Representatives of the gender subcommittee to Colombia’s peace talks alongside the U.N. Secretary General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura (centre-left) and U.N.-Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, during the Jul. 23 presentation of the preliminary results of the novel initiative, in Havana, Cuba. Credit: Karina Terán/U.N.-Women

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Jul 29 2016 (IPS)

The novel inclusion of a gender perspective in the peace talks that led to a historic ceasefire between the Colombian government and left-wing guerrillas is a landmark and an inspiration for efforts to solve other armed conflicts in the world, according to the director of U.N.-Women in Colombia, Belén Sanz.

In statements to IPS, Sanz described as “innovative and pioneering” the incorporation of a gender subcommittee in the negotiations between the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which began in November 2012 in the Cuban capital and ended in late June with a definitive ceasefire.

She said the large proportion of women who spoke with the negotiating teams, in regional and national forums, and during visits by victims and gender experts to Havana showed the growing openness on both sides to the inclusion of gender proposals in the final accord and the mechanisms for its implementation.

The results of the work by the subcommittee, made up of representatives of both sides, were presented in Havana during a special ceremony on Jul. 23, exactly one month after the ceasefire was signed, putting an end to over a half century of armed conflict.

Taking part in the ceremony were U.N.-Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka; the U.N. Secretary General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura; and Sanz, whose office has worked closely with the subcommittee.

Other participants were María Paulina Riveros, the Colombian government’s delegate to the subcommittee, and Victoria Sandino, the FARC’s representative, along with the rest of the members of the subcommittee, the delegates to the peace talks, and representatives of the countries that served as guarantors to the peace process.

The results of the subcommittee´s work, presented on that occasion, include the incorporation of a gender perspective and the human rights of women in each section of the agreement, starting with guarantees for land access and tenure for women in rural areas.

Other points agreed on were women’s participation in decision-making to help ensure the implementation of a lasting, stable peace; prevention and protection measures for a life free of violence; guarantees of access to truth and justice and measures against impunity; and recognition of the specific and different ways the conflict affected women, often in a disproportionate manner.

“These are some examples that can be illustrative and inspiring for other peace processes around the world,” Sanz said from Bogotá, after her return to the Colombian capital.

Victoria Sandino, a FARC commander, who headed the guerrillas’ representatives to the gender subcommittee in the peace talks with the Colombian government (second-left, wearing red headscarf), poses with members of civil society during the signing of the definitive ceasefire on Jun. 23 in Havana, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

In her view, “these strides forward represent milestones in the promotion of women’s rights and the transformation of gender inequality during the construction of and transition to peace, which could be exported to other places in the world and adapted to their particular conditions and contexts.”

The introduction of a gender focus also includes the search for ensuring conditions for people of different sexual orientations to have equal access to the benefits of living in a country free of armed conflict.

“For women and people with different sexual identities to be able to enjoy a country at peace is not only a basic human rights question: without their participation in the construction of peace and, as a result, without their enjoying the benefits of peace, peace and stability themselves are threatened,” said Sanz.

She cited a study commissioned in 2015 by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, 15 years after the approval of Security Council Resolution 1325, designed to promote the participation of women in peace processes.

The report showed that women’s participation increases by 20 percent the probability that a peace agreement will last at least 20 years, and by 35 percent the chance that it will last 15 years.

“So if women don’t participate in peace-building processes, not only as ‘beneficiaries’ but as drivers of change and political actors, it’s hard to talk about a stable, lasting peace,” said Sanz.

Erika Paola Jaimes, a survivor of Colombia’s armed conflict, holds a sign about peace during a trip to Havana to participate in the peace talks between the government and the FARC rebels, which led to a ceasefire signed Jun. 23 in the Cuban capital. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

The U.N. study also shows the risks faced by women in the post-peace deal stages.

According to the report, women in areas affected by the conflict have fewer economic opportunities and suffer the emotional and physical scars of the conflict, without support or recognition – besides often facing routine violence in their homes and communities and shouldering the burden of unpaid care for children and the elderly and household tasks.

In a broader sense, “the structures of inequality remain in place and measures are needed to dismantle them, as well as a commitment by society as a whole,” said Sanz, who described a transition process like the one that Colombia is facing as “a key opportunity” to transform women’s status in society.

She said the continued work of the gender subcommittee is “crucial”, as well as that of women’s organisations, with the support of international aid, in order to incorporate provisions in the agreements to enable these situations of inequality to gradually be transformed, with a view to the period following the signing and implementation of the accords.

The inclusion of gender provisions in peace agreements “opens a window of opportunity for the transformation of existing structures of inequality and can also be an opportunity for other peace processes, during the signing of the agreements and the stage of implementation,” said the head of U.N.-Women.

According to estimates, women account for over 40 percent of the members of the FARC, whose exact numbers are not publicly known.

Overall, women represent slightly over half of the general population of 48 million. However, Colombia is one of the countries in Latin America with the lowest levels of female representation in politics.

In 2015, women represented only 14 percent of town councilors, 17 percent of the members of the lower house of Congress, 10 percent of mayors and nine percent of governors. These figures are still far below the parity that would do justice to the proportion of women in society, states a U.N.-Women report.

Social actors and government representatives sign a social and political pact for reparations and peace in Colombia on Apr. 11, the National Day of Remembrance and Solidarity with the Victims of the Conflict. Credit: UARIV

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, May 16 2016 (IPS)

“If you’re going to talk about Colombia and the peace process, do it somewhere else,” was heard at a regional preparatory meeting for the World Humanitarian Summit, according to Ramón Rodríguez, with the Colombian government’s Unit for Attention and Integral Reparation for Victims (UARIV).

“Cuba’s representative, for example, stated: ‘This is a World Humanitarian Summit, we’re going to talk about humanitarian questions in general, and not specific cases,” the official said with respect to the preparations for the first gathering of its kind, to be held May 23-24 in Istanbul.

“For the organisers of the World Humanitarian Summit, disasters are the main issue. They practically fobbed us off,” added Rodríguez, UARIV’s director of social and humanitarian questions, in an interview with IPS in his Bogotá office.

This is true even though United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, when he called the summit, declared that “We must ensure no-one in conflict, no-one in chronic poverty, and no-one living with the risk of natural hazards and rising sea levels is left behind.”

In any case, “the issue (of the Colombian armed conflict) draws a lot of attention, although it is very limited,” said Rodríguez, an industrial engineer who organised and directs the world’s biggest humanitarian aid logistics system, in terms of percentage of a national budget that goes to citizens of the country itself.

Colombia is the only country in Latin America and the Caribbean where a humanitarian crisis has been declared due to internal armed conflict.

In nearly seventy years of civil war in different shapes and formats, the counting of and attention to victims has undergone major changes. Today there is basically industrial-level aid, adapted to a lengthy, calculated disaster.

“We, the government, are the main humanitarian actor in Colombia,” said Rodríguez. “We have an emergency response team. We work with humanitarian organisations through local humanitarian teams.”

Perhaps the main lesson that the Colombian government learned was that it had to count the number of victims and people affected by the conflict, in order to address the humanitarian crisis in its true magnitude. Until 2004, getting the government to admit the number of victims was a tug-of-war.

In 1962, a study on Violence in Colombia (by Guzmán, Fals and Umaña) estimated that 200,000 people were killed between 1948 and 1962.

The victims of forced displacement began to be counted in 1985 by the Catholic Church, at the time the only non-governmental institution with the capacity to carry out a national census of displaced persons.

In 1994, the government put the number of displaced persons at 600,000; however, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) counted 900,000.

But it was a 2004 Constitutional Court sentence that ordered the government to – gradually – acknowledge the real number of displaced persons, thus recognising the effects of the war.

The Court has been able to verify compliance with the ruling thanks to the support of a non-governmental alliance of academics and researchers: the Follow-up Commission on Public Policies on Forced Displacement.

Finally, in 2011, on the initiative of the government of current President Juan Manuel Santos, whose term began in 2010, the Victims and Land Restitution Law was approved. Among the many measures it involved, it created the UARIV.

At the time, the government recognised 4.5 million people affected by the war in a country of 48 million.

The UARIV opened a Single Registry of Victims, which up to Apr. 1, 2016 had counted a total of 8,040,748 victims since 1985.

Apart from the debate on whether the victims were undercounted, or the number of victims grew, or what grew was the number counted by the state, today UARIV knows that 84.2 percent of the registered victims are displaced persons, and that 45.4 percent come from the geostrategic, resource-rich and dynamic department of Antioquia in northwest Colombia.

It also reports that when the threats peak, this coincides with a peak in forced displacement of people from their land, which intensified between 1995 and 2007, while kidnappings (which account for 0.5 percent of victims) peaked in 2002 and are now becoming a thing of the past.

The UARIV also recognises that the worst years of the war were between 2000 and 2008, and that 2015 has been the most peaceful year since 1985.

In addition, the unit reports that among the victims there are slightly more women than men, while children are the single largest group. And it says one-fourth of the victims are black or indigenous people.

Rodríguez has kept up his monitoring as the peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas continue in Havana.

“I asked for a report for the Jan. 1-Apr. 30 period,” he said. “In the same period last year we had 15 mass displacements. In 2016 we had 16. In 2015 1,425 families were affected, 5,721 people. So far this year we have 1,200 more people. Which means that there was an increase in the number of people affected between 2015 and 2016.”

The increase is attributed to criminal bands made up of former far-right paramilitaries, and to the National Liberation Army (ELN), a smaller left-wing rebel group, with which the government recently announced the start of talks.

Colombia is now on the verge of a peace deal. But Rodríguez said it will take “three to five years to achieve peace. There will be an upsurge in violence,” not only because of former paramilitaries but also guerrillas who refuse to lay down their arms.

“Something that should be shown at the World Humanitarian Summit is the rise in violence that is going to occur when the peace agreement is signed. The question of control territory is of great importance to the armed actors, and converges with economic aspects,” said the official.

For Rodríguez, the “victim response, assistance and reparations model” that Colombia has come up with is another key element that would be useful to share at the Istanbul summit.

The model has two phases. The first, immediate humanitarian aid, operates within 48 hours after acts of violence, and comes in two forms: funds, through the municipalities, and in kind, through operators who are subcontracted, who were paid a combined total of more than five million dollars in 2015 for providing services.

Several months later, the victims are registered in the Single Registry of Victims, and emergency and transition aid (for housing and food) begins. The last phase is reparations, which includes indemnification of different kinds.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Journalist Juan Gossaín (left) and the Colombian government’s chief negotiator Humberto de la Calle in the latter’s apartment in Cartagena de Indias, during an interview about the peace talks with the FARC. Credit: Omar Nieto/Prensa de Presidencia de Colombia

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTÁ, Jul 7 2015 (IPS)

There is a growing sensation in Colombia that the peace talks with the FARC guerrillas are “about to come to an end” – in success or failure, according to the government’s chief negotiator, Humberto de la Calle.

In his apartment overlooking the sea in the Caribbean coastal city of Cartagena de Indias, former vice president De la Calle (1994-1996) was interviewed by veteran Colombian journalist Juan Gossaín. The two used to work together on the morning news and talk programme of the RCN Radio station, which Gossaín headed for 26 years, until 2010.

The interview was more like a friendly conversation, without a question and answer format. It was distributed by the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace to be published Sunday Jul. 5.

The chief negotiator, generally reluctant to talk to the media, warned that the government might walk away from the talks: “I want to tell the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) in all seriousness, this could end. It is likely that one day they won’t find us at the negotiating table in Havana’.”

“The patience of Colombians is running out. The risk is real,” said De la Calle, although he also stated that the process could end “because we reach an agreement, since in this final stretch we are dealing with important underlying issues.”

As De la Calle said, “although it seems like a paradox, the peace process has received more support from outside than here at home.”

President Juan Manuel Santos worked painstakingly and in secret to launch peace talks after taking office in August 2010.

And while in the talks themselves the government has never threatened to pull out, it has made such statements to the media in the past.

In October 2012 the talks were officially launched in Oslo, two years after Santos was sworn in, with Cuba and Norway as guarantors and Chile and Venezuela as facilitators. Since then the meetings have been held in Havana, where the 38th round of talks is now taking place.

Under the principle that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” preliminary accords have been reached on three of the six main points on the agenda, in 32 months of talks.

These three points involve a wide range of aspects related to land reform; political participation; and the substitution of drug crops.

The pending items involve the right of victims on both sides to truth, justice and reparations; disarmament; and mechanisms for the implementation of an eventual peace deal.

The negotiations are taking place as the decades-long conflict drags on, and it looks like a clause stipulating that nothing that happens on the battlefield can affect the talks has fallen by the wayside.

The intensification of hostilities is costing lives and causing environmental disasters, and support for a continued military offensive, rather than a negotiated peace, is growing again.

But the same thing happened 15 years ago, as indicated by Gallup poll results.

To the question “what do you believe is the best way to solve the problem of the guerrillas in Colombia?” the response in June 2015 was a tie between those who selected the option “continue the talks until reaching a peace agreement” and those who chose “no talks; try to defeat them militarily.”

A similar tie was seen in July 2003, March 2004, October 2010 and June 2011, while in the rest of the polls carried out, a majority chose a negotiated solution.

Since 2001, a majority of respondents have consistently supported peace talks over a military solution, with the exception of the December 2001- July 2003 period.

But since December 2001, respondents have said they do not believe the insurgents could ever seize power by force.

Looking at Gallup polls over the past 15 years, it is clear that De la Calle’s assertion that “people are more skeptical than ever” regarding the peace talks is not true. The results indicate that, no matter what happens, the sense of “desperation” that the chief negotiator mentioned, and that his interviewer emphasised, fluctuates.

“We have to be honest enough to tell Colombians that the peace process is at its lowest ebb since the talks began,” De la Calle said.

But why is that happening? It’s the question of justice, he said. “It is the touchiest part of the negotiations. The FARC have to assume responsibility for their actions. The state does too, of course.”

De la Calle said the Colombian government would only agree to a ceasefire if the top FARC leaders spent some time in prison for crimes against humanity – although the negotiator said they would be held “in decent conditions, without bars or striped uniforms.”

He also acknowledged that the FARC “have said they are willing to accept a system of justice that would include these components.”

If that is true, it’s not clear where exactly the problem lies.

In February, the attorney general’s office revealed that it planned to investigate over 14,000 businessmen, ranchers, politicians and members of the security forces with alleged ties to the partially dismantled far-right paramilitaries.

Almost simultaneously, former president César Gaviria (1990-1994) proposed for these non-combatants “a pardon in exchange for their recognition of the crimes committed, an apology, and a willingness to provide reparations for the victims.”

Segments of the business community and some political factions welcomed or expressed an openness to discussing the proposal, others rejected it, and others were concerned or upset.

In any case, the ever vulnerable climate surrounding the peace talks became even more tense.

Not long afterwards, the negotiators in Havana announced a preliminary agreement regarding an issue that is especially thorny for those who not only enjoy impunity but have also been active behind the scenes, anonymously: a non-prosecutorial truth commission.

Above and beyond the discussion on justice and punishment, De la Calle says the main obstacle now faced in the peace talks is the question of a bilateral ceasefire – “the FARC’s top priority,” in his view. The insurgents would also have to stop raising funds through practices like extortion and involvement in the drug trade, he added.

A bilateral ceasefire when “there are other sources of violence, besides the FARC,” as De la Calle rightly points out?

The much smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) would appear to be awaiting the results of the peace talks with the FARC before launching its own negotiations, while remaining active.

Then there are the ultra-right-wing paramilitary groups that either did not take part in the 2003-2006 partial demobilisation or regrouped as what the government calls “Bacrim” – for “bandas criminales” or “criminal bands”.

“We can’t tell the security forces to stay quiet,” De la Calle said. “If they want a ceasefire, the government is willing to do that, but ‘concentration zones’ would be essential.”

In these “rural concentration zones” first demanded by Álvaro Uribe during his presidency (2002-2010), “convicted guerrillas would be held for a time, without requiring that they turn in their weapons,” De la Calle explained.

IPS postponed publication of this article in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain a response by email from FARC chief negotiator Iván Márquez to several of De la Calle’s statements.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

The first delegation of victims of Colombia’s armed conflict offer a press conference after their talks with the government and FARC negotiators on Aug. 16 in Havana, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Aug 25 2014 (IPS)

Three major advances were made over the last week in the peace talks that have been moving forward in Cuba for nearly two years between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas, while the decades-old civil war rages on.

On Saturday Aug. 16, a group of relatives of victims of both sides met face-to-face in the Cuban capital. It was the first time in the world that victims have sat down at the same table with representatives of their victimisers in negotiations to put an end to a civil war.

And on Thursday Aug. 21 an academic commission was set up to study the roots of the conflict and the factors that have stood in the way of bringing it to an end.

That day, the unthinkable happened.

High-level army, air force, navy and police officers flew to Cuba, under the command of General Javier Alberto Flórez, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In the 24-hour technical mission they met with their archenemies, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which emerged in 1964) to discuss “how to implement a definitive bilateral ceasefire, and how the FARC would disband and lay down their arms,” said President Juan Manuel Santos.

Santos described the participation of active officers in the talks, as part of a subcommission installed on Friday Aug. 22, as “a historic step forward.”

Twelve victims, of the 60 who will travel to Havana in five groups, met for nearly seven hours on Aug. 16 with the FARC and government negotiators, who included two retired generals, one of whom was Jorge Enrique Mora Rangel, an army officer accused of human rights abuses.At one extreme, former rightwing President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) proposes the creation of a higher court to review the sentences handed down against members of the security forces from 1980 to 2026, and to release them while the sentences are revised. At the other extreme, the FARC do not recognise Colombia’s legal system as having the authority to try the guerrillas, once a peace agreement is reached.

The group of 12 was made up of six relatives of victims of crimes of state and of the far-right paramilitaries (which partially demobilised in the last decade), four victims of the FARC, and two victims of two or three different armed actors.

It was “a unique experiment that has not been seen anywhere else,” according to Fabrizio Hochschild, representative of the United Nations in Colombia.

In previous forums in Colombia, thousands of family members of victims have expressed their main demands: the truth about what happened to their loved ones, improvements in the mechanisms for reparations, guarantees that what happened will not be repeated, and justice.

The negotiators gave the task of selecting the groups of victims’ relatives to the U.N., Colombia’s National University, and the Catholic bishops’ conference. They were chosen from an official universe of 6.7 million victims and survivors, including 5.7 million victims of forced displacement, most of whom are small-scale farmers.

In the Colombian conflict, the last civil war in Latin America, the dead number at least 420,000 since 1946, including more than 220,000 since 1958, according to commissions for the historic memory set up in 1962 and 2012.

The creation of a Historical Commission on the Conflict and Victims (CHCV), at the behest of the negotiating table, was announced Thursday Aug. 21.

The commission consists of six academics and one rapporteur named by each side, for a total of 14 historians, sociologists, anthropologists, economist and political scientists.

The CHCV will analyse the origins of the armed conflict, the aspects that have stood in the way of a solution, and the question of who is responsible for its impacts on the population.

The rapporteurs will produce a joint report, by late December, although they will not “attribute individual responsibilities” and the report “must not be written with the aim of achieving specific legal effects,” the negotiating table stipulated.

This is not a truth commission, which should emerge once a peace agreement is signed. But it is a firm step in that direction.

Meanwhile, the aspect that appears to be foremost in the mind of public opinion in Colombia is neither the question of truth nor how to guarantee that the atrocities won’t happen again; it is the question of justice.

At one extreme, former rightwing President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) proposes the creation of a higher court to review the sentences handed down against members of the security forces from 1980 to 2026, and to release them while the sentences are revised.

At the other extreme, the FARC do not recognise Colombia’s legal system as having the authority to try the guerrillas, once a peace agreement is reached.

That position is based on a certain logic: if the guerrilla group is part of the negotiations, along with the state, and both have committed crimes, the state “cannot be both judge and jury,” the FARC negotiator, a commander whose nom de guerre is Pablo Catatumbo, told IPS in Havana.

At the same time, the families of victims of forced disappearance do not accept impunity.

The victims’ families asked the negotiators on both sides not to get up from the table until an agreement is reached.

But the fragility of the peace talks, held under the principle of “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” is evident.

There are still 28 pending aspects in the three points that have been agreed, of the six points on the agenda for the talks. It will be difficult to reach a consensus on these unresolved aspects, which are marked in red: 14 sub-points in the area of agriculture, 10 in political participation and four in the area of illegal drugs.

The CHVC is to make recommendations for reaching agreement on these sub-points.
Besides its interest in the question of justice, the public wants the FARC to demobilise and lay down their arms.

General Mora Rangel said in June “they must demobilise and hand over their weapons…they have to do so to join society and Colombia’s democratic system.”

But according to peace analyst Carlos Velandia, there will be no demobilisation, no laying down of arms, and no reinsertion.

There will be no photo ops of a “mass demobilisation”, like the ceremonies held in the mid-2000s showing the paramilitaries handing in their weapons, he said. Instead armed structures will be transformed into political structures, although the mechanism has not been worked out yet, he added.

And unlike in the case of the paramilitaries, “there won’t be thousands of insurgents stretching out their hands for ‘Papá State’ to help them,” he said.

Despite the obstacles, “the problem doesn’t lie over there, where both sides are taking a proactive stance,” a Catholic priest who is well-informed on what is going on in the talks in Havana told IPS.

The problem lies in Colombia, he said, where Uribe – now an extreme-right senator and a leader of the opposition in the legislature – had an enormous influence on public opinion during his two terms as president.

Uribe is “working on” businesspersons, bankers, large-scale merchants, and some journalists, to win them over in his fierce campaign against the peace talks, the priest said.

“Santos isn’t a leader, he’s a follower. If the country turns against him, he’ll abandon the peace process,” he maintained.

If there is strong public support for an eventual peace deal, the powerful oligarchy’s pressure on Santos could convince him to block a referendum on the peace agreement.
But if Uribe and victimisers who do not want to be more openly identified by the victims manage to foment rejection of the peace talks among voters, they would not object to a referendum on an eventual peace accord.

A precedent for this was set in Guatemala, where turnout for a referendum on a peace deal that put an end to 36 years of civil war – 1960-1996 – was extremely low, and among the few voters who did show up, a majority rejected the peace agreement.

In Colombia’s peace talks in Havana, the mechanism of a popular referendum is the sixth point on the agenda, which is still pending, and Santos has not referred to it in public.

To block these maneuvers, “there have to be more and more decisions aimed at recognising the legitimacy of the talks, including acts of truth and forgiveness. That will make it more likely, although not more sure, that the peace process will move forward successfully,” because “the more people who can forgive, the closer we are to seeing peace win out,” the priest said.

Different sectors of society agree on the need for “a new social pact” to approve the accords and work out the pending aspects marked in red. For the FARC and many others, on the left or the far right, these pacts should be reached through a constituent assembly that would rewrite the constitution. But Santos would appear to be leaning towards a referendum instead.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Shaman Víctor Jacanamijoy, spiritual leader of the Inga indigenous people from the Colombian province of Putumayo, leads a ceremony in Bogotá during a Jun. 11 “spiritual harmonisation for peace” event organised nationwide by native authorities to send out a clear message for the elections. Credit: Courtesy of Tatiana Ramírez/ONIC

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Jun 11 2014 (IPS)

Colombians will basically decide Sunday whether to continue the five decade counterinsurgency war or persevere in the attempt to negotiate a political solution to the conflict, in order to allow the children being born this year to experience what their parents have never known: a country at peace.

Depending on the outcome of the Jun. 15 runoff election, an emerging violent sector could take over control of the state, perhaps for the next few decades.

In the second round of the elections to choose the president who will govern this war-torn South American country for the next four years there does not seem to be much choice, between the centre right and the extreme right.

The former is represented by sitting President Juan Manuel Santos, who is seeking reelection, and the latter by Óscar Iván Zuluaga, a follower of senator-elect and former president Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010).

The two candidates are now neck and neck in the polls, after Zuluaga took 29.3 percent of the vote and Santos followed with 25.7 percent in the first round on May 25, when turnout stood at 41 percent.

Both candidates would apply neoliberal, free-market policies, according to which a prospering business community is the lever for the country’s development. They would both keep taxes low for the wealthy, while providing cash subsidies for the poor financed with the revenue expected over the next 20 years or so from the massive production of oil, coal and gold by multinational corporations.

Neither of the two promise to industrialise the country with the capital generated by these non-renewable resources. And both support free trade agreements and associations, which threaten the production of many national industries as well as agriculture, and more specifically small farmers.

Both candidates were ministers under Uribe: Zuluaga headed the Finance Ministry and Santos the Defence Ministry.

Under the Uribe administration some 2.5 million people were displaced by the war and at least 3,000 civilians were murdered by the military and passed off as guerrillas killed in combat – so-called “false positives” – under a body count system in which members of the armed forces were offered incentives like weekend passes, cash bonuses, promotions and trips abroad for killing insurgents.

Zuluaga is seen by his opponents as Uribe’s puppet.

But while Santos was elected in 2010 with the votes of the right, including Uribe supporters, he angered his former boss as soon as he took office by countering several of the ex-president’s main policies and criticising some of his government’s actions – prompting fierce opposition from Uribe.

Santos also patched things up with his awkward neighbour, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez – detested by Uribe – who governed from 1999 until his premature death in 2013.

With Chávez’s aid, Santos undertook negotiations to put an end to the war with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which was founded as a communist-inspired peasant army and turned 50 years old on May 27.

After two years of exploratory talks, formal negotiations began in November 2012 in Havana. The talks are closely followed by the international community, and are moving ahead even as the conflict rages on, because Santos has not agreed to declare a ceasefire.

Now, five days ahead of the runoff vote, Santos and a smaller but more radical guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), which also emerged in 1964, announced that since January they have been holding exploratory talks that could lead to formal negotiations.

The exploratory phase with the FARC was kept secret and only revealed once it gave rise to full-blown talks. So because he reported the contacts made with the ELN, Santos was accused this week of using the peace talks for electioneering purposes.

In Colombia, the armed conflict has always been decided at the ballot box. Without fail, candidates promise to bring it to an end, with the only difference being in how they propose to do so: by a negotiated solution or promising once more to defeat the rebels by military means?

While Uribe opted for the latter, Santos has combined the two approaches.

Zuluaga, like Uribe, denies that there is an armed conflict in Colombia, referring instead to “the terrorist threat.” He has accused Santos of “negotiating with terrorists.”

Santos responds that the money that is swallowed up by the war could catapult Colombia into the big leagues of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – the so-called rich countries’ club.

Zuluaga initially announced that he would suspend the peace talks as his first measure as president – although he later toned down the threat.

But he said that he was not bound by what had been agreed so far by the two sides in the negotiations.

There is a real possibility that he might withdraw from the FARC talks at the first chance, and that he may never launch negotiations with the ELN, if he becomes president.

The risk that Zuluaga could sink the peace process, seen by international observers as a serious attempt at peace, has led to the unthinkable: two-thirds of the left, according to surveys, say they would vote for Santos – who represents the traditional oligarchy – even though they only see eye to eye with him with regard to his peace policy.

The other one-third of the left see no difference between Santos and Zuluaga/Uribe and say they have serious doubts that Santos will live up to any agreement signed with the guerrillas.

There is a real possibility of that. Which is why the unprecedented backing of Santos’s reelection by anti-establishment sectors takes on even greater significance.

This has been fuelled, in the last 15 days, by a new movement in support of the peace talks. Every day, dozens of initiatives emerge, by artistes, intellectuals, victims’ organisations, central trade unions, indigenous and women’s groups, journalists and political leaders, to protect what has been achieved so far and press for the talks to continue.

This diverse, and partly spontaneous, pressure group could make the peace talks truly irreversible if Santos wins. But in any case the movement would be more organised to confront Zuluaga if he was to walk away from the negotiating table as president.

In contrast with those who do not see any differences between Santos and Zuluaga and his mentor, the reality is that Colombia’s economic elite is divided. And this is precisely why Santos has managed to push his peace policy forward so far.

Álvaro Uribe forms part of an emerging economic elite that has accumulated wealth thanks to the war, and is completely immersed in the logic of confrontation and counterinsurgency.

Uribe is a member of a clan that has been wrapped up in scandals, lawsuits and accusations for its ties with the far-right death squads that grouped together in the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) to fight the guerrillas, but then drove millions of peasants off their land to seize their property.

Perhaps that was why Uribe was the only one who managed to convince the AUC paramilitaries to demobilise; 80 percent of them did so, although many regrouped.

The division seen in Colombia’s leadership may originate in competition over business. Santos represents a more modern segment of the economic elite. For example, they do not need drugs to be illegal – a necessary condition in order for drug trafficking to generate the enormous revenues that financed the AUC.

The sector represented by Santos has done its math and concluded that the armed conflict is an obstacle to economic growth. For at least 15 years, they have believed that better business could be done if Colombia were not caught up in war.

The Jun. 15 elections will demonstrate whether that sector is still a minority.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Photo Courtesy of UN Women

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 18 2013 (IPS)

When war erupts, women are often the first to experience the harsh brutality and the last to be called to the peace table. A resolution adopted Friday by the U.N. Security Council moves us one step closer to the full participation of women as leaders for peace and security.

By unanimous vote, the Council adopted a resolution that sets in place stronger measures to enable women to participate in conflict resolution and recovery, and puts the onus on the Security Council, the United Nations, regional organisations and member states to dismantle the barriers, create the space, and provide seats at the table for women.Without an invitation, [Malian women] walked into the talks and raised the alarm about the attacks against women and girls.

Despite increases in the numbers of women in politics and in business leadership, very few women have lead roles in formal peace talks, in spite of the significant role they play in community-level reconciliation. Peace negotiations and all institutions linked to conflict resolution remain male-dominated.

Since the end of the Cold War, women have represented only four percent of signatories to peace agreements, less than three percent of mediators of peace talks, and less than 10 percent of anyone sitting at the table to negotiate on behalf of a party to the conflict.

Yet decisions on matters such as power-sharing, natural resource management, electoral systems, land and property restitution, disarmament, justice and reparations can have a profound effect on women’s lives and prospects for lasting peace. These decisions have an impact on women’s political participation, economic and physical security, and on the way war crimes against women are perceived and prosecuted.

In many current conflict resolution processes, such as those for Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo, or Somalia, there have been few opportunities for women to participate directly. UN Women hopes that this new Security Council resolution will trigger opportunities for women’s direct engagement, setting priorities for recovery in their countries.

There can be few better investments in building a sustainable peace than involving women. They connect the talks to the lives of those affected by conflict. They help generate broad social buy-in to the peace. U.N. Women therefore invests in building coalitions of women to influence negotiations.

Last year in Mali, for example, after women were routinely targeted when extremist groups took over the northern part of the country, resulting in rape and the removal of women from public office, women were told to stay out of public space. With men fleeing from attacks and forced recruitment to rebel forces, women were left to head households with no means of seeking water or food, or of reaching to the outside world for help.

This story is not unusual. Nor is what happened next. Women across Mali demanded inclusion in the conflict-resolution efforts that began immediately in nearby Burkina Faso. In response, UN Women began convening huge meetings of women from civil society and government leaders from across the country to set out their own priorities for peace and demand a space at the peace table.

UN Women arranged for four women peace leaders to fly to the peace talks in Ouagadougou. Without an invitation, they walked into the talks and raised the alarm about the attacks against women and girls and the dire situation facing them in refugee camps and in towns occupied by armed forces. They demanded inclusion in efforts to stop the fighting so their needs could be addressed and their human rights protected.

Security Council resolution 2122 spells out specific measures to protect women’s rights, including their right to sexual and reproductive health. It outlines measures so that delegations to peace talks, post-conflict national leaders, peacekeepers, mediators, foreign ministers and their staff put into action the commitments set out in Security Council resolution 1325, the first one calling for women’s engagement in conflict resolution, adopted 13 years ago.

This is important because sometimes it takes a woman to make a difference. It was not until there were more women in international criminal tribunals that there was a significant increase in indictments listing sexual violence as a war crime.

And the U.N.’s appointment of a woman lead envoy for conflict resolution – Mary Robinson, Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region – has brought a new approach to mediation. In her first months of taking office, she convened a massive conference of women leaders from across the region in Bujumbura to guide her work and the way forward.

With today’s resolution, the Security Council is recognising something very important: that gender-based inequality, just like poverty, is an injustice that fuels conflict and undermines peace, and that gender equality and women’s full participation are critical to international peace and security.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is Executive Director of UN Women.

International peace talks on the Syria conflict could take place next month, Syria’s deputy prime minister has said.

Qadri Jamil, speaking in Moscow on Thursday, said the long-delayed international conference aimed at bringing the Syrian government and opposition together to seek an end to the country’s civil war would take place Nov. 23-24.

“Geneva is a way out for everyone: the Americans, Russia, the Syrian regime and the opposition,” Jamil was quoted as saying.

“Whoever realises this first will benefit. Whoever does not realise it will find himself overboard, outside the political process.”

Jamil named the dates when he was asked whether plans for the so-called Geneva 2 conference, which Russia and the U.S. have been trying to organise since May, had been pushed back from mid-November to late November or December.

When contacted by Al Jazeera, his office in Damascus said Jamil was speaking in his capacity as a member of an opposition delegation and not on behalf of the Syrian government.

Asked about Jamil’s comments, Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said it was not up to the Syrian government to name a date for the talks.

“I can neither confirm nor deny the dates mentioned by Mr Qadri Jamil,” Lukashevich said.

“This is a matter for the U.N. Secretary-General [Ban Ki-moon], under whose auspices this forum will be held. We will wait for his … official announcement of these dates.”

Russia and Western nations led by the U.S. have been pushing the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad to meet to try to hammer out a negotiated solution to the two-and-half year-old conflict, which has killed more than 115,000 people.

However, George Sabra, who heads the Syrian National Council, the largest member of the opposition National Coalition, has already said his group would not attend the talks in Geneva.

Against this backdrop, the world’s chemical-weapons watchdog said it had completed nearly half its inspections of the country’s arsenal with a view to its destruction by mid-2014.

Al Jazeera’s Omar Al Saleh, reporting from Antakya in neighbouring Turkey, said The Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had expressed confidence in completing the operation within the designated period.

The OPCW is due to finish the first stage of its mandate by the beginning of next month.

Fighting in the north

On the ground, meanwhile, fighting between the Syrian army and anti-government fighters at a prison in the northern city of Aleppo eased a day after they assaulted the facility, activists said on Thursday.

Rebel forces had launched an attack on the government-controlled prison on Wednesday night, in the heaviest fighting for the jail in months, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based activists’ network.

Elsewhere in northern Syria, al Qaeda-linked fighters came under fire from the Turkish army after a stray mortar landed across the border, Turkish officials said.

In a separate development on Thursday, Abu Dhabi-based channel Sky News Arabia said that its crew had gone missing in the contested city of Aleppo in northern Syria.

The TV station said it lost contact on Tuesday morning with reporter Ishak Moctar, a Mauritanian national; cameraman Samir Kassab, a Lebanese national; and their Syrian driver whose name was being withheld at his family’s request.

Nart Bouran, Sky News Arabia chief, said the crew was on assignment primarily to focus on the humanitarian aspects of the conflict in Aleppo.

The channel appealed for any information on the team’s whereabouts and for help to ensure the journalists’ safe return.

Since Syria’s uprising erupted in March 2011, the country has become the most dangerous in the world for journalists, according to press freedom advocate groups.

Dozens of journalists have been kidnapped and more than 25 have been killed while reporting in Syria since the conflict began.

Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

FARC negotiators in Havana speak to the press in November 2012. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Aug 23 2013 (IPS)

Colombia’s FARC guerrillas announced Friday a “pause” in the peace talks in Havana, which formally opened a year ago. But analysts say it is only a temporary glitch.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos unexpectedly announced Thursday that he had introduced a fast-track bill in Congress to hold a referendum in which voters would approve or reject any peace agreement reached with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

The president said it would be best for the referendum to coincide with the March 2014 legislative elections, although he left open the possibility of it being held in May 2014 instead, during the presidential elections, when he is expected to run for re-election.

Colombia’s laws do not allow referendums to be held simultaneously with elections. The reform presented by Santos would make that possible.

That would formally set a deadline for the peace talks, even though the agreement to negotiate, published in September 2012, did not contemplate any time limits.

A clause in that agreement states that neither of the two sides will leave the negotiating table until a final accord has been reached. Norway and Cuba are guarantors of the peace talks, and Venezuela and Chile are observers.

Prior to the current crisis, sources knowledgeable about the negotiations said a final peace agreement could be ready in the first few months of 2014.

The sixth point in the document published in September 2012 includes the discussion of a referendum or another mechanism for approval of the final peace deal. But that question has only been addressed informally in Havana.

According to official reports, agreement has only been reached on the first point on the agenda – integral agrarian development – in the talks so far, although there are still key details to be worked out on that question.

The negotiators are reportedly discussing the second point, regarding rights and guarantees for the opposition, access to the media, and mechanisms of citizen participation, including guarantees of safety and equal conditions for vulnerable segments of the population.

Conflict and peace analyst Carlos Velandia said the talks in Havana “are much more advanced than what they have told us.”

He said progress has been made on several aspects of the agenda, although it is not clear which ones.

Historian Carlos Medina Gallego tweeted that “Conflict occurs in peace talks when one side takes decisions outside of what was agreed and seeks to impose its will on the other.”

The “pause” introduced by the FARC apparently indicates that there is no agreement on the mechanism for voters to approve an eventual peace accord.

The rebel group wants a constituent assembly to be elected, to rewrite the constitution.

But serious problems with the electoral system that have been denounced, such as vote-buying, raise fears that politicians with funds from drug trafficking and corruption would win a majority of seats on the assembly.

Nor is any parallel reform planned in the legislature, where the conservative president’s supporters hold a broad majority of seats, to resolve issues like low voter turnout or barriers that make it virtually impossible for voters in remote communities to participate in elections.

The communist FARC was founded in 1964, as was the second-largest insurgent group, the pro-Fidel Castro National Liberation Army (ELN), which was influenced by liberation theology, a current in the Roman Catholic Church which finds in the teachings of Jesus Christ a call to free people from unjust economic, political, or social conditions.

Discreet exploratory talks with the ELN have taken place since Santos took office in August 2010, but with ups and downs that led to a breakdown.

However, this week there were signals that the exploratory talks may resume.

According to Velandia, a former ELN leader who spent time in prison for his involvement in the guerrilla group, said the “pause” in the talks between the FARC and the government “is a temporary situation.”

“The FARC will certainly not leave the negotiating table,” he told IPS. “But the government’s actions have done a great deal of damage to the talks and could slow down the process.”

José Jairo González, an analyst with the Centro de Estudios Regionales del Sur, a local think tank, told IPS that “I don’t think it is the government’s intention to try to impose the referendum at any price.

“This is a reasonable pause to look at the limits and reach of the referendum and the prior conditions for participation in the (legislative) elections in March or the presidential elections,” said the analyst, who studies Colombia’s nearly half-century armed conflict.

González added that the referendum could not be held under the current electoral system, “which is being questioned; that’s what the FARC is saying.”

The referendum would have to be decided on by the new legislature elected in March.

In any case, it is not clear in Santos’ bill when a special constituency would be created to allow FARC representatives to run for Congress.

The FARC’s “pause” coincides with a national strike launched Monday Aug. 19 by coffee, cacao, potato and rice farmers, cargo truckers, gold miners and health workers, who have blocked key roads. There have been violent clashes between strikers and the riot police.

Late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez played a decisive role in bringing about the exploratory talks with the FARC, which apparently began in early 2011.

The recently restarted talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority are the only peaceful political activity amidst ongoing violence in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Bahrain and elsewhere in the Arab world.

Neither U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry nor Ambassador Martin Indyk are Pollyannaish about the prospects of a major breakthrough regarding the “final status” issues, which the parties have put on the table.  Because Arabs and Israelis have had a history of failure in negotiating a settlement, these talks will require more than optimism and good will.

To enhance the prospects of success and bolster the U.S. “even-handed” approach, Secretary Kerry should have appointed a distinguished Arab American to partner with Mr. Indyk as a co-emissary to the talks.

Before analysing the “Why Now” question, it is imperative to reiterate a basic truism:  Nothing is mysterious about resolving the “final status” issues or achieving the two-state solution.  Palestinians, Israelis and the U.S. sponsor have a clear idea of the contours of these issues, whether about Jerusalem, borders and land swap, refugees, security, the end of occupation, and national sovereignty.

The question remains:  If they could not agree on these issues in the past, despite U.S. prodding, why are the present talks any different?  Several factors, which now seem to be arrayed in an unprecedented way in the region, could contribute to the success of the present talks.

First: The Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, are pushing for a resolution of the conflict because of a growing fear of radicalism of Arabs and Muslims.  These states believe the festering Palestinian issue and Israeli occupation are a contributing factor to radicalisation and the rise of a new generation of jihadists. In their calculation, resolving the conflict would neutralise it as a magnet for recruiting potential extremists.

Second:  As a regional actor, Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority is weaker than ever.  Its authority barely covers Ramallah and other towns and cities in Area A and certainly does not extend to Gaza where Hamas is in control. It’s rife with internal divisions.

Despite the PA’s diplomatic efforts at the United Nations, Abbas has been unable to reduce the grip of the occupation on the West Bank or to significantly improve the economy in Palestinian territories. With eroding legitimacy and an anemic economy, Abbas is barely holding on, thanks to the support he receives from Europe and the U.S.

In reality, Abbas knows he cannot cut a deal without Israeli acquiescence. Cognizant of its weak hand, the PA leadership, with Washington’s backing, might be willing to make unprecedented concessions required for a deal with Israel.  He could get some Palestinian support for such an agreement if it promises significant economic improvements to Palestinians’ daily life, and if he could sell the deal as the best arrangement he could get under present circumstances.

Third:  The inclusion of Hamas and its support for any agreement are critical, but Hamas presently is too weak to demand such inclusion.  Its rift with Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah has reduced the organisation’s regional reach and influence.  The military overthrow of Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt has deprived Hamas of a major source of regional support.

If the Egyptian military decides to restrict the tunnel economy on the Gaza-Egyptian border, Hamas would be dealt a major blow. Unemployment and poverty would become more dire, and Hamas would be held responsible for the resulting misery.

The conventional wisdom has been that although Hamas might not be strong enough to impose a settlement, it is strong enough to defeat one.  Because of its current weakened position, Hamas might not be able to derail a settlement.

Fourth: Although many in the region and globally are beginning to question the practicality of the two-state solution because of the expanding number of Jewish settlements and settlers in the occupied territories, the argument for a one-state solution and other alternatives have not taken root and have been rejected outright by key players who could effect a settlement.

Fifth: Ongoing debates in Israel about the Jewish nature of the state and the perceived Palestinian demographic threat could be pushing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seek a deal with the Palestinian authority.

In this calculus, Israel’s security interests could be served if the PA continues to fight radicalism and keep Hamas at bay while implicitly recognising Israel’s right to pursue potential terrorists beyond its boundaries. Under such a settlement, which Netanyahu would consider a win-win, the PA also would signal its acceptance of the Jewish nature of Israel.

What could go wrong?

Despite the optimism surrounding the talks, the process could be derailed by several “wild cards” and unexpected developments.  These could include a bloody internecine violence among Palestinians; a sustained Israeli military strike against Iran; an Israeli government decision to stop the promised release of Palestinian prisoners and or to build new settlements, which would severely embarrass Abbas; and a serious terrorist strike inside Israel that could be attributed to Hamas or other Palestinian factions.

Furthermore, if Egypt implodes and the Muslim Brotherhood regains power, Hamas would be in a much stronger position to defeat a prospective settlement regardless of the position of Gulf Arab states. If this occurs, Abbas and the PA would be unable to offer the Israelis tangible concessions to make a settlement possible.

U.S., Israeli and Palestinian leaders are acutely aware that if the talks fail, the stalemate could eventually drag their countries into the surrounding conflicts in the region. Their respective national interests are pushing them toward a settlement.  If they cannot achieve the envisioned end result, it would be years before the post-autocracy convulsions could offer another opportunity.

Emile Nakhleh, a former Senior Intelligence Service Officer, is a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico and author of “A Necessary Engagement:  Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World and Bahrain:  Political Development in a Modernizing Society”.

A new neighbourhood under construction in the West Bank's Ariel settlement. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Mitchell Plitnick
WASHINGTON, Aug 15 2013 (IPS)

Against the backdrop of two major announcements of Israeli settlement expansion, U.S.-brokered peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians resumed Thursday in Jerusalem.

The talks are the result of an intense effort by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to overcome the impasse that has kept talks frozen for nearly three years.

After preliminary meetings in Washington two weeks ago, the parties commenced what is expected to be a nine-month process of talks. But on Sunday, Israel announced that it was moving forward with plans to build nearly 1,200 new housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Many observers believe the timing was meant to forestall heavy opposition to peace talks from within Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition. Israeli Housing Minister Uri Ariel, a leading pro-settlement hawk, made the view of his faction very clear.

“We will build thousands of homes in the coming year in Judea and Samaria,” Ariel said on Israeli radio, using the biblical term for the West Bank. “No one dictates where we can build … This is just the first course.”

But the timing was aggravating to the Palestinians, who are taking a major political risk by engaging again in peace talks without an explicit Israeli promise to stop settlement construction. This was the sticking point for the Palestinians when they discontinued talks with the Israeli government three years ago, as Palestinian anger at many years of talks while settlements expanded and multiplied neared a boiling point.

Daniel Levy, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, says that the problem is the massive imbalance of power between them and Israel.

“It is the Palestinian leadership’s participation in talks under these conditions that would appear to make the least sense, as evidenced by them now having to digest Israel’s new settlement announcements,” he wrote in an op-ed for Al Jazeera.

“Only if the Palestinians at least start to address the asymmetry could they gain from being in negotiations. Indeed, the only chance that the talks themselves will produce anything positive is if the Israeli-Palestinian power imbalance begins to shift.”

Palestinian embarrassment was magnified even more on Monday when Israel announced another 890 units would be built in the settlement of Gilo in East Jerusalem.

Gilo is a particularly sensitive settlement, as Palestinians contend its ongoing expansion is strangling the adjacent Palestinian city of Beit Jala. Israel considers it an integral part of Israeli Jerusalem, despite the fact that it lies beyond the 1967 border.

“It is clear that the Israeli government is deliberately attempting to sabotage U.S. and international efforts to resume negotiations,” Palestinian negotiator Mohammad Shtayyeh told the Associated Press. “Israel continues to use peace negotiations as a smoke screen for more settlement construction.”

Yet Shtayyeh and the rest of the Palestinian negotiating team reported to the talks on Tuesday as scheduled.

The settlement announcements, as well as rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli attacks on the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip in recent days have complicated Kerry’s work. But he said that he had convinced Palestinians President Mahmoud Abbas to stick with the talks because Abbas “is committed to continuing to come to the negotiation because he believes that negotiation is what will resolve this issue.”

While at a stop in Colombia, Kerry addressed the settlement issue, which he said the United States had been apprised of in advance. “As the world, I hope, knows, the United States of America views all the settlements as illegitimate. We have communicated that policy to all of our friends in Israel.”

Kerry seems determined to keep talks going, and certainly gives the impression of matching that determination with a belief that he can succeed despite difficult conditions and the recent obstacles.

While he primarily endeavored to prevent the settlement expansion from derailing the talks, he also, according to reports, communicated the same message to Netanyahu that he gave publicly in Colombia.

Kerry’s efforts have raised hopes among the backers of a two-state solution to the conflict.

Jessica Rosenblum, spokeswoman for the “pro-Israel, pro-Peace” U.S. lobbying group J Street, told IPS that, “The serious and sustained engagement of the administration in achieving a two-state resolution early enough in President Obama’s second term when they still have the time and influence to get it done is a potential game changer.

“What strikes me most about Secretary Kerry’s response is his zealous desire to safeguard the negotiations themselves and give them the space they need to take root and ultimately bear fruit,” Rosenblum added.

Israel released 26 long-term Palestinian prisoners ahead of the talks on Tuesday. The move was highly controversial in Israel, but the Palestinians needed a dramatic gesture to legitimise their participation in talks and this was seen as easier than a settlement freeze.

That decision, which engendered passionate protests by Israeli citizens, shows just how concerned Netanyahu is about the power of the settlers.

Even J Street acknowledges how formidable this obstacle can be, though even there, Rosenblum sees some hope. “Netanyahu has got a serious problem with the settler movement that will only grow worse as the negotiations progress,” she said.

“It’s clear that in order to make the concessions necessary to reach a two-state solution, the prime minister will have to form a new coalition that does not include his far-right flank. The good news for him is that he has already lined up MKs [members of the Knesset] willing to join a coalition that is actively pursuing a two-state solution, so the possibility of his government falling need not weigh in his considerations. “

The current wave of settlement expansion reflects a “map of national priorities,” which Israel released on Aug. 4. That map included funding for many settlements, including some outside the major settlement blocs.

So, despite the very real hope that Kerry’s efforts have engendered in some quarters, observers like former advisor to Ariel Sharon, Dov Weisglass, are more cynical.

“Economic benefits to isolated settlements scattered deep within the Palestinian territories undermine the possibility of an agreement and make a mockery of the Israeli government’s peace rhetoric,” Weisglass wrote in an op-ed in a leading Israeli daily.

That view seems to be well in the majority, on all sides.

Six months of United States diplomatic efforts have finally restarted talks between Israelis and Palestinians, yet pessimism about their potential for success persists.

On Monday, negotiators from both sides met in Washington for the first time since talks broke off three years ago, amid Israel’s refusal to concede to the Palestinian demand that construction in Israeli settlements, illegal under international law, be suspended during the talks.

The latest round of resuscitated talks was finalised when Israel agreed to release 104 Palestinian prisoners who have been in Israeli prisons for decades. The first group of those prisoners is expected to be released next week, while further releases will occur periodically, depending on the progress of negotiations.

”The talks will serve as an opportunity to develop a procedural work plan for how the parties can proceed with the negotiations in the coming months,” a State Department statement said.

The negotiations are expected to last some nine months, at the end of which the U.S. hopes to have an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians on all “final status” issues, including borders, settlements, Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and other contentious points.

To manage the process, the United States has appointed its former ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, as lead negotiator. While early indications are that Indyk is an acceptable choice to both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, his appointment has also been controversial on all sides.

Hardline supporters of Israeli policy consider Indyk too soft on the Palestinians. When word first leaked of Indyk’s pending appointment a week ago, Israeli Deputy Minister of Defence Danny Danon, a leading opponent of peace with the Palestinians, wrote a letter to Netanyahu opposing Indyk and asking the Prime Minister to “…ask the American administration for an honest broker for these negotiations.”

He bases his opposition to Indyk’s support of the New Israel Fund, a moderate, liberal international Jewish group which has been the focus of a smear campaign, including unsubstantiated accusations of funding “anti-Zionist” programmes in Israel.

Pro-Palestinian forces have also questioned Indyk’s appointment, claiming that his background with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and his years as the first head of the AIPAC-backed Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), show a strong pro-Israel bias.

Finally, many other observers question the wisdom of appointing a figure who was so central to the failed negotiations of the past, particularly in the 1990s, including the disastrous Camp David II summit of 2000, which preceded the start of the second intifada.

With the framework for the talks shrouded in secrecy by US Secretary of State John Kerry, the appointment of Indyk is one of the few indicators for the direction the talks are being steered in, and therefore the main focal point of analysis. Groups which strongly support the continuation of the Oslo process and a strong and immediate push for a two-state solution have come out strongly in support of Indyk.

Debra DeLee, president and CEO of Americans for Peace Now, said, “Ambassador Indyk is an experienced diplomat and a brilliant analyst. He has the skills, the depth of knowledge, and the force of personality to serve Secretary Kerry as an excellent envoy.

“He knows the issues, he knows the leaders and the negotiators, and he has a proven record of commitment to peace and to a progressive Israel that lives up to its founding fathers’ vision of a state that is both Jewish and a democracy.”

DeLee’s view was echoed by Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobbying group, J Street.

“The negotiations ahead promise to be tough and will require active, determined and creative US leadership and diplomacy if they are to succeed. Ambassador Indyk can bring all these attributes to the task. Secretary of State John Kerry could not have chosen a more qualified envoy.”

But Stephen Walt, professor of International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, is dubious about Indyk’s role.

“There are obvious reasons to be concerned by Indyk’s appointment,” Walt told IPS. “He is passionately devoted to Israel, and began his career in the United States working for AIPAC, the most prominent organisation in the Israel lobby.

“He was among the team of U.S. diplomats who bungled the Oslo peace process during the Clinton administration (1993-2001). He was also a vocal supporter of the invasion of Iraq, which casts serious doubt on his strategic judgment or knowledge of the region. There is no reason for the Palestinians to see him as a true ‘honest broker’.”

Yet while Indyk’s past association with the U.S. pro-Israel lobby has raised eyebrows, few doubt that he is currently much less connected to it than his predecessor as the leading interlocutor with Israel and the Palestinians, Dennis Ross. Ross, who played a central role in U.S. Middle East diplomacy in the administrations of both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, is currently a counselor at WINEP.

Walt acknowledges the possibility that Indyk’s position might be different now than it was when he last engaged directly in Israel-Palestine peacemaking.

“Indyk’s views seem to have evolved over time,” Walt said. “He may understand that this is his last chance to make a genuine contribution to Israeli-Palestinian peace. It is also the last chance for a genuine two-state solution, which remains the best of the various alternatives.

“Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians should all hope that he surprises us, and that the elder Indyk behaves in ways that the younger Indyk would have strenuously opposed.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry steps off a helicopter after flying from Amman, Jordan, to Ramallah, West Bank, to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Jul. 19, 2013. Credit: State Department photo/Public Domain

By Mitchell Plitnick
WASHINGTON, Jul 23 2013 (IPS)

There is a real opportunity for peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians, even though the obstacles are more formidable than in the past. That was the assessment of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, speaking Monday at a public event which posed the question “Can the Two-State Solution Be Saved?”

“This is a propitious time because there has been a five-year absence of the two parties coming together and they’ve been very resistant even to accommodation to come together,” Carter said.

“So that’s an encouraging sign. There is great pressure on both leaders not to come to table if [the negotiations are] based on borders. Palestine will ask the U.S. to state [what is] their official position and international law, which is that terms must be [based on] the 1967 borders, and land swaps can only happen in free and fair negotiations.”

But Phyllis Bennis, the director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, thinks the framework for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians is inherently flawed and until that changes, there is no chance for successful talks.

“Whatever [U.S. Secretary of State John] Kerry promised to get the two leaders to agree to negotiations, these talks about talks will never break out of their 22-year-long failure until the whole premise changes,” Bennis told IPS.

“You can’t hold talks between a wealthy, powerful, U.S.-backed nuclear-armed occupying power and a dispossessed, impoverished, occupied, unarmed population and pretend they come to the table as equals,” she said.

“It’s not surprising that all sides want to keep the terms secret – [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s cabinet is already rejecting the talks, and [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas has virtually no support for returning to talks while settlement building continues apace. What’s needed is an entirely new kind of diplomacy – not grounded in Israeli power but in international law and human rights.”

Carter also acknowledged that circumstances are quite different than they were when he brokered the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

“There was no demand on me to engage in peace talks,” Carter recalled. “But [Egyptian president] Anwar Sadat and [Israeli prime minister] Menachem Begin were strong, courageous, and wise enough to reach an agreement. I think what Secretary Kerry faces now may be more formidable. But the key issue is whether the people will prevail on their leaders to make peace.”

Kerry announced last week that a formula had been found that would bring Israel and the Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating table after a nearly five-year long hiatus.

But the Palestinians have said they are not yet committed to the new round of talks, as they expect negotiations to be based on the 1967 borders. Israel, for its part, has announced a release of long-held Palestinian prisoners as a good will gesture, but has also been reported to be pressing Kerry to amend the terms of reference to include Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

Despite this lack of commitment from the parties, preparations are going forward. Reports from both Washington and Israel indicate that the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, will be named as the lead negotiator for the U.S. team.

And both the Palestinians and Netanyahu have declared that any agreement reached will be subject to a public referendum.

Carter believes the referendum idea is a good one, not only to confirm the legitimacy of any deal that might be struck, but also as added pressure on the leaders to come to an agreement he believes both sides still very much want.

“I think the referendum is a good idea, because Prime Minister Netanyahu also said he would not formalise an agreement without a referendum. This is exactly the same as Hamas’ position,” Carter said referring to the long-held stance by the Islamist leadership in the Gaza Strip.

In December 2010, Gaza’s Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas said, “Hamas will respect the results [of a referendum] regardless of whether it differs with its ideology and principles.”

Carter continued, “I think [a referendum’s] good, because if leaders accept an agreement I think it almost guarantees people back home will accept the same thing.”

Despite the optimism Carter expressed, scepticism surrounding the renewal of talks is dwarfed by that surrounding the chances of such talks succeeding.

Many observers have noted the ongoing divisions between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the continued unwillingness of the United States and Israel to negotiate with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas, and the anti-peace stance of much of Israel’s ruling coalition, including Netanyahu’s own Likud party. All of these factors generate a great sense of pessimism.

Carter believes that if a deal is worked out that the leaders of both sides agreed upon, there would be overwhelming support for it.

After meeting with the leader of J Street, which calls itself a “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobbying group, he said, “I pray that if progress is made toward a two-state solution, it will have support not only on a worldwide basis, but also in America even from those who might not have thought this is possible.” Yet even he recognises major obstacles.

Asked by IPS about Israel’s determination to maintain a long-term presence in the Jordan Valley, something the Palestinians are never likely to accept, Carter said, “The Jordan Valley was never mentioned as being controlled by Israel after peace in my day. We anticipated that Israel would withdraw from all of Palestine east of the green line. I am not sure the Palestinians will ever accept Israeli control of Jordan Valley.”

Carter also stated that Israel’s occupation was a violation of its commitment to United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 but that if the 1967 borders were the basis for resumed talks, that would “honour the basic thrust of 242″.

Carter added that Palestinians would have to resign themselves to only a token return of refugees to Israel and that their right of return would have to be exercised only in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Schoolchildren in Quibdó, the capital of Chocó, a province where displacement is on the rise. Credit: Jesús Abad Colorado/IPS

By Helda Martínez
BOGOTA, Jun 4 2013 (IPS)

Drugs and arms traffickers are muscling in on Colombia’s Pacific coastal region, forcibly displacing local people, according to a new report by the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES).

One of the factors forcing people to leave their homes is “disputes and strategies to consolidate control over territories by the armed actors,” said Marco Romero, the head of CODHES, at the launch of the report titled “La crisis humanitaria en Colombia persiste: El Pacífico en disputa” (Colombia’s humanitarian crisis continues: The disputed Pacific region) on May 31.

Displacement in the region “is a consequence of its geographical location, as well as neglect by the state, which has benefited the drug trade. In addition the government policy known as ‘locomotora minera’ (‘drive for mining,’ a policy to foment large-scale mining) has increased production since 2009, and with it, the ambition of the armed factions,” Romero said.

Colombia’s internal armed conflict has dragged on since the early 1960s. Now the government of conservative President Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are holding peace talks in Havana. But there are a number of other armed groups in this country, including drug trafficking syndicates and far-right paramilitary militias.

The report by CODHES, which is the most respected non-governmental source of statistics on displacement, says that last year 92,596 people were forced to flee their homes in the country’s Pacific region – 36 percent of the 2012 victims of forced displacement nationwide.

Since 1999, over 860,000 people have been displaced in the Pacific region, according to CODHES. The worst year for the region was 2012, when the number rose by 22 percent compared with 2011.

Nationwide, there were 256,590 cases of displacement last year, some 2,500 fewer than in 2011, when the number totalled 259,146.

But the number of cases of mass displacement in 2012 was 98 percent higher than in 2011.

“Mass displacement is the term used when a single episode of violence forces the migration of at least 10 families or 50 people,” CODHES researcher Paola Hurtado told IPS.

In the Pacific region, mass displacements have increased by 45 percent over the last two years.

Afro-Colombian and indigenous people, who live mainly in the western Pacific coastal departments (provinces) of Nariño, Cauca, Valle del Cauca and Chocó, are the most affected. In 2012, an estimated total of 51,938 blacks and 18,154 native people in this region were victims of forced displacement.

“The situation of Afro-descendant people is terrible,” Ariel Palacios, of the National Conference of Afro-Colombian Organisations (CNOA), said at the presentation of the report.

“Government protection policies are ineffective, and racism is rife in the cities. That’s why most Afro-Colombians try to relocate in small towns or villages, to mitigate the gravity of their situation,” Palacios said.

A newer aspect is intra-urban displacement, within or between cities, to which CODHES devotes part of its report, attributing it to disputes between criminal bands for control of small-scale drug dealing.

Romero said, “Paradoxical as it may seem, in the midst of conflict and the humanitarian crisis, the country is seeking peaceful solutions and reparations for the victims, with Law 1,448 and the peace talks between the national government and the FARC.”

He was referring to the Victims and Land Restitution Law, which began to be enforced in 2012 in response to the main injustice arising from the war, the other side of the coin of displacement: illegal appropriation of land.

The law “is a positive development because it accords recognition to victims and acknowledges that, if the state was not capable of protecting them in the past, it must do so now,” Gabriel Rojas, CODHES’s research coordinator, told IPS.

“It’s also positive that economic resources have been assigned,” amounting to some 30 million dollars, he said.

“However, we know, and the outgoing agriculture minister (Juan Camilo Restrepo) has admitted, that there are serious problems with organisational aspects and registration, which have caused difficulties and in some cases re-victimised people, who suffer anxiety knowing there is a law to protect them and yet, a year and a half later, implementation lags far behind,” Rojas said.

Colombia has one of the largest populations of internally displaced people in the world. Civil society organisations and official estimates put the number of displaced since the 1980s at over five million people in this country of approximately 46 million people.

The situation reached such a pass that in 1998 the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) opened a permanent office in Bogotá.

IPS requested comments and statistical information from the government’s Unit for Care and Comprehensive Reparations for Victims, and was promised a reply, “which would not be immediate,” on condition the request was sent by e-mail.

“The lack of official statistics is becoming a problem. The last known figure for the total of Afro-Colombian people affected by forced displacement in 2012 was about 90,000, but there is no certainty,” Rojas said.

Women walk past destroyed shops in Qusayr, Syria. Credit: Sam Tarling/IPS

By AJ Correspondents
DOHA, May 30 2013 (Al Jazeera)

Syria’s opposition will not participate in proposed international peace talks in Geneva next month, their leader has said.

George Sabra, the head of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), on Thursday said the opposition were suspending their participation until the international community intervened to end the siege in Qusayr, a town in Homs province near the Lebanese border.

“The National Coalition will not take part in any international conference or any such efforts so long as the militias of Iran and Hezbollah continue their invasion of Syria,” Sabra told reporters in Istanbul.

Khaled Saleh, the SNC spokesperson who addressed the news conference after Sabra, said civilians in the town had been “severely wounded” and Qusayr had been completely cut off by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

“Civilians have no access to water, electricity and the massacre continues minute by minute while the Assad regime continues to use weapons” it receives from allies, he said.

He said the United Nations and Arab League should intervene to stop the killings that the Lebanese group “Hezbollah is responsible for”.

The planned peace talks in Geneva are being arranged by Russia – a Syria ally – and the United States. The SNC had said earlier it would take part only if a peace process that led to Bashar al-Assad stepping down was put in place.

Russian missile

SNC’s announcement to boycott the talks came only hours after Assad said his country would respond to any Israeli attack on its soil.

In an interview to be aired on Thursday by Al-Manar TV station, owned by Hezbollah, Assad also said he had already received the first shipment of an advanced S-300 Russian missile system and would soon get the rest.

Gerald Steinburg, a professor of Political Studies at Bar-ilan University, told Al Jazeera that Israel was paying attention “closely” to what was happening in Syria. The comments were first published on Thursday by the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar, which got excerpts of the interview.

“Syria has received the first shipment of Russian anti-aircraft S-300 rockets,” al-Akhbar quoted Assad as saying. “The rest of the shipment will arrive soon.”

Israel has suggested its military might strike the Russian S-300 missiles.

But he said Israel was not alarmed by shipments of arms to Syria.

“Mr Assad has got problems dealing with his own survival and that of his regime, so it is not really a major concern in Israel,” he said from Jerusalem.

Several foreign envoys had participated in the Istanbul meeting to help the opposition arrive at a decision.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said major powers also remained divided on who would take part in the talks or when they would be held.

Ban told reporters “active consultations” were still being held, while Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said the U.S. government’s “entire foreign policy apparatus” was working to hold the meeting.

The U.S. has also called on Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters from Syria immediately.

France says about 3,000 to 4,000 Hezbollah fighters are currently battling alongside regime troops in Syria.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Land reform was the first item on the agenda of Colombia’s peace talks. Credit: Constanza Vieira/IPS

By Patricia Grogg and Constanza Vieira
HAVANA/BOGOTA, May 27 2013 (IPS)

Colombian government and guerrilla delegates have announced an agreement on the question of land reform – an important step in the peace talks that began six months ago in Havana.

“This first document…is the ‘golden gate’ for the continuation of talks on the rest of the issues,” FARC negotiator Andrés París commented to IPS shortly after Sunday’s announcement.

“This is a firm step towards a final agreement to end the conflict,” he said, adding that the peace process “is being strengthened as the government’s spirit of change and reform grows stronger and as Colombians begin to see a future of peace in these talks, as well as changes that benefit them and improve their living conditions.”

A Latin American diplomat close to the talks told IPS that it was important that the positions of the government of conservative President Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) insurgents had come closer together on the question of rural development, and that the talks could now move forward on other issues on the agenda.

Land reform is the first item on the agenda for the peace talks aimed at putting an end to the conflict that began in 1964, when the FARC emerged on the scene.

The document on “integral land reform” clarifies however that implementation depends on the talks reaching a final peace accord, as one of the principles guiding the process is that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”

Accords on different points on the agenda “will only be applied once we have an overall agreement to end the conflict. In other words: there will be no partial application of the accords,” said chief government negotiator Humberto de la Calle.

FARC chief Iván Márquez said the agreement on land reform was vague on some points, “which will necessarily have to be taken up again before a final agreement is reached.”

These specific aspects apparently include the maximum permitted extension of large landed estates and foreign-owned rural property.

“Everything will be done with full respect for private property and the rule of law. Legal property owners have nothing to fear,” said de la Calle, who added that the agreement would radically transform rural Colombia and that it went beyond the traditional view of agrarian reform and was aimed at closing the gap between rural and urban Colombia.

FARC sources have told IPS that in Colombia, where no real land reform process has ever been carried out, there are estates of up to 100,000 hectares in size, while 87 percent of peasants have no land.

And according to the Gini Index, which measures income inequality on a scale of 0 to 1, land concentration in Colombia increased in the last decade from 0.74 to 0.87 – one of the most unequal distributions of land in the world.

The joint communiqué says the agreement on land issues would mean the start of radical transformations of rural Colombia, based on equality and democracy, by granting access to land for the largest possible number of landless peasants by means of a land bank, or “Fondo de Tierras para la Paz”.

The accord also covers housing plans, the provision of tap water, technical assistance and training, access to education, formal land titling, infrastructure, and soil recovery. “The agreement seeks to reverse the effects of the conflict and restore land to the victims of dispossession and forced displacement,” the document states.

“With the future generations of Colombians in mind, the accord delimits the agricultural frontier, protecting areas of special environmental interest,” it adds.

In addition, it says a food and nutrition system would be put in place as a form of social protection, to eradicate hunger.

The next round of talks, set to begin on Jun. 11, will focus on the question of political participation – FARC’s transition to a legal political movement. Other points on the agenda are an end to the armed conflict, the drug trade, victims’ rights and reparations, and mechanisms to oversee implementation of the agreements.

President Santos called the agreement on land issues “a fundamental step towards a final accord to put an end to half a century of conflict.”

“We will continue the process in a prudent and responsible fashion,” he wrote on Twitter.

In this stage of the talks, “these accords cannot be very concrete; they are just a framework,” sociologist Alfredo Molano, an expert on the conflict over land, told IPS.

A similar process will now follow with the remaining five points on the agenda, and after that, concrete details and numbers will be hashed out.

Molano stressed that the aspects on which agreement was reached included the gradual process of issuing formal title to all of the land occupied or possessed by peasants in Colombia.

“We’re talking about two million hectares,” he told IPS. “Today there are six peasant reserve zones (ZRCs) with a total of 800,000 hectares, and another five, covering 1.2 million hectares, are in the process of being created.”

The ZRCs are areas of collectively-owned rural land. But although they were recognised by law in 1994, they continue to battle for full recognition.

They curb the constant encroachment of the agricultural frontier in forested areas, and are considered a good formula to curtail the steady growth of latifundios or large landed estates.

Ibrahim Makhlouf stands on the roof of his home in the West Bank, from where he can see the Israeli settlement outpost of Shalhevet Farm. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours/IPS

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
ASIRA AL-QIBLIYA, Occupied West Bank, May 16 2013 (IPS)

Ibrahim Makhlouf reaches for two wooden planks lying in the hallway and places them expertly in an L-shape along the seams of his front door.

“Open [the door],“ he beckons, knowing that doing so is nearly impossible. “Every night, we put this here,” he explains. “For the settlers.”

Makhlouf’s home sits on the outskirts of the West Bank village of Asira Al-Qibliya, only 500 metres from the illegal Israeli settlement outpost of Shalhevet Farm, an offshoot of the equally illegal settlement of Yitzhar.

Makhlouf told IPS that his house is attacked by Israeli settlers at least two times per week and has been vandalised over 100 times. The windows on Makhlouf’s two-story home all have bars on the outside to prevent them from shattering when settlers throw stones.

“When we see the settlers, we send the children to another house. What can we do?” Makhlouf, who lives with his wife and six children, said. “We’re afraid. There is no safety.”"When we see the settlers, we send the children to another house."
-- Ibrahim Makhlouf

Since the Shalhevet Farm outpost was established in 1999, Makhlouf said he has been barred from accessing some 16 dunams of his family’s land, which was traditionally used to plant figs, grapes, olives and other trees, and from using a freshwater spring.

“It is my father and grandfather’s land, but now settlers are planting, and I can’t even enter it. They want to confiscate the land and houses and control the whole area to extend their settlements,” Makhlouf said.

“The [Israeli] government encourages them, with money and protection from the soldiers,” he added. “The government and the settlers are one.”

Illegal settlements

In recent weeks, international actors, including the United States, have renewed efforts to get Israel to freeze settlement construction in the West Bank in order to restart long-stalled peace talks with the Palestinians. On Apr. 30, the Arab League said it would support potential land swaps along the 1967 Green Line in negotiations of final borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state.

But the growth of Israeli settlement outposts in the West Bank, like Shalhevet Farm, has been almost entirely omitted from the conversation. Such outposts are often precursors to full-fledged settlements, both of which are illegal under international law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention also forbids an occupying power from transferring its civilian population to the territory it occupies.

For Palestinians, both settlements and outposts have the same negative impact on their lives. But the Israeli government views only outposts, not settlements, as illegal, sometimes dismantling them for being built without the required permits and then relocating residents to nearby settlements.

Settlements are generally much larger than outposts and receive full services and infrastructure, although the Israeli government does also provide outposts, which generally begin as a few caravans on a hilltop, with basic services such as water and electricity. The Israeli army also protects outpost residents, as it does all other Israeli settlers.

Israeli settlement outposts were first built in the mid-1990s, during a freeze on settlement construction imposed by then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. A few years later, Israeli leader Ariel Sharon famously urged Israeli settlers to seize every hilltop. “Whatever you grab will be ours. What you don’t grab will not be ours,” he said.

In 2005, at the behest of the Israeli government, lawyer Talia Sasson reported that the outposts are illegal under Israeli law. To be considered legal, a settlement must be established by a government decision, be built on “state land”, possess a building plan, and have clear, territorial boundaries.

Outposts fail to meet these criteria, although earlier this week, the Israeli government announced plans to examine whether it could retroactively legalise four outposts.

Expansion for control

Today about 100 Israeli settlement outposts dot the West Bank. While most begin small, they develop quickly, and many have cement houses, paved roads, playgrounds and daycare centres.

In the case of Shalhevet Farm, Peace Now, an Israeli non-governmental organisation that works against Israeli settlements in the West Bank, found that the Israeli Ministry of Housing and Construction spent 1.1 million Israeli shekels (over 300,000 U.S. dollars) to connect the outpost to basic infrastructure. The national water company, Mekorot, provides it with water.

Many outposts also serve an important geopolitical aim.

According to Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, some outposts aim “to create Jewish continuity and connect isolated settlements with settlement blocs, in order to prevent future evacuation. Even though each of these outposts is home to only a few dozens of families, the outposts can completely control the land or the road around it.”

Violence against Palestinians and their property emanating from settlement outposts has also been well documented. After a Palestinian man killed an Israeli settler earlier this month near Nablus, Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq documented 13 settler attacks against Palestinians in one week in the area.

38-year-old Munir Jibreel Qaddous, a farmer from the West Bank village of Burin, told IPS about being viciously attacked by Israeli settlers in 2011, while the Israeli army and police looked on and did nothing.

White caravans of the settlement outpost of Bracha B, an extension of the Bracha settlement, overlook much of Burin’s farmland, and settlers regularly vandalise Palestinian property and attack their homes in the village, Qaddous explained.

Data collected by Yesh Din shows that between 2005-2012, over 91 percent of complaints filed by Palestinians against acts of Israeli settler violence were closed without an indictment. Of this, 84 percent were closed due to the Israeli police’s failure to properly investigate the crimes.

“All of them are the same,” said Qaddous, referring to Israeli settlers living in settlements and unauthorized outposts. He told IPS that he witnessed the Bracha B outpost’s construction and gradual expansion.

“In 1999, a watch-tower was put up, then trailers were erected. Then, there were 15 cement houses. Before the settlers came, they put [in] a road, electricity and water,” he said.

“This area is a very strategic area of the West Bank. After five or ten years, maybe you will see settlers on every hill.”

By Clara Nieto
BOGOTA, May 7 2013 (IPS)

The crisis in Venezuela caused by the violent opposition of followers of Henrique Capriles, who is accusing President Nicolás Maduro of election fraud, and peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas in Havana, are occupying the attention of national and foreign media.

Cuba and Norway are guarantors of the Colombian peace negotiations, and Venezuela and Chile are observers. Commentators and analysts of all stripes are wondering about the role of Venezuela and its late president Hugo Chávez (who died of cancer Mar. 5), and of Cuba and the Castro brothers, in this process that aims to end 50 years of armed conflict.

Achieving peace is a priority for Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

Bogotá and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) chose Havana as the location for the talks. Cuba has been a friendly nation to the guerrillas, which gives them confidence and a sense of security.

Clara Nieto. Credit: Margarita Carrillo/IPS

However, according to José Arbesú, a high-ranking official in the Communist Party of Cuba, his country has not given the Colombian insurgents arms or funding, as it did in the case of Central American rebels decades ago when they were involved in civil wars against brutal and corrupt dictatorships.

Santos sought an understanding with Cuba, talked of inviting the country to be an observer at the Fifth Summit of the Americas, a United States-backed project that excluded the Caribbean island nation, and sought the support of Fidel Castro and President Raúl Castro to hold secret exploratory talks with the FARC in Cuba. These led to a 10-point agenda that is the basis of the current negotiations.

Venezuela and Chávez supported Colombia in this. Santos reestablished good bilateral relations with Venezuela, broken off during the government of former president Álvaro Uribe, and created an atmosphere of peace and collaboration. Recently he stated that this support was crucial for achieving essential agreements in Havana.

Chávez, a friend to the FARC, regarded the Colombian conflict as a threat to the security of Venezuela. A solution was necessary to remove a pretext for the United States to intervene in their countries, he said. Venezuela is surrounded by U.S. military bases in the Caribbean, including seven in Colombian territory that former president Uribe ceded to the United States.

Peace in Colombia is a security issue for Venezuela, and also for Ecuador. Leftist insurgents and far-right paramilitaries cross their porous borders freely, and thousands of undocumented Colombian refugees flock to the neighbouring nations, fleeing the conflict and the chemical spraying intended to eradicate coca crops (ordered by the United States) that poisons their families and animals, and destroys the soil and subsistence crops.

Chávez, the main challenger to Washington’s influence in Latin America, was the architect, along with former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of regional integration systems that exclude the United States (such as the Union of South American Nations, UNASUR).

Chávez was more than a pebble in Uncle Sam’s shoe, and it is in the U.S.’s interests to eradicate Chavismo. This poses a major threat to President Maduro, his successor.

The Venezuelan right, headed by Capriles and supported by the international far right, is already on the move against the new president, purportedly “in defence” of Venezuelan democracy which it claims was violated and abused by “the dictator” Chávez.

Meanwhile, the moment is ripe for Colombia’s peace plans. The most influential leftwing leaders in the continent, Chávez and Fidel Castro, repeatedly stated that the time for armed struggle was over. Chávez asked the FARC to release their hostages unconditionally and to end the fighting.

The conservative Santos, for his part, has co-opted some of the leftwing rebels’ core demands, such as redistribution of land to the destitute and to those whose land was taken by paramilitaries and guerrillas, and offering compensation for victims.

Times have indeed changed.

Uribe’s government, in which Santos was defence minister, hit the FARC hard and killed several of its top leaders. The guerrillas were not defeated, but they have been weakened.

The negotiations are taking place in the midst of conflict, and peace would be a boon. But they are demanding structural changes to ensure an equitable country – Colombia is the most unequal country in Latin America – with opportunities, land, health and education for all.

The Colombian far right, with Uribe at the head, is mobilising against the peace process, and encouraging discontent in the armed forces against the government.

And, if not U.S. President Barack Obama himself, the U.S. Southern Command is also active. General John Kelly, its commander, spoke at length in a presentation to Congress on Mar. 20 about the regional danger represented by the FARC, saying they had acquired surface-to-air missiles and submarines that could reach Florida, Texas or California in 10 to 12 days, and could travel as far as Africa.

Such statements could influence the Colombian military, which is hostile to negotiations with the guerrillas, and undermine the peace process. Kelly mentioned the joint operations carried out with the Colombian army against the FARC – an intervention in internal affairs and public order in the country – and he spoke in favour of the continuation of military action against the guerrillas.

The media are closely observing both these conflicts. In Colombia, most media outlets support the peace process. In Venezuela it remains to be seen whether Chavismo, without Chávez, will fully back Maduro, who is faced with a difficult scenario. There are many who are trying to not let him govern. Colombia needs peace in its important neighbour, and ought to have Venezuela’s support. Maduro has promised that it will.

* Clara Nieto is a writer and diplomat, former Colombian ambassador to the United Nations and author of the book “Obama y la nueva izquierda latinoamericana” (Obama and the New Latin American Left).

Excerpt:

Thai authorities and Muslim rebels leaders have started peace talks aimed at ending almost a decade of unrest in the country’s far south, as fresh violence killed at least five people.

The talks on Thursday with representatives from the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) insurgent group, expected to last one day, will focus on reducing bloodshed, Thai National Security Council chief Paradorn Pattanatabut said, warning the overall peace process would take time.

“Today’s main focus is to reduce violence. Today we will focus on building mutual trust and good relations,” Paradorn told reporters in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, where the meeting was being held.

Ahmad Zamzamin, a former senior aide of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, is facilitating the talks.

Prior to the talks, a roadside bomb exploded in the Chor Ai-rong district of Narathiwat province, 840 kilometres south of Bangkok, killing three soldiers who were patrolling the area, said the 4th Army Region commander, Lieutenant General Udomchai Thammasarorat.

“The people of southern Thailand have become used to violence with attacks by suspected Muslim separatists happening on an almost daily basis,” Al Jazeera’s Wayne Hay said.

Five other soldiers were also wounded in the ambush.

Authorities say the attack took place in a village that is home to a key leader of the Muslim separatist group taking part in the talks with the Thai government.

“We suspect this was the work of local militants who want to discredit the peace talks under way in Kuala Lumpur,” Udomchai said.

A separate shooting incident was also reported in Narathiwat killing two Buddhist civilians.

The husband and wife were shot in Tak Bai district, where in 2004 more than 80 Muslim men died in a confrontation with security forces.

“That kind of underscores the difficulty of these talks,” said Al Jazeera’s Florence Looi, reporting from Kuala Lumpur.

More than 5,300 people have been killed in the conflict in the majority-Muslim provinces in Thailand, which are under emergency law.

Rebels have carried out shootings and bombings on monks, teachers and village officials as symbols of the majority-Buddhist state.

In the past, Thailand and Malaysia have attempted, but eventually failed, to broker talks with the rebels.

“Analysts predict it will take many years before peace can be achieved in southern Thailand,” Looi said. “It will be a long and arduous road. But many agree that Thursday’s dialogue is a crucial first step”.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Presidents Santos and Chávez at a 2010 Colombia-Venezuela summit en Santa Marta, Colombia. Credit: Constanza Vieira/IPS

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Mar 15 2013 (IPS)

Late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez played a key role in the current attempt to negotiate peace in Colombia. Along with Cuban President Raúl Castro, he confidentially urged the FARC guerrillas to agree to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’s secret proposal for peace talks.

For years, the late Venezuelan president and Cuba’s Fidel Castro had argued that armed struggle was a thing of the past. And Raúl, Fidel’s successor, took the same stance.

Chávez,who governed Venezuela since 1999 and died on Mar. 5, also provided the logistics to transport the FARC’s negotiators abroad incognito during the preliminary talks, when Santos decided that the contacts should no longer take place in Colombia.

Getting the two sides together “was the hardest past,” according to political scientist Ronal Rodríguez, a professor and researcher at the Venezuela Observatory of the private University of Rosario, in Bogota. Once that was achieved, Norway and Cuba assumed the role of guarantors and Venezuela apparently took a backseat, as a facilitator, along with Chile.

“In politics, only what has already happened is certain,” former Colombian minister Horacio Serpa told IPS. But the most likely scenario is that acting president Nicolás Maduro will be elected president of Venezuela in the Apr. 14 elections.

“In that case, as he has specifically stated, he will continue along the lines followed by President Chávez in this matter,” Serpa said.

“We Colombians hope that Venezuela will continue to help, and continue creating conditions so we can make peace…and that whatever the outcome of the elections, Venezuela will continue cooperating towards that end.”

Rodríguez said that in any case, “Venezuela has already played the most important role it could play with respect to peace in Colombia, by getting the FARC to have the confidence and trust to sit down at the table for peace talks.”

“The challenges that lie ahead mainly concern the negotiating parties, so Venezuela’s role will not be as important as it has been up to now,” he said.

But he said that if Maduro is elected, it would “give continuity to the process” and would give the FARC confidence regarding Venezuela’s presence as one of the guarantors that the peace talks would continue to move ahead.

He said, however, that if opposition candidate Henrique Capriles won the elections, Venezuela’s support for the talks would continue, because for Venezuela, Colombia’s peace process “is a structural, state question that goes beyond the differences between Chavismo and the opposition.”

Rodríguez noted that Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict “has already had a contagion effect across the border in Venezuela,” which suffers “kidnapping, extortion and all those dynamics that the armed actors (from Colombia) have brought.”

Like the FARC, a smaller rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), has also been active in Colombia since 1964. And far-right paramilitary groups, which were partially dismantled in 2006 after closed-door negotiations with the Colombian government, are another actor in the conflict.

“As in the case of all borders during wars, cross-border routes are sought for smuggling arms, provisions of all kinds and financing by means of legal and illegal operations,” former minister Camilo González, director of the Institute of Studies for Development and Peace, told IPS.

González added that “not only has business activity been affected, with negative effects for local residents, traders and producers on both sides of the border, but in several Venezuelan states, the insecurity associated with the presence of the FARC or the ELN has had an impact on many sectors.”

According to accounts gathered by IPS along the border in November, remnant or regrouped paramilitary bands are also active in the Venezuelan border cities of Ureña, San Antonio and San Cristóbal, the capital of the state of Táchira, where they extort local traders and businesses.

González said that “Venezuela in the post-Chávez era will continue collaborating with the peace process in Colombia,” because putting an end to the armed conflict “is in the interests of all sectors of society in Venezuela.”

“I think there will be continuity,” said Carlos Velandia, known as “Felipe Torres” when he was a member of the ELN national leadership. Now he is dedicated to research and consulting on peace.

His arguments are based on Maduro’s close involvement “in the construction of Venezuela’s willingness to support a political solution to the conflict” and the fact that “the conflict has leaked across the border, and also affects Venezuelan territory.

“And the only way to put an end to it is to negotiate peace here in Colombia,” he added.

“The presence of foreign forces is disturbing Venezuela’s democratic stability,” Velandia said.

In Venezuela, he said, “there are factions in the military that want to fully live up to the constitutional mandate to defend sovereignty and territorial integrity. And it’s really hard for a member of the military to see foreign forces in his country and look the other way.”

That means that “Venezuela has no alternative other than supporting a political solution in Colombia, because its security and tranquillity depends on that,” the former guerrilla said.

Alfredo Molano, a Colombian sociologist and writer, went a step further. He said that “if Chavismo collapses in Venezuela and a military dictatorship is established to, let’s say, avoid civil war, what prospects would the FARC have with regard to their own future?”

He said Chávez played the role of a peace-maker “in a clean, transparent fashion, which infused the different parties with confidence.”

But above all, “he was able to show the FARC that the conditions were in place to lay down their weapons, without renouncing their political objectives. Chávez established himself in power without weapons, simply with votes, and with them he subordinated the Venezuelan armed forces,” he told IPS.

“When they agreed to peace talks, the FARC had the Chavismo model in mind. They decided to trade bullets for votes because it is possible – as shown by Venezuela (where Chávez, as an army lieutenant colonel, led a failed coup attempt in 1992). But if that door is closed, the peace talks in Havana will fall apart,” Molano said.

Christian Völkel, a Colombia analyst with the International Crisis Group, takes a less pessimistic view. “Regardless of how important Venezuela’s participation was in the secret phase of talks, the negotiations now have enough momentum of their own to sustain them,” he told IPS.

“Chávez, without a doubt, was the politician that the FARC respected the most,” but that doesn’t mean his death “will have a dramatic effect,” he argued.

“The two sides have been negotiating in Havana for five months, and it looks like they’re already moving towards agreements,” said Völkel, referring to progress that has apparently been made on the issue of land ownership, the first question on the six-point agenda for the talks.

The issue of land ownership is at the centre of Colombia's peace talks. Credit: Constanza Vieira/IPS

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Dec 20 2012 (IPS)

Colombia’s large-scale agricultural producers and peasant farmers managed to listen to each other for the first time about the core cause of the decades-long armed conflict: the concentration of rural land ownership and the social and economic development of the countryside.

The exchange of views took place at a three-day forum held in Bogota at the request of the negotiators taking part in the peace talks between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which began a month ago in Havana.

The left-wing FARC emerged in 1964 from a group of peasant farmers who were forced in 1948 by violence waged by large landowners and the government to colonise land abandoned by the state, which they defended with guns since 1950.

Six decades and hundreds of thousands of victims later, there is little public information about how the peace talks are going. But it is clear that the different sides see the question of land ownership as lying at the centre of the hostilities.

It is the first point on the agenda for the talks, which were unexpectedly announced in late August, after two years of secret preliminary negotiations.

The forum on “integral agrarian development”, which ended Wednesday Dec. 19, was organised by the United Nations Development Programme and the Centre of Thinking and Follow-up on the Peace Talks, an ad-hoc body set up by the National University of Colombia.

The organisers brought together 1,314 delegados – 33 percent of whom were women – from 522 social and business organisations representing 15 productive sectors from around the country. The debates of the commissions, made up of 20 groups of 60 to 90 people on average, were closed to the press. The conclusions of the debates were sent to a final plenary session.

The delegates discussed the different issues contained in the first point of the peace talks agenda: access to and use of land; unproductive areas; the formalisation of property ownership and of rural labour; the agricultural frontier and protection of nature reserves and communally owned indigenous and black territories; rural development programmes; and infrastructure.

Other issues debated were the social development model; incentives for agricultural production, cooperatives and a solidarity economy; technical assistance, subsidies, credit and marketing; and food security.

The conclusions compiled by the commissions included all of the contrasting positions, as well as the areas where agreement was reached. The final document will be presented to the negotiators on Jan. 8 in Havana.

The statistics from the Colombian countryside speak for themselves: 1.15 percent of rural property owners hold 52 percent of the agricultural land. The country’s Gini coefficient, which is commonly used as a measure of inequality of income or wealth, stood at 0.87 in rural areas – one of the highest levels of inequality in the world given that a score of 1.00 would represent a single person or body owning all of the farmland.

Currently, 38 million hectares are used for large-scale cattle-ranching. But if that total was cut in half, neither productivity nor profitability would be affected, said Agriculture Minister Juan Camilo Restrepo. Meanwhile, just five million hectares are dedicated to agriculture, when at least 22 million are needed.

Optimising land use would bring greater prosperity and profits, Restrepo said in late November. But he added that this cannot be imposed by decree.

Rafael Mejía, the president of the rural association of Colombia, which represents large landowners and agribusiness interests, punctually attended the forum. “I came to listen to you, and for us to be listened to with respect and civility. We managed to do this, and I am satisfied,” he said in his brief closing message.

“I listened to you attentively. I have learned from all of you….We have to learn to turn the page if we want to build, all together…a rural sector like the one we all want, where we all have a place,” he added.

IPS was informed that Mejía commented in the hallways that this was the first time that he had the opportunity to listen to the peasant farmers, and that he realised that they had proposals “that can be discussed.”

On the first day of the forum, Mejía stressed that the poverty and poor conditions in rural areas could not be eradicated if the violence continued. He also said that “private property and productive activities, in the framework of a market economy, are non-negotiable.”

But Jesuit priest Francisco de Roux, provincial of the Society of Jesus’s Colombia Province, stated in his own closing remarks that “What Colombia is doing is discussing the model to be applied, even if some say it is not negotiable.

“The model that we have had until now has produced inequity; it is at the heart of the conflict; it has to do with the mass migration caused by forced displacement; and it has not produced the expected economic growth in the rural sector,” said the priest, who is an economist known for his work on behalf of the country’s poor farmers.

For his part, Andrés Gil, the head of the Asociación Campesina del Valle del Cimitarra, an association of small farmers from the central Cimitarra valley, said the forum “has created an atmosphere in which it is possible to try to bring about a closer alignment of positions in the world of agriculture – the positions of the rural associations and peasant organisations.”

The best aspect of the forum was “the debate of ideas and proposals through political channels rather than war,” he told IPS. “That is the stride forward made by this event…Opportunities like this should be fomented around the country. This should be the way politics and strategic decisions are built in Colombia.”

But the Colombian federation of cattle ranchers refused to attend the forum because the resulting conclusions would go to the peace talks with the FARC, the federation’s spokesman, José Félix Lafaurie, told the press.

Lafaurie, who has been accused of ties to the far-right paramilitary militias, argued that many cattle ranchers have been the victims of the rebel group over the past decades.

Joint FARC and Colombian government press conference in Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Nov 30 2012 (IPS)

The Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas will resume the peace talks in the Cuban capital on Dec. 5, in a climate of moderate optimism surrounding a process in which citizen participation could play a key role.

After 11 days of talks that started Nov. 19, the negotiators decided to take a brief recess for consultations and internal discussions on the issues being addressed, Humberto de la Calle, the head of the delegation of the government of Juan Manuel Santos, announced Thursday.

De la Calle broke the silence he has kept since arriving in Havana to say that so far the talks have been “advancing as expected.” He said the government puts “special importance on broad, pluralistic participation.”

Both the government and FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) delegates agreed that the talks were going well.

The head of the rebel group’s delegation, Iván Márquez, said in a press conference that “the necessary steps and solutions have been taken” to begin discussing the first point on the agenda.

“In Colombia and around the world, people are clamouring for peace in our country. We are very optimistic,” said Ricardo Téllez, another FARC negotiator. He said “serious, profound” issues have been discussed, while adding that “there has also been room for laughter and jokes.”

“We have been building up trust, which is extremely important,” he said. “Don’t forget that these two sides are involved in a conflict that hasn’t ended yet…the FARC have declared a ceasefire, but the clashes continue.”

In Bogotá, President Santos has reiterated that the armed forces will not cease their actions against the guerrillas.

The results of the first stage of talks, which have been held behind closed doors in Havana’s Palacio de Convenciones, include plans for a Dec. 17-19 public forum on agricultural questions, and the creation of a web site and other mechanisms for people to set forth proposals regarding the points on the agenda.

The web site will begin to function on Dec. 7, when a broad information campaign will be launched on TV and radio and in the press, to invite people to send in their opinions, ideas and recommendations. A form will also be distributed, for people who prefer to send in a written suggestion, rather than participate on-line.

Analysts say the initiative to open up the talks to citizen participation represents a major stride forward in the talks that officially began on Oct. 18 in Oslo.

Norway and Cuba are guarantors of the negotiations, and Chile and Venezuela are observers. The talks will mainly be held in Havana, although some sessions could take place in other countries.

Mechanisms for public input were foreseen in the general agreement on the negotiations signed by the FARC and the Santos administration at the end of the preliminary talks, which took place in Havana from Feb. 23 to Aug. 26.

A joint communiqué issued by the two delegations says they asked the United Nations in Colombia and the National University’s Centre of Thinking and Follow-up to the Peace Talks to organise a public debate on a “policy of integral agrarian development”.

The U.N. and the National University centre are to report on the conclusions reached in the public debates to the negotiators on Jan. 8. De la Calle said the delegates also agreed to receive the results of forums organised by the congressional peace commissions, which had the support of the U.N. office in Bogotá.

“The aim is to get citizens and organisations from all sectors to set forth relevant, useful proposals in the debate on the agenda agreed in the general agreement on the talks. With this public input and the direct talks that we are holding, we hope to reach accords that will lead to the end of the conflict,” de la Calle added.

The FARC sees the public debate on agrarian policy as “a watershed” in the talks, because “we think it is a good time for the country to express its views,” Márquez told journalists.

“We want the people of Colombia to point out the route to peace,” he added.

A policy on integral agrarian development is the first item on the negotiators’ six-point agenda. The issue includes access to and use of land, unproductive rural property, formal land titling, the agricultural frontier and the protection of nature reserves, development programmes, and infrastructure.

It also covers social development aspects such as healthcare, education, housing and poverty eradication in rural areas, incentives for agricultural production, cooperatives and the solidarity economy, technical assistance, subsidies, affordable credit, the generation of income, markets, the creation of formal sector jobs, and food security.

FARC has repeatedly stated that the extreme concentration of land ownership in Colombia is the historical cause of the insurgent struggle.

In 2003, 0.4 percent of landholders owned 63.6 percent of the country’s farmland, while small farmers, who represented 86.3 percent of all agricultural producers, had just 8.8 percent of the land.

The rebels are pressing for comprehensive land reform, which would include the confiscation of land to be distributed among landless farmers.

*With reporting by Ivet González

Women’s bodies are not spoils of war, say the women of Colombia. Credit: Intermón Oxfam

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 27 2012 (IPS)

Against the backdrop of an upcoming U.N. Security Council (UNSC) meeting on women, peace and security, a coalition of some 63 international women’s groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has decried the absence of women during peace negotiations in post-conflict situations.

In a letter to Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson and Under-Secretary-General Michelle Bachelet, executive director of U.N. Women, the coalition says of the nine peace agreements that were signed last year, only two contained women and peace and security provisions.

Furthermore, out of the 14 peace processes that were underway in 2011, only four of the negotiating party delegations included a woman delegate.

The coalition, which includes the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP) and the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), has specifically expressed “deep concern” over the absence of women at the negotiation table in the current peace talks between the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the ongoing transitional political processes in Mali.

Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, GNWP’s international coordinator, told IPS that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s 2012 “Report on Women, Peace and Security” has already highlighted that words and resolutions have not been translated into actions.

She said sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is both the root cause and consequence of women’s lack of representation in decision-making.

“This scourge will only continue if women are not part of the decision-making. Women will always be vulnerable if their strength and leadership is not acknowledged and valued,” she added.

On Friday, the UNSC is expected to discuss the implementation of its landmark resolution 1325 adopted in 2000, which was primarily aimed at integrating gender into its core mandate: the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security.

Cora Weiss, president of the Hague Appeal for Peace and U.N. representative of the International Peace Bureau, told IPS it is time for the UNSC to have a small working group to vet all of its resolutions for their impact on and participation of women.

She said UNSC Resolution 1325 has gotten more attention, and more lip service than most other resolutions. “Everyone talks about women. But where are we?” she asked.

“I hope the talk is not a trend, but will lead to a permanent condition where it will be taken for granted that women are equal to men, and are equally represented in all decision making. To reach that goal much more needs to happen.”

Weiss called on the secretary-general to appoint a woman to a permanent office on women’s participation in peace processes.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, who presided over the 1990 UNSC meeting and was the prime mover of the 1325 resolution, has since helped bring to global attention “the unrecognised, under-utilised and under-valued contribution women have been making to preventing war, to building peace and to engaging individuals and societies live in harmony”.

But he has continued to warn that the historic and operational value of the resolution has been undercut by the disappointing record of its implementation.

Cabrera-Balleza told IPS the progress in 1325 implementation has been slow and inconsistent.

For example, 12 years on, there are only 38 National Action Plans on 1325, a mere 19 percent of the 193 U.N. member states.

At this rate, she said, “it would take more than 50 years before we would see at least 50 percent of the member states demonstrating political will and putting in place a systematic translation of 1325 and its supporting resolutions into executable, measurable and accountable actions.”

“And why are governments not using the indicators developed under Resolution 1889 (adopted in October 2009 which included follow up indicators to Resolution 1325)?” she asked.

“The indicators are not meant to be used to point fingers at who is doing or not doing their work. They are guideposts that will help improve implementation,” she noted.

Weiss told IPS right now there are at least two opportunities for peace: Colombia and Mali.

The Colombian FARC talks in Havana should have women at the table as an independent voice, not associated with the “sides”.

“There are many networks of women in Colombia, they have brilliant, experienced people who have been witness to and victims of the 50-plus year war,” she said.

She also said they support the peace process and have reasonable demands, such as no impunity for perpetrators of sexual violence.

Meanwhile, she said, the tragedy in Mali will see a six to 12 month process for rebuilding its military, and a parallel peace process.

“Where are the women in that process? We are told the ‘political forces’ will be at the table,” she said.

And one of the five permanent members of the UNSC (whose identity Weiss did not reveal) has said they cannot dictate to a sovereign state what to do.

“How will states ever carry out the decisions of the UNSC if they are not reminded of their obligations under the Charter?” she asked.

Women were told they could not come to the Irish Peace table because it was only set for political parties.

So they went and formed a political party and the two women at the table made history and institutionalised human rights into the Good Friday Agreement, said Weiss.

“What happens in Colombia and Mali will influence future peace processes. They can be role models,” she said.

“We hope that women’s equal participation in decision making, adherence to human rights and peace education will be among the measures taken to create a lasting peace in all future peace agreements.”

IPS spoke to people Sunday in Bogotá’s Bolívar square about the peace talks that began Monday in Havana. Credit: Helda Martínez/IPS

By Helda Martínez
BOGOTA, Nov 19 2012 (IPS)

Scepticism, fear of expressing an opinion and a dash of hope make up the cocktail of responses from Colombians asked about the possibility of the decades-old civil war finally coming to an end as a result of the peace talks between the government and the FARC guerrillas, which began Monday in Havana.

“I really hope so,” María Jaramillo, a 40-years-old accountant, told IPS. “God willing. But I think it’ll be difficult, because nothing is easy with the guerrillas. Of course if peace is achieved it would be an enormous accomplishment, because many peasants would return to their land, all the bombing would stop, and the country would grow.”

Some of the other people interviewed by IPS in Bogotá’s central Bolívar square were more sceptical. Political science student Elizabeth Núñez said she did not believe the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) were really seeking peace, “although nothing is impossible.”

“So far, to judge by what the guerrillas are saying, it’s the same as ever. As if they had no intention of respecting the results of the dialogue,” Núñez told IPS, before the FARC negotiators announced a unilateral ceasefire on Monday in Cuba.

The actual start of talks in Havana is the culmination of six months of secret preliminary contacts between the government of conservative Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and leaders of the FARC, the left-wing rebel group created in 1964 in the central province of Caldas by peasant farmers in response to injustice on the part of the government and the courts.

Santos announced in August that peace talks would be launched as a result of the preliminary negotiations held with the support of the governments of Cuba and Norway, which are now guarantors of the talks, and of Venezuela and Chile, as observers.

The “general agreement for the end of the conflict and the construction of a stable, lasting peace” that emerged from the preliminary talks basically proposes that the FARC will abandon armed struggle if the government agrees, among other things, to bring to a halt major mining and infrastructure projects in rural areas, and to carry out an ambitious comprehensive agrarian development plan.

The peace talks formally began in October in Oslo, with an agenda that encompasses land reform, including alternatives for illegal drugs; the future legal political participation of the guerrillas; an end to the armed conflict; and assistance for victims.

However, the content of each point on the agenda has not been clearly worked out, and radical differences have emerged. For example, the land restitution programme, the Santos administration’s flagship strategy, which the president sees as a major stride forward in the area of land reform, is criticised by the guerrillas as a measure that will actually benefit the business elites and foreign corporations.

Many Colombians, meanwhile, prefer to keep silent in this polarised nation.

When IPS approached a random selection of people in the square, which is surrounded by the cathedral, parliament, the Supreme Court, and city hall, nearly a dozen declined to talk, saying they didn’t have time, even though it was Sunday.

But many others did respond. “Peace! We have been needing a peace process for the past 20 years. The deaths of so many soldiers, guerrillas and civilians would have been avoided. That’s why I hope there will be no interferences in this process,” responded Arturo, 50, who said he was a secondary school teacher.

“But we also know about the economic interests behind the war,” he added. “Peace would take resources away from the army, and would end the business of the others (the insurgents), which is also lucrative. I think the conflict will still stretch on for a number of years.”

“One factor is the polarisation that was aggravated by (right-wing) president (Álvaro) Uribe in his two consecutive terms (2002-2010), by fanning radical hatred,” university professor Armando Ramírez, an expert on public opinion, told IPS.

“To this is added the generalised lack of understanding, all the way from primary school up to university, of the real significance of democracy, public opinion or civil society…and the media efficiently contribute to the disorientation by favouring the establishment’s arguments,” said Ramírez.

“On radio and television, most political programmes address this issue like show business: there are anecdotes, curious aspects, and short reports devoid of context, while serious newspaper stories and columns target experts or academics, not ordinary people,” he said.

Andrés Felipe Ortiz, a member of the non-governmental Observatorio de Medios en Derechos Humanos, Medios al Derecho, agreed with Ramírez. “People depend on information to have an opinion, but the press is not clear, and polarisation is exacerbated, so people conclude that the (peace) process won’t go anywhere,” he told IPS.

“Santos called for prudence, and that’s valid, but it’s not the same as concealing things,” he said. “It’s clear that the media do not help people understand things that are of mass interest. Nor is there any sort of teaching on human rights or international humanitarian law. Journalists document things, they don’t explain.”

In Bolívar square, there were also people who believe the peace talks should be joined by the demobilised United Self-Defence Units of Colombia (AUC), the far-right paramilitary militias created by large landowners in the 1980s, allegedly to fight the guerrillas, and who took part in a demobilisation process under the Uribe administration.

“It’s obvious that we should give ourselves a chance at peace,” Carlos Blanco, a lawyer who said he was an adviser to “an organisation that defends the demobilised” paramilitaries, told IPS. “But it’s also obvious that in this process, the AUC should be represented, because their demobilisation was autonomous and voluntary.”

The AUC “were created as a political platform that collapsed, because the initial rules of the game were modified and the chiefs were extradited,” he said, referring to the paramilitary leaders who were extradited to the United States on drug charges, such as Salvatore Mancuso, who is serving time in a U.S. prison and has asked to take part in the current peace talks.

“We will achieve peace when the different sides give in and the victims and victimisers sit down across from each other and forgive each other,” said Ismael Rodríguez, a 31-year-old airline employee.

Protests held in Bogotá by groups that suffer the consequences of the war and do not feel represented in the peace talks. Credit: Constanza Vieira/IPS

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Oct 17 2012 (IPS)

Closed-door talks between members of the FARC guerrillas and the Colombian government began in Oslo Wednesday, after the delegates were taken from the airport to an undisclosed location.

The negotiators plan to speak to the press in the Norwegian capital on Thursday. The two delegations travelled to Norway separately on Tuesday afternoon.

The government and the communist FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) rebels, which have been fighting since 1964 and control a large part of rural Colombia, each named five chief negotiators, five alternates, and 20 other delegates as advisors.

The number of delegates formed part of the agreement reached after a year and a half of exploratory talks held in near total secrecy, with Norway and Cuba as guarantors and Venezuela and Chile as observers.

The government delegation is headed by former vice president Humberto de la Calle, and includes other key negotiators chosen by conservative President Juan Manuel Santos, such as representatives of industry and senior military officers.

A source close to the FARC told IPS that in Wednesday’s meeting, the insurgent group’s delegation would draw attention to an “empty chair.”

While there are five government delegates, there are only four sitting on the FARC’s side of the negotiating table.

The empty chair belongs to Simón Trinidad, nom de guerre of former banker Ricardo Palmera, who was extradited to the United States in 2004 by then president Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010). Trinidad is serving a 60-year sentence in a Colorado maximum security prison for the FARC kidnapping of three U.S. military contractors in 2003, who were held as hostages by the rebel group until 2008.

By naming Trinidad as one of their principal negotiators, the FARC is apparently indicating that his extradition marked the start of the undermining of Colombia’s autonomy in solving its internal armed conflict.

The group also appears to be pointing out that the peace talks require definitions of the U.S. role in the counterinsurgency war in Colombia, where it is the main source of military funds and the principal military strategist.

On Sept. 7, Colombia’s RCN radio station read out a letter from Trinidad in which he told President Santos: “My attendance as a peace delegate is feasible…All it would take is a simple political and diplomatic request on your part to the government of the United States; you know that very well.”

Colombia’s Justice Minister Ruth Stella Correa and the attorney general, Eduardo Montealegre, expressed more modest expectations, saying Trinidad could participate by means of a teleconference, if the U.S. authorities gave their permission.

There has been no public reaction on the question by the government of Barack Obama.

On Tuesday, INTERPOL’s (international police) wanted list still included the names of two other FARC negotiators facing U.S. arrest warrants in connection with the kidnapping of the three military contractors: Andrés París (Emilio Carvajalino), one of the FARC’s chief negotiators, and Tanja Nijmeijer, a Dutch-born rebel who forms part of the team of advisers.

But Interpol confirmed Tuesday that it had suspended the international arrest warrants for the negotiators named by the FARC, as requested by the Colombian government. Colombian arrest warrants for the guerrilla negotiators were also suspended.

The empty chair has been a symbol in peace talks between the government and the FARC since January 1999.

At that time, the then FARC commander Manuel Marulanda left his seat empty next to then president Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002) when formal negotiations began in San Vicente del Caguán in southern Colombia.

On that occasion, Marulanda – described to IPS by someone in the know as “a tremendously wary peasant and a born military strategist” – contended that the FARC had uncovered a plan to assassinate him during the ceremony.

According to another source in Bogota, the second issues that the FARC will bring up in Oslo is the need for a comprehensive peace process, that would also include the National Liberation Army (ELN) in parallel talks.

The ELN, which also emerged in 1964, inspired by the Cuban revolution, is smaller than the FARC but has an influence over many communities.

In 2009, the FARC and the ELN put an end to a war between regional structures of the two guerrilla armies, which had led to the deaths of insurgents as well as civilians and had driven a wave of refugees across the border into Venezuela.

The agreement between the two rebel groups included a commitment not to negotiate for peace without the other insurgent organisation.

A communiqué issued by the leaders of the FARC and the ELN, with a September dateline, reported that a summit of guerrilla leaders had stressed the two group’s staunch determination to seek a peace agreement, and the aim to make their “ideas and actions converge.” However, they did not specifically state an interest in talks between the ELN and the government.

The same source close to the FARC told IPS that eventual negotiations with the ELN would be independent, until the two processes merged into one towards the end of the talks, when the question of victims would be addressed.

The source also confirmed that there have been contacts between the ELN and the government.

At the meeting between leaders of the two insurgent groups, they decided to mutually back the negotiating agendas of the respective peace processes.

The agenda for talks with the FARC contains five main points: land, political participation, an end to hostilities with the surrender of weapons, drug trafficking and victims.

The ELN agenda refers to power relations, territory and population, as well as natural resources and sovereignty.

The need for peace talks with the ELN is also underscored by new civil society networks and coordinating mechanisms that are emerging with the objective of influencing the peace talks with the FARC and the changes that lie ahead if a peace accord is reached.

More than 200 of Sudan’s journalists are now unemployed after the government forced the closure of a number of newspapers in the country amid increasing press censorship. Credit: Zeinab Mohammed Salih/IPS

By Zeinab Mohammed Salih
KHARTOUM, Sep 15 2012 (IPS)

In Sudan’s newspaper district in Khartoum East, dozens of people sit beneath the trees sipping tea or reading newspapers. Most are journalists who once worked for the 10 newspapers that were either forced closed by the country’s security services or because of economic constraints that resulted after the government raised printing taxes in an attempt to prevent the media from reporting on anti-government demonstrations. 

Mohamed Ahmed, a former journalist for the Ajrass Elhuriya newspaper, which was closed in July 2011, is one of them.

“I have been sitting under the trees for a year and a half because the government closed my newspaper and other newspapers, that consider me to be opposed to the government, are afraid to hire me.”

The Sudanese Network of Journalists, a union for reporters, estimates that about 200 journalists are currently unemployed by the closures, which, it says, is the highest unemployment rate the profession has seen. The crackdown against the press began more than a year ago, soon after Sudan and South Sudan separated in July 2011.

More than 10 journalists were reportedly arrested and tortured by the police before and during nationwide anti-government demonstrations in June after the implementation of a government austerity plan that scrapped fuel and commodity subsidies.

In addition, security services have been accused of preventing 15 reporters from publishing stories on the demonstrations.

On Sep. 9, the general court in Khartoum north upheld the closure of a local newspaper, the Rai Elshab, and fined it for breaching the “duties of the press” and for “starting sectarian strife” after it published a story about rebel forces fighting the government in the country’s volatile western region of Dafur.

The war between the rebel forces in Dafur and the Sudanese government has raged since 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Army and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) began attacking government, accusing it of oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs. Since 2010, the warring factions have been in peace talks. However, fighting has continued in the region, with the most recent incident occurring on Sep. 6, which resulted in the death of 10 government soldiers.

The country’s National Intelligence Security Services (NISS) had closed the Rai Elshab newspaper in January, and owners had gone to court in an attempt to have the publication reopened. However, the judge ruled that the paper would not be allowed to publish again without NISS approval.

Ashraf Abdul-Aziz, the head of the political department at Rai Elshab, told IPS: “The NISS complained against us in a court and closed our newspaper because we published a story about JEM, which has been fighting against the government in Darfur. That the NISS has the right to allow us to publish or not is a very strange situation.”

The Sudanese Network of Journalists told IPS that in the coming weeks the organisation would lay a complaint against the Sudanese government with the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. According to one of the organisation’s leaders, Khalid Ahmed, the complaint will be made once all national and regional mechanisms to put pressure on the government for a free and fair media had been completed.

In July reporters protested against the censorship at Sudan’s Human Rights Commission to no avail.

Khalid Ahmed said that the network’s last memorandum to the Human Rights Commission in Sudan had been submitted on Jul. 4 and called for the cessation of censorship and the release of journalists in police custody.

“They didn’t reply to our memorandum as we’d expected, but we will continue on our mission to complain to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva to set the media here free,” he said.

Faisal Mahmed Salih, the former chief editor of the now-closed Eladwaa newspaper, and the head of Teebba Press Center, told IPS that the censorship had negatively affected the media’s role in disseminating information.

“Due to censorship, readers don’t buy newspapers because all of them are the same. People only buy one newspaper or two now.”

Political analyst Hafiz Mohamed told IPS that the crackdown against the press would have a negative effect upon democracy and any possible political reform.

“Freedom of expression is a basic part of the democratic process, included with other freedoms such as freedom of assembly and association. If the government forbids journalists and the media from doing their jobs, there will be no democracy in Sudan,” he said.

He added that the government’s current censorship “shows that the government is afraid of the freedoms of the press.”

However, Rabei Abdallatee, consultant to the Information and Communication Minster, told IPS that censorship had been imposed on the media because there were “public and special circumstances in the country.”

He said that the censorship would only end if the circumstances changed. “Our country has special circumstances, because we are in a war with rebel groups and the media has to be careful,” Abdallatee said.

He said that the newspapers closed by the NISS, which are yet to be charged, “published negative articles, and threatened our national security” and were being investigated.

Osman Shinger, the chief editor of Eljareeda newspaper, told IPS that his publication had been to court 15 times during the last two months because of an arrest warrant against him. Shinger was charged after the publication of an opinion article criticising the governor of Sudan’s Al Jazirah state.

“I think that all the Sudanese problems are relevant to freedom of expression and access to information,” Shinger said.

“We tried to talk to the Centre of Media and Information, but it is seen as an NGO that favours the government. They didn’t reply to our phone calls and they didn’t allow to us to enter their building.”

Meanwhile, some journalists who were arrested and subsequently released now face ostracism from other publications practising self-censorship.

Mohamed Alasbst, the former managing editor of the Al-Ahram daily newspaper, spent two months in prison because he aided the now-deported Egyptian journalist, Shymaa Adil, who was covering Sudan’s nationwide protests for the Egyptian Elwatin newspaper. She spent two weeks in prison. He told IPS that because of his stint in prison, newspapers will not hire him for fear of being targeted by the government.

Alasbst added that his own newspaper fired him after he was released from prison.

“They expelled me from my job and the other newspapers also don’t want me to work with them, because I was in prison and they are afraid for the government. They fear if they hired someone like me who is considered to oppose the government, the government might fight them or close them down.”

The difficult situation has resulted in some choosing to quit the profession altogether.

Mohamed Ahmed told IPS that he has decided to leave Sudan to find work in one of the Gulf states.

“I was just a professional in my career and the government didn’t accept the professionalism, they want all the journalists to be in with the government or not to be journalists at all.”

Peasant delegates at the Marcha Patriótica peace movement’s first public appearance, on Jul. 20, 2010 in the town of La Macarena, in the FARC’s zone of influence. Credit: Constanza Vieira/IPS

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Sep 13 2012 (IPS)

What are the obstacles to peace in war-torn Colombia? When government and rebel negotiators asked themselves this question, they concluded that one problem was that the media in this country had turned “peace” itself into a dirty word.

But Enrique Santos – the former owner of the leading daily newspaper, El Tiempo, older brother of President Juan Manuel Santos, and a key participant in the preliminary talks with the rebels – reportedly quipped: “That can be fixed in two weeks.”

IPS was told about the comment by a source close to the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Enrique Santos reportedly made his remark during the exploratory talks that began a year and a half ago and led to the president’s Aug. 27 announcement that formal peace talks would start in October.

“That assertion, if he really made it, is also a confession about how news is handled in a manipulative fashion,” journalist Arturo Guerrero told IPS.

Changing the mentality of the media “isn’t an easy task,” because “constant genuflexion before those in power is a characteristic of our press,” said Javier Darío Restrepo, a veteran reporter who heads the ethics department of the New Ibero-American Journalism Foundation (FNPI), founded by Colombian Nobel Literature Prize-winner Gabriel García Márquez.

Under the government of right-wing President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), the media were “totally obsequious,” he told IPS. “No one could raise any doubts about him being the Messiah, the man who was going to change the country.”

During the Uribe administration, the media, basing their reports almost exclusively on military sources, celebrated bombings of guerrilla camps and rebel casualties. And anyone who dared talk about peace risked ridicule and accusations of complicity with the FARC, the main rebel group, in arms since 1964.

By means of a constitutional reform, Uribe managed to be re-elected to a second term, although his bid for a third term was cut short by the Constitutional Court. “Little by little, the press left him behind, and now they criticise him more and more openly. Why? Because the ones in power have changed, now it’s Juan Manuel (Santos),” Restrepo said.

Since Aug. 27, headlines trumpeting the benefits of peace mushroomed overnight. All of a sudden peace has become more profitable than war, and studies have been published to demonstrate this.

“Santos is realistic” a guerrilla leader and negotiator who until recently was dubbed a “narco-terrorist” blares out from the front page of one newspaper. “Peace comes first” states the president of the Supreme Court, Javier Zapata Ortiz, on another. “The Pope encourages the peace process with the FARC” says a front-page headline the next day.

Restrepo said “there is a kind of worship of those in power. That is one of the most worrisome aspects of our press, because it keeps it from being effective in its analyses and in denouncing abuses of power.”

In 1999, a United Nations general assembly resolution, the “Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace”, defined a “culture of peace” as “a set of values, attitudes, traditions, modes of behaviour, and ways of life…”

And article 7 of the Declaration states that “The educative and informative role of the media contributes to the promotion of a culture of peace.”

For that reason, upbeat headlines aren’t enough.

In order to usher in a culture of peace based on respect for life in Colombia, it is necessary “to work to change the mentality of journalists,” Restrepo said.

“Change has to do with training, and with incentives” such as prizes and praise, because “journalists love it when their work stands out,” added Restrepo, who said he imagines a kind of “ongoing campaign that would help the public learn how to distinguish what is going well and what has to improve.

“But above all, change has to do with journalists learning how to look at their own work with a critical eye,” he added.

Restrepo said it was “very difficult” to say when “the hatred propagated over the past decade will be appeased, because it will entail a change of attitude, which will require a long-term effort, in which the press has to be very involved.”

But it’s not a question of no longer reporting on “the barbarities being committed by the guerrillas, because this isn’t about achieving peace with our eyes closed,” he stressed.

What is needed, he clarified, is context; showing “how different countries that have experienced similar situations have resolved their problems, paying the price that is paid for peace.”

In his view, this “contextualisation” is not seen in certain newspapers, “because they are giving in to the primal instinct of ‘they are cheats, and how can we make peace with cheats?’ Well, it isn’t with friends that you make peace,” he said.

A country that is caught up in war for decades is repeating mistakes over and over again, he said. And the mistake made by the press is, “precisely, insisting on stirring up toxic memories, that poison people’s minds,” Restrepo said.

“It is the duty of journalists not to spread the poison,” but to report on these issues in such a way that “feelings turn into logic,” he argued.

Reality “is made up of many elements that, understood by readers, help them react intelligently instead of with knee-jerk reactions based purely on feelings,” he said.

The outlook has changed since late August.

The revelation that the government was holding exploratory talks with the FARC and that formal peace negotiations would begin in October in Oslo and would then continue in Havana took the media and pundits by surprise.

But for the past year, Congress has been debating legal reforms that now make sense in light of the announcement. The reforms would pardon war crimes committed by all of the parties involved in the decades-long armed conflict.

The projected reforms included the expansion of the jurisdiction of military tribunals; the creation of a legal framework for peace talks, that would benefit politicians and businesspersons with ties to the far-right paramilitaries; and an attempt at judicial reforms, already blocked by a civil society campaign waged by journalists and ordinary citizens over the Twitter social network.

Guerrero, a columnist with the El Colombiano newspaper who has helped raise awareness among journalists about the need for responsible coverage of the conflict, does not believe that public opinion “in today’s world of Internet” is as easily manipulated as Enrique Santos’s alleged remark would indicate.

“The absolute reign of the traditional media has noisily collapsed, because the social networks, blogs and the Internet in general have become a sixth continent, where these media no longer have an influence,” he said.

“That sixth continent is overwhelming…and many people are turning to it as a source of news,” he said. Meanwhile, “the large mass of people who do not follow the news and only find out what is going on every once in a while…are more susceptible to manipulation,” he added.

One decisive aspect is that “functional illiteracy is still high in the country, especially in rural areas,” Guerrero added. And that segment of the population also has “a quite rudimentary understanding of politics.”

In large cities, on the other hand, “what predominates is the conscious vote, and those sectors that have access to the Internet, that are the most educated, play a part in marking the horizon towards which the country is marching,” he said.

From left to right: FARC members Andrés París, Mauricio Jaramillo, Ricardo Téllez, Sandra Ramírez and Hermes Aguilar at Tuesday’s press conference in Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Constanza Vieira and Patricia Grogg
HAVANA/BOGOTA , Sep 5 2012 (IPS)

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are taking a pragmatic, reformist stance in the new attempt to negotiate a peace agreement with the Colombian government, to put an end to nearly half a century of civil war.

The priorities on the rebel group’s agenda include putting a curb on large-scale mining projects and infrastructure works like hydropower dams in rural areas, and measures for rural development.

In exchange, the FARC would lay down its arms.

On Tuesday, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, speaking from the presidential palace in Bogota, and FARC chief Timoleón Jiménez, in a video broadcast from Havana one hour later, formally announced that peace talks would start in October.

In Havana, the words of the rebel commander were listened to attentively by FARC members Marco León Calarcá, Andrés París, Mauricio Jaramillo, Ricardo Téllez, Sandra Ramírez and Hermes Aguilar, in the news briefing for Cuban reporters and foreign correspondents, where questions were not allowed.

The talks will begin in Oslo in the first half of October, before moving to Havana.

According to Tuesday’s announcement, the first item on the agenda is agricultural reform.

The terms of the agreement were distributed to the press after Jiménez’s videotaped speech, in which he said the Colombian government had repeatedly stated that there would be no ceasefire.

The rebel leader said the government, “in its strange point of view, sees any possibility of a ceasefire, truce, armistice or demilitarisation as only contributing to generating perverse incentives.”

He also said the guerrillas “have come to this new attempt at reconciliation besieged not only by the brunt of the military offensive unleashed a decade ago, but openly compelled, by its growth, to reduce our political and social aspirations in exchange for a miserable surrender,” he added.

Nevertheless, he said, “we hold the hope that the regime won’t try to repeat the same script of the past.”

This is the third attempt at peace talks between Colombian governments and the FARC, an insurgent force that has an army-like structure.

The negotiations that made the most progress took place from 1984 to 1990. They were launched by the government of Belisario Betancur (1982-1986) and were brought to a violent end by President César Gaviria (1990-1994) in December 1990.

That round of talks gave rise to the Patriotic Union (UP), a left-wing party created as part of an agreement for the demobilisation and gradual reinsertion of the rebels in political life.

But the UP was systematically eliminated, with thousands of its members and supporters murdered.

The next peace process was initiated and ended by President Andrés Pastrana
(1998-2002). The talks were held in Caguán, a Switzerland-sized area in the south of the country from which military troops were temporarily withdrawn for the purpose.

After the talks collapsed, the United States got more heavily involved in Colombia’s counterinsurgency war.

The FARC maintain that peace is impossible without reforms, and that the reforms will emerge from the negotiations.

The insurgent group’s delegates to the talks “obey the decisions that are reached democratically in the secretariat” of the FARC’s central high command, a senior FARC commander stated in a private letter to which IPS had access on Monday Sept. 3.

The message adds that the rebel group will take part in the negotiations – which the participating parties say will continue uninterrupted until a peace deal is reached – as if they were “the most important of fights.”

The guerrilla leader also states that “on this side, everyone is ready” to engage in negotiations.

The National Liberation Army (ELN), a smaller rebel group, which like the FARC took up arms in 1964, has also said it is willing to sit down at the negotiating table.

The ELN has been seeking peace talks for years, but has failed to reach an understanding with any Colombian administration.

The letter seen by IPS says that at the root of the failure to reach an agreement to hold negotiations, as shown by previous exploratory talks, is the fact that the FARC considers that “peace will arrive together with changes, or it won’t arrive…it isn’t simply” a matter of laying down arms, synonymous with demobilisation.

On the contrary, for the elites, peace is synonymous with demobilisation, adds the source, a commander of FARC troops in a large region of Colombia, whose identity will be kept confidential.

The other side is lacking in “magnanimity,” he said. “When it comes right down to it, they won’t budge,” said the rebel leader, referring to the collapse of talks in Caguán.

The letter says the guerrillas will complain to Santos because he maintained the pro-mining policy of his predecessor, Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010). The rebel commander says drug trafficking money and the personal interests of the far-right ex-president – who is fervently opposed to the peace talks – come together in the mining industry.

At the negotiating table, the FARC will bring up the local conflicts generated by major infrastructure works, which are generally preceded by bloody operations of forced displacement of the local population, and which are opposed by the communities in the affected territories, the letter adds.

According to the agreement reached after exploratory talks held in Cuba from Feb. 23 to Aug. 26, the official negotiations will open in Oslo, but will be based in Havana, while meetings may also take place in other countries.

Previously, the two sides had held preliminary talks for a year and a half – a period during which top FARC commander Alfonso Cano was killed in combat, in November 2011.

Cano had been the chief FARC negotiator in the 1980s peace process that gave rise to the UP.

“We are looking at a real possibility” of an end to the conflict, although the road will be “difficult,” President Santos said.

Colombia and the world “have changed,” but this is also “a different accord,” Santos added.

Colombia is now the second-largest economy of South America, “millions of Colombians are leaving poverty behind,” and “the use of violence to achieve political objectives is a thing of the past,” and is not tolerated by any government in the region, he said.

The governments of Cuba and Venezuela, which publicly reject armed struggle, have played a key role in the preliminary talks.

Santos also said that “we can talk about peace thanks to the success of our armed forces and police.”

He stressed that military operations will not be suspended during the talks – an aspect that independent experts and the FARC see as the Achilles’ heel of the current peace effort.

“This is an agreement to end the conflict,” he insisted, although he warned that the success of the talks “must not be taken for granted.”

The talks “will be measured in months, not years,” Santos added, and the progress made will periodically be assessed. And if there is no progress, “we will not continue,” he stated.

A refugee camp in Mae Sot, a town on the Thai-Burma border where peace talks are being held. Credit: Mikhail Esteves/CC-BY-2.0

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
MAE SOT, Thailand, Aug 3 2012 (IPS)

In a country where talk of a ceasefire brings representatives from 11 different armed ethnic groups to the table, Myanmar’s chief peace negotiator, Railway Minister Aung Min, is experimenting with an unusual solution to decades of separatist struggles.

Since launching his ceasefire initiative in September last year, the minister has traveled around Myanmar (also known as Burma) and neighbouring countries without so much as a nod to the possible role of foreign observers or international peace facilitators.

“It is unlikely that the government wants third parties at this stage of ceasefire talks and we are okay with this arrangement for now,” Zipporah Sein, the 57-year-old general secretary and first female leader of the separatist Karen National Union (KNU), told IPS during an interview in the group’s office on the edge of town.

“This is part of the trust-building stage that will lead to political and peace talks.”

A formal round of talks that was held in Myanmar last April only allowed three foreigners, including a British and United States diplomat, to witness the negotiations as observers, Sein revealed.

Mae Sot, a town along the Thai-Myanmar border that Aung Min has visited three times in the past year, is a microcosm of the specific challenges of peace negotiations in Myanmar between not just two but multiple ethnic groups, each with their own specific concerns.

For the past two decades this town has been home to the country’s majority Burman community as well as a haven for refugees, mostly from the Karen State, fleeing ethnic violence and persecution.

The ‘Myanmar style’ of peacemaking – one that rejects foreign intervention – is a departure from the customary path similar talks have followed in other Asian countries, where foreign governments or international organisations were recognised as neutral third-parties, tasked with liaising between governments and armed combatants who have been locked in decades-long conflicts.

For instance, Malaysia is currently serving as a facilitator in ongoing peace talks between the Philippines government and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Negotiators led by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari helped establish the August 2005 peace agreement between the Indonesian government and the separatist Islamic Free Aceh Movement. And Norway enjoyed a prominent role as the official go-between during the failed peace talks between the Sri Lankan government and the now-defeated Tamil Tiger rebels over a decade ago.

But Aung Min’s challenge is undoubtedly more complex than most other conflicts, and his divergent approach appears to be reaping some rewards.

Between September 2011 and April 2012, his talks have secured ceasefire agreements with 11 armed ethnic groups. Among these accomplishments was the January breakthrough with the KNU, which has been involved in Asia’s longest-running separatist struggle, spanning 60 years.

Still, Sein did not rule out a shift to accommodate an official, independent peace facilitator as the current talks move towards thornier issues, such as the future of the armed Karen forces and greater autonomy in the Karen State.

“We may need a neutral third party when it comes to discussing the political and development issues in the Karen State,” Sein told IPS. “We are for a federal system with greater rights for ethnic groups, so they can live and participate in a meaningful way.”

Win Min, a Myanmar national security expert, does not believe Aung Min’s is a strategy ironed out by insiders from President Thein Sein’s reformist administration, such as the former major general who specialised as an intelligence operative; rather, he is of the opinion that the new approach stems from Aung Min’s relative inexperience and the fact that he was thrust into a role for which he had no training.

As a result, the latter is operating through a model that reflects “a hint of Burmese pride,” Win Min told IPS.

“Aung Min was stepping into uncharted waters when he was given the role of peace negotiator,” he said. “He had to find his way with each of the ceasefire talks. It was unscripted, with no foreign third party to give directions.”

And the further he went down this road “the more confidence he gained”, according to Win Min. “His modest and friendly personality, and a willingness to listen and accommodate different views, also (lubricated) the process.”

Win Min pointed to a streak of honour that still prevails in the Southeast Asian nation gradually emerging from 50 years of military dictatorships.

“Burmese have that sense of pride that we do not want to be subject to international pressure; to say we can do things ourselves,” said the Harvard-trained academic.

Myanmar Egress, a prominent local NGO, bolstered this attitude when it stepped in to help establish contact between the government and its adversaries from the ethnic minorities.

The move also enabled the Thein Sein administration to turn down offers made by many respected international personalities and organisations to shoulder the role of neutral peace facilitators, including former Finnish President Ahtisaari and The Elders, an independent group of global leaders led by South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

This streak of national pride does not, however, extend to the economic realm. Myanmar has accepted economic support to strengthen its fledgling peace process from the Peace Donor Support Group (PDSG), led by Norway and supported by Australia, the European Union, Britain and the World Bank, all of which have pledged to pour millions of dollars into relief and rehabilitation work in areas where the guns have fallen silent following the ceasefire talks.

That the ceasefire agreements have held so far reflects a shift in thinking from previous regimes’ attempts to end conflicts with ethnic separatists.

“The position the government is taking in relation to the ethnic groups is one of equality,” Paul Keenan, research coordinator at the Burma Centre for Ethnic Studies, based in the northern Thai town of Chiang Mai, told IPS.

“Previously, the government dictated terms to the armed groups and they had to give up their weapons before talks, because security was the priority, not peace and equality,” he added. “But the atmosphere is completely different now. And Aung Min wants to talk to everyone, which is new.”

(END)