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Weekly Report - 07 October 2021 (WR-21-40)

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COLOMBIA-VENEZUELA: Moving to reopen the border

There were some signs of a thawing in the icy relationship between Colombia and Venezuela this week, with the Venezuelan government opening border crossings on 5 October that had been closed since February 2019, and to vehicles since 2015. Whilst Colombia has yet to reopen its side, Venezuela’s move was followed a day later by Colombia’s President Iván Duque saying that his government is willing to reopen consular services in Venezuela – although there was no sign of any intention to resume full diplomatic relations, the severing of which resulted in the total closure of land borders over two and a half years ago.

The movement of people and goods between Colombia and Venezuela has long been the economic lifeblood of towns and cities on both sides of the border, with residents dependent on free movement for trade and employment. Since Venezuela’s economy unravelled in 2015, cross-border migration has been overwhelmingly from the Venezuelan side, with Colombia offering basic goods and work opportunities that are scarce on the other side of the frontier.

The closure of the border in February 2019 was therefore also strongly felt in Colombia, diminishing the flow of Venezuelan customers to Colombian businesses. These economic difficulties on the Colombian side were exacerbated by the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic: Colombia’s national statistics department (Dane) reported that the principal border city of Cúcuta (the capital of Norte de Santander department) became Colombia’s poorest from March-April this year, with extreme poverty rates topping 20%.

Reopening the border was therefore an economic imperative, but efforts to achieve this have been hampered by the severe distrust and lack of diplomatic channels between the countries. Colombia’s brief opening of its side of the border in June this year was slammed by Venezuela’s foreign ministry as a unilateral decision that it would only reciprocate in the event of an “advance in bilateral coordination in security, trade and health matters”. There is no sign that any such advances have been made. Rather, the reopening seems to be a result of economic necessity, as well as a recognition that official border closures have done little to halt the flow of contraband and illegal armed groups in both directions across the porous frontier. Duque highlighted these problems on 6 October, when he inaugurated a new military command (Cenor) for Norte de Santander containing four rapid deployment battalions, which will be tasked with securing the border.

Venezuela was the first to announce a reopening, with Vice President Delcy Rodríguez framing the decision in purely economic terms as she predicted a revival of binational trade and a boost for the productive sectors in western Venezuela. This was followed by a supportive statement from Duque, who said that Colombia would reopen its side “as soon as possible” once provisions were made to “guarantee the security and biosecurity of the Colombian people”. A day later, Duque said that his administration is “open to” resuming consular operations in Venezuela “on the condition that we have full guarantees in terms of security”. This did not amount to an olive branch for the Maduro administration, however, with Duque adding that “at no moment will [Colombia] stop denouncing the abuses of the dictatorship or its close relationship with Colombian terrorist groups”.

Truth Commission

On 1 October Colombia’s constitutional court (CC) extended by a further six months the mandate of the country’s Truth Commission, which was established as part of the 2016 peace agreement between the administration of Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) guerrilla group. The Commission did not begin its work until 2018, when it was given three years to complete a report on crimes committed by all sides during the Farc’s 53-year insurgency. The CC ruled that the pandemic has impacted the Commission’s ability to work to this deadline, and it ordered the government to provide it with the necessary budget to complete its work.

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