H.E. Mr. Néstor Osorio:

I thank the members for their questions and especially for following Colombia and being preoccupied with the difficulties and problems of our social life. On the issue of equality, or rather inequality, one of the recognised big problems of Colombia is the tremendous gap that exists and the need to upgrade and create conditions for the poor people of no or very low earnings to go up the ladder and be active citizens. That is why in developing the programme for government and in developing the approach to the big issues of Colombia, President Santos encapsulated his priorities for the next four years by talking about prosperity, education and equality.

This is important in the sense that education is placed at the centre with a clear determination. We have achieved already almost 100% coverage of boys and girls who complete primary school in Colombia. If we pursue this quest of education, we will create the basis for the future for this social upgrading and for a more equal society. As the Chairman has observed, even if our middle class has grown, the distribution of earnings today compared with 15 years ago is abysmal. We still have people who live in extreme poverty. When we evaluate this aspect of the millennium development goals, the eradication of poverty, it is clear that Colombia has managed to get out of this extreme poverty in real terms. It is close to 2 million in these four years and this is with the following of the United Nations standards and analysis. We keep on that and it is a very sensible matter.

Connecting this with the different issues that have been mentioned here, as far as we managed to reduce these gaps, we create more educational opportunities and we open the possibility of new business. At the same time that we are eradicating poverty, I want to mention the need to create wealth. This is the real thing. We need to create wealth and we create wealth with new business and new projects, with public works and with private investments, and that creates employment. There are not separate compartments. At the beginning of the first government we talked about the locomotives - different locomotives that work together and develop the society and the economy in a homogenous way. One of the big responsibilities of the government is how we create educational opportunities and open the country for business with the conditions necessary to be attractive, thereby creating employment and promoting people on the social ladder.

The issue of respect of human rights is very serious. The Deputy said it is very dangerous to be a trade unionist in Colombia, and that has been the case.

There are ways to demonstrate this. The situation has improved, which is something which must be taken into consideration.

One of the tragedies of Colombia during the conflict with the guerillas involved the formation of paramilitary groups which developed their activities during a time in which the capacity of the Colombian state to fight the guerillas was very poor. The capacity of the army was much reduced. In a way, there was a permissive attitude among civilians, especially in rural areas, in organising to protect themselves from guerilla attack, but something unexpected, or unimaginable, developed. These groups of peasants in trying to protect their crops became contaminated by individuals who took advantage of these conditions to take properties illegally and displace people under the pretext that they were co-operating with the guerillas. I invite members to analyse the role of the paramilitaries, acting illegally and at the margins of the law of Colombia. The government has tried to dismantle some criminal bands which developed subsequently. In many cases, it has been proved that it was these paramilitary groups which started to kill trade unionists and violate human rights.

The armed forces have committed excesses, but these excesses have been dealt with before the tribunals. We are having a big discussion to identify the device by which the military forces will be judged by the civil courts and which crimes will be judged by the military. This happens all around the world. There are some areas which are reserved for the military to judge, while there are others which belong to the civil courts. We intend to continue down that path.

I frequently hear about the case of Mr. Huber Ballesteros. He is notorious because he was about to travel to London for a union meeting. According to all of the information I have received and the judicial procedures, there are serious indications that he was suspected of having been involved in providing arms for the guerillas and having been in contact with them. This is something on which I will not make a judgment. I have written many letters to the authorities which have responded to me on the status of these procedures. I have spoken to the NGOs and Members of Parliament in London about the matter which we continue to follow.

It is very important that the government is prepared to recognise wrongdoing. Last December President Santos made a public and international apology and asked for a pardon for a massacre which had taken place in San José de Apartadó in 2005. We went to a committee of the House of Lords with representatives of this community and went through an exercise of reconciliation. That was a very courageous approach to take. There is no obstacle in the President's path and he is prepared to put at the disposal of the judiciary those who have committed excesses or crimes under our criminal code.

The issues of rural reform and drugs are very much inter-linked. It is very clear that a substantial part of the finances of the guerillas came from drugs. FARC has been trying to say it was not involved in the production of crops, that it was just taxing those who were moving the drugs around. However, it is clear that it controlled the territory in which the cocoa fields were located. This has emerged in the negotiations and it has recognised it. The plan is for the total eradication of cocoa fields. We have dismantled more than 30% of the areas cultivated with cocoa crops ten years ago. In the 1980s no more than 5% to 7% of the cocoa fields were located in the country. The cocoa crops were cultivated in Bolivia and Peru where it is an ancestral crop. The drug traffickers and those who developed the cartels were clever and decided to cultivate the crops rather than depend on the Peruvians or Bolivians. That is how 80% or 90% of the cocoa crop in the world was grown in Colombia. There has been an eradication of 60% of it. Therefore, good progress has been made. We will talk about this issue with the international community. However, the point is that if we manage to bring FARC on side to act as a promoter of rural reform, we will be able to develop according to the needs of the regions.

Many members have been to Colombia and know that the topography of the country is better for the cultivation of some crops, including small crops, coffee being one example. I have been involved in coffee production all my life. As I was the executive director of an international coffee organisation and visited all of the coffee producers of the world, I know what I am talking about. There are 2 million people involved in coffee crop cultivation and transportation. Some 500,000 families work together and the average size of a piece of land is 3 ha. Very few have 50 ha. The position is different in Brazil where it is an agri-industry. In Colombia coffee production is a family business. There are other areas such as the plains in the east of the country where, with the development of intensive agri-industries and big investment, it will be possible to develop what we need to develop. Investors from Ireland could play a tremendous role, given the expertise available and developments here. When I presided over the committee of agriculture of the WTO, I was involved in launching the negotiations on the famous subsidies, about which members know. I came to Dublin to meet all of the agricultural producers and the companies which managed them. I know about Ireland's expertise in the matter and to what degree it could help us. This goes to the heart of what we are addressing. We are asking the international community for a contribution and its co-operation. After the resolution of the conflict, we are able to give ownership of the land to the people in question and it will not stop there. The credits will then come - the technical assistance and agricultural practices. It is like a Marshall plan to develop agriculture, with the participation of the people in question who will have the possibility to develop an activity.

One has to bear in mind that the members of FARC must spend their lives in the rural areas. We are not planning to bring them to Bogotá or Medellín, which I do not think would appeal to them. Their reintegration into society will be in the areas with which they are familiar and in which they will feel comfortable in developing activities.

I can offer the example of the coffee industry. When we were negotiating the quota agreements in London in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the drug issue was at the centre of the negotiations. What we put forward to the United States, the European Union and Japan in the negotiations, which were negotiations between producers and consumers, was that if we managed to get a remunerative price for the coffee growers and get them to guarantee production and supply of the product to the consuming countries, they would not be distracted into the drug trade, even if they were paid 50 or 100 times more for the crop of coca. That was the case. There is little drug production in the coffee areas. Some of the drug barons wanted to buy coffee farms to have those farms, but drugs did not become part of them or it was a very small proportion. It was also not land for the guerillas either.

We are convinced that if we manage to create a productive agricultural system in the rural extensions, that are small or big according to crops, we will be able to be part of the very important challenge that humanity faces for the future. In 2040 to 2050 the world population will be 9 billion people and it will consume double the amount of food being consumed today. Colombia is one of the countries that has the potential to be a provider of land and, with our biodiversity, it is also one of the countries that will continue to protect the planet. There are clear indications that by solving the problem of land distribution and drug cultivation we will create job opportunities and social upgrading.

On the issue of illegal mining, this is one of the problems we face. It is not very new but it is also not old. Part of the reconversion of illegal activities by some of these illegal groups has been to move to illegal mining, with risks for the environment as well as the displacement of people and robbery of land. One of the practices of the paramilitary people was to arrive at a place, force the owners to sign the papers and then force them to go to the notary to transfer the land to them. We are making an inventory of this in the country. The members of the committee will see some figures on that in the papers we will distribute. We are making an inventory of who has been deprived of their land and we have already restituted many areas of land to the owners. We will continue to do that in the future.

Another issue on which Colombia has been keen to make progress is gender equality. Special laws have been passed in Colombia to promote women and young girls and to fight one of the most hideous activities in the world, sexual violence. On the Security Council we were at the centre of making proposals for resolutions and initiatives. I convene a women's forum in Europe in the ECOSOC, as the Colombian delegation, and with the co-operation of many other countries. I pay tribute to Cuba, which is hosting our peace talks, and Norway, where the talks have started, as well as Venezuela and Chile, which are the witnesses in the process. They are helping and facilitating us, but we have the ownership and the clarity of the process. We know that the international community is ready to help us and the most appropriate moment for that contribution will be in the post-conflict era.

I refer to the committee's considerations about the free trade agreement. As one helps to create job opportunities and to develop a business partnership, one is promoting social insertion, the creation of jobs and creating a sense of moral responsibility about respect for human rights. Perhaps the human rights processes in the agreements are not ideal or perfect and could be more ambitious, but this is an area that, along with the free trade agreement, we will continue to work on in the framework of the relevant international organisations and the relevant international community fora. It is something we are very clear that we have a responsibility to address.