 Dear Professor Sacks, dear students and friends from around the world, I want to first thank the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, the Global Masters of Development Practice and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network for hosting the fourth annual international conference on sustainable development at one of the world's finest universities. I know this year's event will focus on scalable and innovative solutions for achieving the UN goals from now to the year 2030. Well, what I am about to say may sound strange, but I sincerely believe there is no more scalable or more innovative solution than the pursuit of peace. If you look around the world today, it seems that political discourse is out of control, that intolerance is on the rise, and that most conflicts at the center of international attention are resistant to diplomatic solutions or even to dialogue. In the preamble of the 2030 agenda, it says, we are determined to foster peaceful, just and inclusive societies which are free from fear and violence. There can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development. One has to wonder then, will it be possible to achieve any of these three dimensions of sustainable development, economic, social and environmental, in a balanced and integrated manner, if we lose our ability to resolve basic conflicts between neighbors, communities and nations themselves? The answer is clearly no, but I do not bring you a message of pessimism. Quite the contrary, I want to share a message of optimism that shows that when you commit to the path of peace, even if the situation seems impossible or hopeless, a world of possibilities opens up in ways that you never imagined. A great American woman, the wife of a great American president, Eleanor Roosevelt, once said, it isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it. Well, in Colombia, without a U, with an O, Colombia, my country, we decided to do more than just talk about peace. And we not only decided to believe in peace, we rolled up our sleeves and worked very, very hard for it. I assume most of you have heard about Colombia's internal armed conflict, a senseless war between sons of the same nation that consumed us for over 50 years. I would describe it simply as a toxic and deadly mix of illegal armed groups fueled by drug trafficking, kidnapping, greed and murder. The why or the how I will leave to the historians. But what I can tell you is that next week, on September 26, in the beautiful Caribbean city of Cartagena, the Colombian government and the FARC, the largest armed rebel group in the Americas, will officially sign a peace agreement with the entire international community as witness. On that day, at that moment, the oldest and the last conflict in the Western hemisphere will come to an end. It will be truly a remarkable moment. And on October the 2nd, millions of Colombians will go to vote and have the last word on peace. With their voice, a lengthy, painful and very difficult process will conclude and a new beginning will emerge, the possibility of building a peaceful, prosperous nation. A year ago, here in New York, we were the first country in the world to announce that we had incorporated the Sustainable Development Goals into our National Development Plan. It became a law and that we had created a high level commission to implement the 2030 Agenda in complete alignment with our peace efforts. In fact, many of the policy objectives we have been working on that are related to these goals, such as eradicating extreme poverty by the year 2025 and becoming the most educated nation in the whole of Latin America, also by that year, are also linked to the peace agreement. For instance, one of the first points negotiated in the agenda addressed one of the root causes of the conflict, the severe lack of rural and agricultural development in Colombia. We will be investing billions of dollars in programs that provide small farmers and their families with land, with housing, with education, with technical assistance and financing, while at the same time connecting them with the distribution chains of their products working along private sector partners. You see, the lesson here is that in the pursuit of peace itself, we found a way to gradually incorporate many elements of the supremely ambitious and transformational vision laid out in the 2030 Agenda. The pursuit of peace made us creative. The pursuit of peace made us think of ways to scale successful efforts and learn from those that did not work. The pursuit of peace made us innovate in so many ways, big and small, that all of a sudden, with the conflict out of the way, Colombia is set to achieve major sustained economic growth while reducing inequality over the coming years and decades. So, dear friends, today I can tell you that a new Colombia at peace is walking towards those sustainable development goals that we proposed in the Rio Summit with optimism and the full commitment of everyone of our citizens and everyone of the Colombians that truly believe in the achievement of these goals. Thank you.