ProPaz at the EuroLat-Parliamentary Assembly in Vienna

Despite the peace agreement between the Colombian Government and the former guerrilla group Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP), which was signed  in November 2016, Colombia has still a way to go in its peace process. Support comes from the programme ProPaz which is implemented by GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development. To share insights into the ongoing work, the programme has been invited to the 11th Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly (EuroLat) on 17 September 2018 in Vienna.

During the EuroLat meeting with the civil society, Jaime Gomez Navarro from the ProPaz program held a speech on the contribution of civil society to the Colombian peace process and the role of technical cooperation. ProPaz provides assistance for the implementation of the Colombian peace agreement, for example the inclusion of a gender perspective into the transitional justice, the enforcement of mechanisms of participation, the coordination between institutions in the peace process, and the formation of spaces for dialogues about territorial development. The presentation also included statements of members of civil society organizations in the region of Meta.

The following topics aroused particular interest during discussions: the significance of the contribution of civil society organizations to the system aiming at establishing truth and transitional justice; the necessity of solving the structural causes of the armed conflict – like for example the distribution of land and the lack of legal safeguards for the rural population as well as the urgent appeal to the Colombian State to protect human rights activists and peace activists against threat.

The participation of ProPaz at the EuroLat assembly made it possible to demonstrate the existing challenges for the construction of a sustainable peace in Colombia, and to visualize how technical cooperation can contribute to this goal.