Mexico City, (EFE).- The Minister of Justice of Colombia, Néstor Iván Osuna, participated this Wednesday in the Peace Dialogue Table between the Government and the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) to present the bill reform of criminal policy and assured that “the achievement of peace is the very justification” of the government of the president, Gustavo Petro.
Osuna explained in his speech at the Roundtable for Peace Dialogues that the Colombian government is committed to moving “from a purely imprisoning model to a resocializing and restorative model,” according to a statement released jointly in the framework of the meetings that take place in the Inter-American Conference on Social Security, located in the south of Mexico City.
“For the Government, what is happening and what is going to happen in this Table is an absolute priority because the search for and achievement of peace is the very justification of this Government,” he stressed.
The Minister of Justice is the first senior government official to visit the Table, but “it will not be the last,” said Otty Patiño, head of the government delegation.
For his part, Pablo Beltrán, head of the ELN Dialogue Delegation, affirmed that Minister Osuna’s assistance could help “seek synergies between the plans for change proposed by this government and the work of the Roundtable.”
Beltrán stressed, however, that the current government inherits a “dramatic situation of unconstitutionality and violation of accumulated rights” in Colombian prisons.
The Mexico City Peace Dialogue Table, which began on February 13, is expected to last four weeks, one more than initially planned.
The key point of the talks will be to reach an agreement for a ceasefire by both parties, but they will also discuss the participation of society in the construction of peace, something that has not been explored for the moment.
Negotiations between the Colombian government and the ELN, which were interrupted for four years after starting in 2017, resumed in November 2022 in Caracas under the auspices of Cuba, Norway and Venezuela as guarantor countries.
Although President Petro announced the entry into force of the bilateral ceasefire on December 31, the guerrillas denied it days later, arguing that no agreement had been reached in the talks, which led to the calling of an extraordinary meeting in Caracas in January to ease tensions.
Mexico, together with Venezuela, Chile, Norway and Brazil, are guarantors of the peace talks, while Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and Spain act as accompanying countries.
