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Weekly Report - 8 March 2012 (WR-12-10)

COLOMBIA: Santos urged to be bold over armed conflict

Courage and audacity; that is the demand that a group of some 100 renowned academics, journalists, writers and political commentators made of President Juan Manuel Santos in an open letter earlier this week. They want Santos to consider the emergence of a nationwide attitude currently gaining pace, albeit slowly, for a negotiated resolution to the half-century old internal armed conflict. In fact, the President’s decision to recognise, formally and juridically, the existence of millions of internally displaced persons (IDPs), and the existence of an armed conflict, constituted two key steps towards redressing the suffering of millions of Colombians. The rumour currently circulating in the Latin American press is that peace talks, or at least unofficial communications with the leaders of the country’s two main guerrilla groups, the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc), could be mediated by Cuban authorities.

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