{"id":26316,"date":"2016-06-24T02:17:22","date_gmt":"2016-06-24T02:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/colombia-and-farc-sign-historic-ceasefire-deal\/"},"modified":"2016-06-24T02:17:17","modified_gmt":"2016-06-24T02:17:17","slug":"colombia-and-farc-sign-historic-ceasefire-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/colombia-and-farc-sign-historic-ceasefire-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Colombia and FARC sign historic ceasefire deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Rebels agree to lay down arms after more than 50 years of conflict that left 220,000 people dead and displaced millions.}<\/p>\n

The Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have signed a ceasefire, which includes the armed group laying down their arms after more than 50 years of conflict.<\/p>\n

Negotiators signed the ceasefire agreement on Thursday in the presence of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC commander Rodrigo “Timochenko” Londono at a ceremony in Havana.<\/p>\n

The historic event was also attended by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, the presidents of Cuba, Venezuela and Chile and the Norwegian foreign minister.<\/p>\n

The agreement is a final step in peace negotiations which have been going on since 2012.<\/p>\n

Colombia’s decades-long civil war has left more than 220,000 people dead and driven millions from their homes.<\/p>\n

“Colombia got used to living in conflict. We don’t have even the slightest memories of what it means to live in peace,” Santos said on Thursday in Havana. “Today a new chapter opens, one that brings back peace and gives our children the possibility of not reliving history.”<\/p>\n

Santos has said a final peace treaty could be signed next month.<\/p>\n

“It is truly a historic agreement and it shows the two sides were able to reach a deal on the most sensitive points still standing in the very long peace negotiations, Al Jazeera’s Alessandro Rampietti, reporting from Bogota, said.<\/p>\n

The means of implementation of the final peace deal remains to be settled.<\/p>\n

The questions of disarmament and justice for victims make the road to peace and reconciliation a hard one.<\/p>\n

The sides are discussing designating zones where the FARC’s estimated 7,000 remaining fighters can gather for a UN-supervised demobilisation process.<\/p>\n

The Colombian president wants a referendum to put the seal of popular approval on its peace effort. But it faces resistance from some political rivals.<\/p>\n

To hold a plebiscite, it needs the country’s constitutional judges to approve a law already passed in Congress.<\/p>\n

Supporters of the peace process also fear that too many voters could simply stay home, threatening to leave the referendum below the participation threshold needed to be valid.<\/p>\n

Momentum had been building towards a breakthrough in negotiations after Santos said earlier this week that he hoped to deliver a peace accord in time to mark Colombia’s declaration of independence from Spain on July 20. But the agreement signed on Thursday went further than expected.<\/p>\n

In addition to a framework for a ceasefire, both sides agreed on a demobilisation plan that will see rebels concentrate in rural areas under government protection and hand over weapons to UN monitors. The peace accord gives the disarmament process a six-month time limit. <\/p>\n

The deal also includes security guarantees for the FARC during its transition to a peaceful political party. A similar attempt in the 1980s led to thousands of rebels and their sympathisers being killed by paramilitaries and corrupt soldiers.<\/p>\n

A peace deal won’t immediately make Colombia a safer place. The cocaine trade remains a powerful magnet for criminal gangs operating throughout the country’s remote valleys and jungles. And the National Liberation Army, a much smaller and more rebellious armed group, has not yet begun peace talks with the government. <\/p>\n

A strong element within Colombia is opposed to a peace deal with FARC. They are led by popular former President Alvaro Uribe, who spearheaded the military offensive against the rebel group last decade.<\/p>\n

“It damages the word ‘peace’ to accept that those responsible for crimes against humanity like kidnapping, car-bombing, recruitment of children and rape of girls don’t go to jail for a single day and can be elected to public office,” Uribe said on Thursday in reaction to the peace agreement.<\/p>\n

But regional and international leaders were enthusiastic about the deal. <\/p>\n

“The peace process can’t turn back,” said Cuban President Raul Castro, whose country was one of the guarantors of the talks. <\/p>\n

In Washington, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the “finish line is approaching and nearer now than it has ever been,” but that “hard work remains to be done.”<\/p>\n

\"Colombia's<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Rebels agree to lay down arms after more than 50 years of conflict that left 220,000 people dead and displaced millions.} The Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have signed a ceasefire, which includes the armed group laying down their arms after more than 50 years of conflict. Negotiators signed the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-26316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26316"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=26316"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=26316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}