Colombian Govt. And ELN To Include Citizenship in Peace Process

The Government of Colombia and the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) closed this Saturday the most recent cycle of talks, in Caracas, with the signing of an agreement on citizen participation in the construction of peace agreements.

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"This is already a consensus for the dialogue table and, therefore, in the search for the greatest possible participation for the necessary transformations. We are moving forward with an unprecedented historic process," said Rodrigo Botero, member of the government delegation, after reading the introduction of the agreement.

"Peace in Colombia requires all voices, all peoples, communities, people, processes and ways to build a nation. This is already a consensus for the Round Table of Dialogues and therefore, in the search for the greatest possible participation for the necessary transformations, we are advancing an unprecedented historical process," reads a part of the peace agreement spreaded by the ELN.

Manuela Marquéz, Delegate of the ELN and Rodrigo Botero, Delegate of the Government of Colombia, read the agreement document, Participation of Society in the Construction of Peace. Agreement No. 28, signed in Caracas, Venezuela

Both parts agreeded to the creation National Participation Committee - CNP, a space that from a collective logic designed and promoted the realization of 78 pre meetings and meetings of national and regional order.

In the CNP will participate 8,565 representatives of social organizations from 30 sectors; as well as 3,217 organizations in all regions of the country, 19 prisons and the diaspora in 14 countries of Latin America, North America and Europe.

The dialogue table it is aware of the needing of that additional spaces are needed to hear other voices from organised and unorganised society.

In Venezuela: Peace Delegations of the ELN and the Government of Colombia meet to sign agreements on the first point of the dialogue table on citizen participation @teleSURtv

From this first phase, the following lines of dialogue were developed: political regime for the construction of a society in which all options and opinions are accommodated; economic model that overcomes inequalities; environmental policy, which discusses the forms of relationship with nature, territories and populations; education and culture, as a project of society that is nourished and strengthened from its social diversities.

"This Agreement is a step forward and an important step towards a social and political alliance, in the direction of a Grand National Agreement, understood as a way and route to remove violence from politics in Colombia and solve the multiple problems that the country lives to move towards peace," the statement reads.