I
should like to depart slightly from protocol and start
my statement by speaking about a humble woman, a
Colombian named María Zabala, who has to bear the
burden of immense pain in her heart day in and day
out. Two decades ago, armed members of illegal groups
arrived outside her house located on the Colombian
Caribbean coast, determined to impose their rule
of terror. In front of her and her small children, they
murdered her husband and two other relatives. They
forced her to leave her house and then they burned
everything down. She barely managed to remove the
corpses from the ashes. She buried them right there
and fled from her parcel of land with her children
and without any belongings. All she carried was the
immense weight of her tragedy.
Today, María Zabala is a courageous and inspiring
leader, a leader of victims, who is working for peace
in my country. In Colombia, sadly, there are many
thousands of cases like María Zabala’s. It is estimated
that over the past 50 years, over 220,000 people died
because of the conflict. That is more than twice the
death toll of the Bosnian war in the former Yugoslavia,
which was an open and ruthless conflict that moved the
entire world. And to that, we would have to add the
injured, the people mutilated by anti-personnel mines,
those who have suffered the infamy of kidnapping and
those uprooted from their own land, who could amount
to almost 5 million people.
That is the harsh and ugly reality of a conflict that
unfortunately persists to this day. It is the oldest and
the last conflict in the western hemisphere. In spite
of the conflict, Colombia has achieved unprecedented
progress in recent years on matters of security, in
the fight against poverty and inequality, and in its
economic performance. We have achieved much — a
great deal — in the midst of a confrontation. Imagine
how much more we could have done without the
confrontation. And I must confess to the Assembly that
for me, as the head of the Government, it would have
been easy to continue to move forward on the path that
we were on and to leave the conflict unresolved, because
waging war — and I know how to wage war — is easier
than seeking peace.
It would have been easier, but not responsible,
because continuing to coexist with the conflict would be
like sentencing millions of people to many more years
of violence, fear, poverty and victimization. It would
not be responsible towards Latin America or towards
the world, as they also suffer, in different ways, from
the effects of the Colombian conflict. And it would not
be responsible towards my own conscience, because we
have the best possible opportunity before us today — a
real opportunity, and maybe the last — to put an end
to the conflict. I could not die in peace if I failed to do
everything within my power to seize the opportunity
presented.
My generation has not seen a single day of peace,
and my dream is for my children and the children of all
Colombians to have the opportunity to know peace. I
hope that the guerrilla forces understand that the time
has come to leave this 50-year confrontation behind;
that the time has come to move from bullets to votes,
from weapons to discussion; that the time has come for
them to continue their struggle, but within democracy.
Today, before the General Assembly, we Colombians
want to thank the international community for the
support we have received in the endeavour to bring an
end to our conflict through dialogue. With the world
as our witness, we wish to assert our right to achieve
the peace. We are tired of being afraid, we are tired of
violence, we are tired of a conflict that pits the children
of the same nation against each other and delays our
development. María Zabala is one victim among many,
all of whom are entitled to justice, truth and reparations
and to not seeing history repeat itself. That is what we
are working on in our country.
My Government has promoted our most ambitious
bill yet, recognizing and compensating victims in the
midst of a conflict. I had the honour of ratifying that bill
in the presence of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. But
our commitment goes beyond serving the victims of the
past; our most urgent obligation today is to eliminate
the possibility of new victims being claimed by the
conflict. Our obligation is to end the conflict now and
to ensure that the spiral of violence and pain will not
continue to recur. We are doing that in accordance with
our democratic tradition — of course respecting, as we
always have, the rule of law — and in compliance with
our international obligations. We wish to achieve an
end to our conflict without relinquishing justice, much
less the truth and due care of the victims.
I take this opportunity to offer my thoughts to the
General Assembly on the role of the United Nations and
the multilateral organizations in our peace process and
its future implementation. The subject is relevant and
current, since Colombia is possibly the first country in
the world to engage in a process of that nature since
the entry into force of the Rome Statute, which will
make us a model for other cases where dialogue is given
priority over armed solutions, as should be the case.
Former United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights Louise Arbour of Canada recently stated
that international doctrine had not been successful
in finding practical answers as to how to resolve the
real tension that exists between peace and justice in
a negotiation process. Ms. Arbour recalled examples,
such as International Criminal Tribunals for the
Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which had been given
immense resources but had yielded very poor results.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda,
established in 1994, has managed to dispose of only
40 cases out of the nearly 800,000 murders committed
in a single year. In 20 years, the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has resolved barely
100 cases.
Therefore, how can we simultaneously achieve
the end of armed conflict, fulfil our obligation to
investigate and prosecute and realize the rights of
victims? That dilemma must be confronted with
honesty and seriousness, and that is what we are doing
in Colombia.
We have adopted an integrated strategy for
transitional justice that addresses the issues of truth,
justice and reparations, which we hope will enable
us to make the transition towards peace. We can say
that we have been pioneers in the implementation of
transitional justice measures in the midst of conflict,
giving priority to satisfying the rights of victims. No
one in my country wants the perpetuation of violence.
What we are asking from the United Nations and
the international community is that both Colombia’s and
every nation’s right to seek peace be respected We ask
for continued support in that effort, along with respect
for our decisions and our approach, with confidence in
the fact that our actions have never deviated from the
values of the international community.
We cannot investigate every action committed over
half a century of violence, prosecute each and every one
of those responsible and then find ourselves unable to
follow through. But what we can do is to build a realistic
and transparent strategy that may satisfy the rights of
all the victims in the best possible way. If we understand
justice and the fight against impunity in a transition as
a set of measures aimed at satisfying the victims and
not just as the administration of criminal processes,
it will be possible to find a comprehensive solution
for everyone. I refer to measures such as genuinely
establishing the facts of events, the acknowledgment
of responsibility, the recovery of trust, access to
reparations, and measures aimed at ensuring that there
will be no recurrence. In that way justice becomes — as
it should be — a support for, rather than an obstacle to,
peace.
I want to be clear: there will be no impunity for
crimes against humanity or war crimes committed
in a systematic fashion. On the contrary, this is the
first time that Colombia is seriously assuming the
obligation of fighting impunity for crimes committed
in our armed conflict. The purpose is not to sacrifice
justice to achieve peace, but rather to achieve peace
with maximum justice. I am saying that out of deep
conviction. There is much at stake, that is, no less than
an end to the half-century long conflict, as well as the
fate of 47 million Colombians.
We have been involved in talks for one year
now, but we have reached agreements on just one of
the six items on the agenda. I am still optimistic, but
the patience of the Colombian people is not infinite.
The guerrillas will have to decide whether they opt
for an honourable and lasting peace, or whether they
will continue to wage war. From this rostrum, I call
upon them to understand that history has led us to this
decisive moment. The time for decisions has come. If
we leave empty-handed, we will doom our nation to
many more years of bloodshed and pain. We cannot
miss this opportunity.Future generations and history
will not forgive us.
Moreover, our conflict, with all its violence and
cruelty, has been affected by a poisonous scourge that
fuels it and is fuelled by it: drug trafficking. That illicit
activity has been the main funding source for violence
and terrorism in my country — and I would say in the
whole world as well in recent times. Without the grim
influence of drug trafficking, which fuels the fires of
our war, I am certain that the war would already have
ended. That is why we have included the topic of illicit
drugs as a specific item in the agenda of the discussions
with the guerrillas.
If we manage to have the guerrillas change sides,
once they have demobilized, and become an ally of
the State in order to definitively curb drug trafficking
and eliminate illegal crops, just imagine what could
be accomplished. A Colombia without coca crops and
without a conflict was once a utopia and an impossible
dream, but it is one that we can now realize for the
benefit not only of Colombians but of the whole world.
Almost a half century ago, in this very place, the
Convention that gave birth to the war on drugs was
adopted. Today we must recognize that that war has not
been won. I say that as the President of the country that
has suffered the most deaths, the most bloodshed, the
most sacrifices in that war, and also the country that
has achieved the most results in the fight against this
scourge and the mafias that underpin it.
Last year, when chairing the Summit of the
Americas, fully aware of that dilemma, I led a proposal
to debate and explore different scenarios in the fight
against the global drug problem, aimed at evaluating
what we are doing and at seeking ways to be more
effective. We commissioned the Organization of
American States to conduct studies with experts,
academics and people with different approaches on
how to face the problem. Those studies were delivered
to us in May. Different Governments are evaluating
them and they should serve as inputs for discussions at
all universities and think tanks, and in the context of
different forums, not just from Latin America but from
the whole world, because it is a global problem that
requires a global solution. Because of that — because
it is a global problem — we expect their conclusions
to also be discussed in this body, the United Nations,
which has already called for a special session on the
drug problem to be convened in 2016.
If we act together on the drug problem and adopt a
new, modern and comprehensive vision that is free of
ideological or political bias, imagine how much harm
and violence we will be able to prevent. I am not just
speaking about harm to people, but also harm to nature,
because drug trafficking has become a major destroyer
of our tropical forests and forests in general, in what
can be termed a veritable ecocide.
Colombia is deeply committed to environmental
protection. At the Rio de Janeiro Conference on
Sustainable Development, we put forward the proposal
to establish sustainable development goals as a
mandatory benchmark in the development agenda for
the coming decades. We are taking an active part in
the design of those goals, and they can and should
be incorporated into a visionary and ambitious
development agenda for all countries as of 2015. In fact,
we were a member of the High-level Panel on the Post-
2015 Development Agenda, convened by the Secretary-
General and co-chaired by the Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom, David Cameron, which has already
presented its report.
Colombia, for its part, is continuing to do a great
deal. For example, a few weeks ago, we doubled the
area of the largest national park in Colombia, the
Chiribiquete National Natural Park, located in the very
heart of our Amazon region. We designated that area a
natural reserve and prohibited mining and deforestation
activities in an area roughly the size of Belgium, and
not just in any place, but in the area where the Amazon
region has the greatest biological and cultural diversity.
This very morning we are launching, with the
Prime Minister of Norway and five other countries,
the New Climate Economy initiative. With the support
of the most respected research institutes, we will seek
the best way of making economic efficiencies and the
fight against poverty compatible with the preservation
of the environment. In that way we are shouldering our
responsibilities with respect to climate change, which
has already had an impact on Colombians. We will
protect the sources of oxygen and water necessary not
just for Colombia’s survival but that of the entire planet.
I will conclude by stating that in my country we are
working and will continue to work to prevent the plight
of María Zabala and millions of other victims from ever
recurring. Never again! I hope that the President of
Colombia will come to the Assembly next year bearing
the good news that the conflict has come to an end.