community we understand that this issue comes from each community and that each community has to be a part to be a benefit to these models it's part of the lessons of this health model the fact that we also coach, we also give them public services thanks to the unions for example a lot of people are now working in areas where they're contributing to society and others are still learning in the year 2003 of a model of the possibility of recurrence and 86% of people are still within the legal part of law now we're not saying that the other 24% became a part of an armed group or a criminal organization but the agency has a model that's very strict as far as the fact that they have to follow the lessons and accept the process someone a father that doesn't pay for example for the children then we are trying to make them better citizens the study that was done in the year 2003 went much further and it showed that the potential recidivism was under a large percent and those we were able to prove that these people that recriminalized or had recidivism was 3% so the model that we are giving is compared to for example a jail in jail in Colombia a prisoner costs approximately $6,000 and has 13% rate re-insertion is about 2,000 a month and excess is more than 76% so that shows us very clearly that jail is not the ideal for re-socializing individuals someone that doesn't get into the reintegration process has 3 times more the probability of recidivism and also being murdered and it's a voluntary process but we've also developed a model for post monitoring and we say to people we give them the average time of maximum duration for this should be 6.5 years that's the only public policy that actually graduates people that are becoming or are a part of the process 6.5 years as a max after they finish the interrecation process then what we tell people is do you want us to go along with you for 3 more years if they say yes 76% have accepted that so what do we do we do a quantitative evaluation what sector is in how is the family doing because we also not only reintegrate the combatant but also the family the children because we understand that the family is part of this whole process as far as co-responsibility perhaps one of the lessons learned or the best lesson learned in the last 14 years we need to organize with other regional activities and governments with municipal organizations but we also have to do it with the businesses but we go even way beyond that to understand the fact that we have to make these people employable we have 106 organizations we work with and we tell the businessmen use whatever source is best for you to volunteer they want to work donate their time to help the production productive work and reconciliation those are the issues that belong with this co-responsibility we look at what are the challenges today as far as co-responsibility we have to go way beyond the amount of people the sectors that we work with as far as reinsertion these these signatize these people particularly in the FARC the stigma that has been applied more than help for 5,000 people have died during this process in the last 5 years and not to not use the experiences learned and lessons learned during the last 14 years as far as the issue of reincorporation of people into the society this is a process construct and should be constructed based on the interest of the different communities of the individuals from the FARC that communities that are accepting them into their community this is a co-construction you know that the peace agreement specifically what the process is for reincorporation of these individuals it's a process that we have to construct with them to give you an idea and a framework of the context the regional council of the incorporation is an organization with the change of name of this agency is affected the institution it's still the same however and as far as this organization and the issues of reincorporation there's two FARC members and on the government we have the high commissioner for peace Rodrigo Rivera and the director of the agency and what does the council actually do they're the ones that determine what are the different activities to be developed what are the time lapses what is the timetable this council sets up the lining what is the validation giving to the productive projects that we're carrying out throughout this process in the last five months we've developed over 46 different sessions of CNR and we've had a lot of advances the first thing that the council had to do which is one of the most important achievements at this new framework is to build trust why was it different because when we set up just public policies now what we have to do is to start from those bases to build trust with the FARC understanding their needs the needs of the communities in the areas where training is occurring but also understanding the motivation of the new focuses that are being used in this new model of reincorporation so what has this council done developed advances based on the model of early reincorporation and tried to set the foundation for the model in the long run when we talk about early reinsertion we're talking about the different measures and actions that have been taken at the beginning that have to be developed within the individuals from the FARC so they can begin to adapt to their new context to the fact that they're going to be citizens to co-existence with the communities they're going to be living one of the lessons learned in the last 20 years that to offer this publicly as far as health education everything that we're offering them are the bases that will allow them to eventually identify a path for themselves in order to become citizens again in the long run it's to stabilize their lives and we're developing this since 15 August when we receive different areas in the country through the 31st of December six months we've had to reincorporate these people at the first steps where we're going to understand the needs of the individuals from the FARC what have we achieved during that time in the last few months is to have a process for these individuals to give them their identification papers to activate these individuals to teach them as far as all the pension systems that are available and nowadays we've accredited more than 12,300 individuals from the high commissioner of peace commissioner's office and at the bottom of the slide you can see how we've given continuity to the peace agreements how we've effectively been able to have support to million pesos just once given to the individual and three basic 90% of minimum salary 24 months with the exception that the individual receives employment at that point then we do no longer give them that basic fund an 8 million that perhaps have to be given to this project further on so we've been able to develop some exercises for productive information for education regarding community projects and economy projects education we've also worked on as part of the areas of CN and we had three census one that was for education with that helped us understand to what degree these individual were in the different areas a census on health which is with the health ministry and a census that was also carried out with the national university that allows to generally understand what is the panorama for individual, where are they heading what are the expectations that they might have for their lives you all know that there is a great cooperative which FARC has, ECONOOM currently we have gone along with the constitution of that group we've had an education process with some of our allies with the solidarity economies for example work ministry to try to orient this great cooperative so it won't fail by December there have to be approximately 52 cooperatives have to be set up to for each one of the areas so they will be part of that general common fund as far as productive materials we already have 26 professionals that are working throughout all of these different areas of the territory that are going to follow these productive viability of the sociability of these individuals we also have approximately 7 productive projects in different territories of the area in summary I'd like to mention that this incorporation council are the ones that are working in the region and today this re-incorporation is being carried out in the areas that were given to them for training and re-incorporation in summary let me say that the international the cooperation we receive from the international community follows us and it's very important and very basic the institution has to be strengthened so that the process will continue obviously it's a long term process it's not something to be accomplished in two or three months thank you very much comprehensive presentations but I think in the interest of time if you have a question or a comment please raise your hand we'll take a group and then we'll come back to the panel please feel free to direct your question as well to Chucho please identify yourself by name and by institution and we'll take 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and then perhaps we'll wrap up okay thank you Buenos dias Buenos dias I represent I do not represent an organization but I want to thank the presentation about Colorado and the doctor it's very interesting all the efforts you're making in Dr. Alvers as well I wanted to ask several questions you're saying that FARC in 66 hadn't even been in the area yet they hadn't been born but I understood I think we sit in the 60s well I think the FARC began about 53 with this Mr. Cano please your question has to be very brief it's important to clarify that this comes from the different parties the liberals and conservatives right the FARC comes from those roots not from the 60s something else that I thought was important is that the Colombiano had the march that was marching against the FARC that was the strongest march we ever saw and the third thing that I thought extremely important to clarify is that the children recruited by the FARC most of them were forced recruitments forced today I don't know they may have died adults and they're in a process it's excellent but I have stories I remember having heard not too long ago that some military individuals were in a armed conflict and when that ended there was a woman a gorilla and not to say that she's not a terrorist was having a baby and she asked the FARC members to the military to take the child because the child was going to die whether she'd been raped 18 times so the stories are real and I think that we have to talk from both sides doctor because we also have victims 32,000 more than 32,000 soldiers have died and they're Colombians too that have families so it's important to clear that up as well and I'm sorry that I have talked beyond my time thank you very much before answering a couple of questions first my name is Cristina Spinell from Colombian Human Rights Committee of Washington I'd like to ask a question for the victims unit your budget, how much is the budget in order to help with the psychosocial problems of the victims and how much is destined to the adults and how much are the children I know that it's different as far as the services that we provided for adults or children and families Armando Boquera Armando Boquera I was a city councilman in the city of Boquilla so when he took the floor I got so emotional just as when Jolanda Finto spoke I am a victim of this conflict and I've been here for the last 25 years I haven't been able to go back to my country as a result of this problem and thanks to the current government who is bringing peace to us and the minister here with us today because this is what Colombians want the pictures that you saw of my land of my at the Department of Choco I was moved by that because I lived there and a number of the members of my family were murdered by one or the other of the armed groups or I'm not going to say if it was the paramilitary or the FARC but these were outlaw groups that killed my family members thank you very much I'm here in Washington and I have a specific problem for Camilo about the reintegration of the ex-combatants of FARC we're very interested in the process as underway as far as the reinsertion of the ex-FARC combatants into society my question has to do with the mid-level commanders what are you thinking about doing as far as the mid-level commanders of the FARC these combatants who are so knowledgeable what are you going to make sure that they aren't integrated into other criminal organizations operating in our country thank you very much for all of your presentations I'm Mrs. Dipo I am looking into the collective memory issue and I'm interested I have a question for Chucho when I went to Medellin to the House of Memory what about the relationship do you have the impression that people are open how have they responded to your work have they been open to the work that you're doing to keep alive the memory of this conflict have they shown interest in your pictures and also the reintegration process which is somewhat fragile do you think that the work done to preserve the memory is an obstacle in any way to the reconstruction process and social re-insertion for the time being thank you we'll go in the opposite order of our presentation starting with Camilo for our answers the question asked from one of the things we've learned without a doubt is that we do have to follow through with these mid-level commanders we're working on this working in Cooper Davis and helping them integrate into the economy we're also doing some training exercises and political participation with these mid-level commanders we've done two workshops at the national level in giving them the necessary tools so that we can help them use that there and we can avail ourselves of their skills now we want to assure that ultimately they become multipliers the people coming out of those strife-ridden areas are two things that come to mind you've got these training programs this training is done in such a way in which people are free to come and go some people don't always stick around now there are those who are in far-flung areas in many of these places people had to move to more fertile and productive lands for them to carry out the different activities farming activities in which they've been trained but these are areas in which there's a free movement we see that people sometimes exit these regions to visit their families and to carry out other activities but when we've done the training for these people they always do come back to the regions we're trying to ensure that the information is conveyed in a broader way that if we want to make sure that they aren't being incorporated into other armed groups now there is a story behind each person involved in this process and part of the state's commitment is to respect the collective decision taken but we also understand individual choice and freedom and in this exercise of working with individuals we do understand that there is a role to be played in the contribution to be made toward this preservation of memory Beatrice I was also victim of the FARC I share in your pain it doesn't matter who victimized us the conflict in Columbia was very cruel the war was cruel that's why we have to protect ourselves we were perpetrators on both sides there were those who wanted to destroy themselves and take us with them and certainly there were mistakes made by the Colombian state at times but that's what we have to do away with that's what we have to put into so that nobody ever tries to take another Colombian state those different actors who have perpetrated violence in Colombia have come from all walks all areas we wanted to do with FARC I also marched and demonstrated with you and many other Colombians asking for an end to the FARC but the FARC is over as an armed group and that is the best news for many Colombians to put an end to the conflict with ELN that has also brought much damage and do with all forms of violence we have to continue fighting the criminal gangs but cream as are known in the acronym in Spanish this is just a residual of the paramilitary groups and we also have to demand that the Colombian state fulfill and follow through on upholding human rights I also am very pained by what Colombians have had to go through not because of what I saw on TV I have been a direct victim of this myself but I can tell you that I'm full of hope right now if all Colombians understood that this is a great opportunity that we have to build a country for everyone we're just starting to do this we can't say we have lasting and stable peace yet but if all the Colombians who have suffered from these acts of violence no matter who caused it in this conflict if we were all to commit to doing our part to help build this new country I'm certain that we will achieve it and I moved and pained by your pain as well the other question as far as resources for emotional or psychosocial reparations this is something that has been given top power to you by my administration that is to assist victims in their emotional recovery to help victims to learn to trust again learn to believe again to believe that it is possible to live in peace peacefully and to have the hope that we can rebuild everything that was destroyed by this violence to build a new life for all of us that will enable us to grow so the resources for this national unit victims this year were over 1.8 billion pesos and so all of the different measures in the implementation of all of the measures one of which is rehabilitation of victims which includes emotional reparations and we will have sufficient resources for this process we have a path forward we have a protocol that we've defined working with people who are skilled and specialized in psychosocial care and emotional healing and so after the administrative part is done we're going to focus our resources on emotional healing now the person asked me about my work and photography I'm going to answer that question first I would also like to thank my colleague fellow countrymen from the same area I'm from and my hope is that my pictures will make emerge some positive emotions I've certainly seen tragedies but I don't take pictures that would generate more hatred or vengeance but rather that make us think that's it friend it's very sad that the issue Casa de la Memoria, the house of memory and the city of Medellin isn't a part of this collective conscience of a city because this is a city and a society that is polarized it's a source of shame to me it's shameful that everything that was invested in the house of memory there are some of my pictures hanging there bearing witness as in many other places in Colombia that I don't have time to mention it's shameful that the administration the last one and this one have not thoroughly understood that we that have fresh the memory sometimes memory serves to spur on and to also highlight or showcase those who were involved in this and so that's why people well memory accuses memory interrogates us memory showcases what happened and this given administration hasn't placed so much attention on the issue of the house of memory it does exist it was set up but it isn't a part of our daily lives it's not a place where people necessarily go to visit like I being here went to the holocaust museum or came here but the purpose of memory is precisely to call into question what transpired to educate us to ensure that we don't repeat the errors committed by everyone work that I've done my photographs I think I've been working independently for the last 16 years and I tell this to be a treat many things in my country such as in Bocaya where the FARC or the military were the responsible parties but the Cuban state could have done more to prevent what happened and didn't and that's why it was taken to account and I have paid out my own pocket to go to the confines of my country to take pictures no one's paid me anything to take a picture of your trees and to say that here's your memory now there's another museum never again this is an hour and a half of Medellin and the people in this municipality of Granada can who run this place will show you images of people who were abducted and made to disappear by the FARC or the EO Lynn or the Colombian state this is a shameful thing that happened economic incentives were paid so whether we're talking about scholarships or medals the war was something that we started to win in the minds of people but the fact is oftentimes the way to win it was to for example when people in my country and many people who were killed were then dressed up after the fact in uniforms that weren't theirs and this is something that's been covered and dealt with in international criminal court I'm a journalist and journalism wasn't something that we've done to defend the left or the right I was trained as a journalist I have a first cousin who was killed or disappeared by the army another by the FARC and I can give you the names and the places where this happened when I tell you this it makes me feel hatred because I've worked with this the agency that Camila was talking about or the integration agency of Colombia when I speak to all of them when I work with them and I learn the names of so many people in my country peasants victims or combatants still and when I tell you that I try to see their side of events because I want to understand I want to hear them and so I'm very critical the people we see that are most visible to us the ones who are carrying weapons but they are also my brethren and I speak of all of them and I understand that the army is the legally constituted army has a lot of decent and good people and I salute the case of General Mejia in terms of the army of Colombia sometimes he offers lessons to journalists who are still imbued in hatred and he calls them out and he says miss I'm sorry but I think that the army is preparing to build a country of peace we can't continue instilling hatred the army of Colombia is changing but journalists whether we're talking about preserving memory it's not just to show the bad things done by others but the things that we ourselves do that is wrong and I know many stories of peasants who were put in uniforms and we can't deny this who wore the uniform and the problem is that we have a hard time looking into the broken mirror of the war ourselves and seeing ourselves and this is something that should cause people to take their share of blame and it's always easier to attribute blame to the armed parties but there's a class of politicians in my country that when I see all the corruption scandals that take place in Colombia when I see how the judiciary itself has become venal and is subject to blackmail and it's corrupt I say how can I look at children, boys and girls and respect of many of them whose pictures I've taken of girls that I met recently Beatriz I just met a girl who's not 26 years old the same age my daughter has that was killed by the army and her 5 year old son and father were also killed and she went into the army a year and a half later seeking vengeance now if these fighters men and women were not having children as they are they want to love each other in peace they want to play a musical instrument they want to lay down their arms I've seen them whether it's in the army or the police reaching out to them but we sometimes are the ones not them who are perpetuating this hatred and so this woman with whom I spoke and many other and I ask this woman who now has a daughter who was born last May and I ask her what do you want to do just to give you an idea of what she's like for you to understand what I'm talking about and sometimes trying to protect certain entities but this woman and this girl rather in her little bag and I was having a discussion with her commander in a discussion we're talking about the victims and the perpetrators of crimes and she and they started talking about just the victims and naming them and I was talked about Spokaja and other places where Eileen and Farke are operating and I say we have to put a name on all of them I don't belong to the police or the army I don't work for the government either I'm a citizen a journalist and what I try to do is to reflect on society and now this girl what does the commander tell me there's a victim here he said there's a girl here from the gorilla who has a press clipping in her bag of a mass massacre in which family members of her died and I asked him what fact are you talking about and he told me now she cries he said because in a plastic bag she has this press clipping as many gorilla fighters have bags and carry memories in them and I said that was documented by only one person he was the only person that for four days was there helping the peasants trying to find their dead family members in the mountains and I said well I am a foot journalist so to speak I don't work in an office in Bogota or Medellin now you saw pictures that are taken on foot on the ground with the victims and often times the victims themselves are men and women who have taken up arms themselves the pictures I have taken are something that are pictures that I take from my soul now when that press clipping was taken out of the bag that was from the magazine Simana and these were my pictures about the death of her family members and so this little girl after talking you don't just look up to someone and say show me the picture you have there I wanted to hear her story I asked her to tell me her story and then I told her that story of what happened to your family I am the one who chronicled that story I was the one who went to that community to help them find their dead and she smiled she didn't cry and she showed me the press clipping and I showed her those are my pictures because these are stories so that we can all look at ourselves in that broken mirror that's why I work to ensure that never again we have to go through what we have experienced and I try to teach this to many people Beatriz I was also a victim as a journalist of abductions there was someone who was held captive with me who was ultimately killed after I was freed and I can't tell you how that made me feel so I don't just talk about one side or the other I'm a journalist I have two eyes I have one head but most importantly I tell people I have learned to see with my left eye because that's in line with my heart and I tell the stories of my country for people to understand that war is something we have to end if we could do away with war throughout the world of these stories we would but the only war I know is Columbia's war and I know some very brave people and the police and the army and the guerrilla people who are good people with ideals Camila the girl with the guerrilla group that now has a baby who's growing up and I asked her what are you going to do and this whole process concludes and I swear to you because I remember clearly my profession isn't to lie I'm not cynical and what she told me was that she wanted to work for the peace of the country to ensure that no more families were to suffer the misfortunes that she suffered and there's an army captain she said who has been guilty for this act as well as others and so many of the pictures that I have taken if you go to Baja today I was there a month and a half back the church there where that tragedy took place are pictures of mine there not pictures of dead people pictures of resistant people of people on the move these aren't pictures of remains of what I've tried to do and I say this once again to you and I apologize to you but these pictures are a part of a collective memory that the country needs to know about because all the years that I've worked as an independent journalist I I'm not the voice of victims I can't be the voice of victims but I can bear witness to acts of barbarism but also to resistance to force and the love of the people of my country to move forward and I bear witness to that I don't want to just talk about pain I want to talk about hope and if we as a society we're more loving and if we try to put ourselves in other people's situation we can move forward and that's why I reject people who are entrenched in this thought that there is a military solution there is no military solution not in Colombia or nowhere else because as you know you know who it is who ends up dying now Chucho mentioned Granada which is a municipality in Antioquia where the FARC so Beatriz I was there in Granada not long ago I was there with the governor after the destruction of that municipality and that March of the brick that Chucho showed us and you know for the first time in many years there was a mayor was able to go to the 53 walkways of Granada all of the different paths or roads of Granada and this was something that for many years no one was able to do for the first time in many years we could come and go to all of the different areas of the city that goes to show that the war indeed has ended there and where the FARC was merciless in that whole region I told just a month ago all of the citizens there we can finally go out and about everywhere and the mayor of the city who is of the same party of the former president and he told me look we can go everywhere these people are no longer in our municipality and that is the true merit of having ended the conflict the war in Colombia at least for the FARC because the FARC was one of the strongest most violent and aggressive and lasting group that we had in Colombia