Colombia: UN Ready to Receive 7,000 Weapons From FARC

The United Nations mission in Colombia announced that it is ready to receive 7,000 weapons that belong to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, on June 20.

IN DEPTH:
Colombian Peace Process

In a press release published Thursday, the U.N. Colombian mission said that 44 containers and eight depots had been placed in 26 demobilization zones in order to collect the weapons.

Around 450 international observers and 72 civil officials will oversee the disarmament process, it added.

As part of the peace agreement, signed between the Colombian government and the FARC on Nov 24, the FARC must give up all arms before they can reintegrate into civil society.

The initial deadline for disarmament was extended by 20 days.

In order to compensate for the delay and keep the peace process timetable on track, the mission said it “has set an ambitious goal of compressing the handover of all individual weapons in the space of 20 days.”

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The FARC was founded in 1964 on the heels of a decade-long violent period that took a heavy toll on rural areas of the country. Amid a crackdown on self-organized communist communities seen as a threat to elite interests, the FARC emerged directly from rural roots as a group of campesinos turned to armed struggle to to fight systematic inequality.

After over half a century of internal armed conflict, a landmark peace agreement reached last year between the FARC and the government through four-year-long negotiations paved the way for the rebel army to begin its 180-day, U.N.-monitored disarmament process.

On Dec. 1, the FARC took its first steps toward reorganizing as a legal political party — which will debut in the 2018 elections — by leaving behind its military strategy and moving to transition zones across the country to prepare to lay down its arms once and for all and reintegrate into civilian life.