Towards a Colombia at peace

The International Catalan Institute for Peace (ICIP) reaffirms its commitment to peace in Colombia the day after a referendum in which voters rejected the peace agreement signed between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC guerrilla movement. ICIP believes that we must continue working to make peacebuilding possible and leave behind over fifty years of armed violence and eight million victims. But we are also aware that achieving peace is a long process, and not without obstacles.
It is this commitment to peace that led ICIP, along with other Catalan institutions and organizations, to celebrate the formal signing of the peace deal with numerous festive, educational and institutional events last week. A Colombian delegation, consisting of Lucía González, advisor to the High Commissioner for Peace in Colombia, and Henry Acosta, Colombian economist and facilitator of the agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC during the four years of negotiations in Havana, participated in the celebrations. The Colombian delegation was received by the President of Parliament, Carme Forcadell, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Institutional Relations and Transparency, Raül Romeva, and the Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau.
The peace agreement celebrations were organized by ICIP, the Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation, the City of Barcelona, Casa Amèrica Catalunya, the Barcelona Provincial Council, the Catalan Development Cooperation Fund, the Taula Catalana Coordination Group for Peace and Human Rights in Colombia, Colòmbia en Pau, and Colombia Soy Yo.