Mr. Hasan Dodwell:

A question was asked about the new legislation and what has happened over recent months. The first thing to say is that it has literally been two and a half months. Some things have already started to move through the Colombian Congress. It is a presidential system. The Colombian Government can present items but then they have to pass through the Colombian Congress. As we highlighted in the briefing we sent out, they have a large majority at the moment. One thing has gone through in terms of environmental issues. As well as focusing on promoting peace, the other big headline for the new Colombian Government is a focus on environmental protection. A regional agreement, the Escazú Agreement, which provides environmental protections and has been promoted by environmental groups for a long time, had stalled in recent years in Colombia but has been immediately passed in the new Colombian Congress. That is something to celebrate in terms of environmental issues.

Police and political reforms are being presented and will go through several stages in the Colombian Congress. Women's issues, which were mentioned by Deputy Gannon, are among the various issues being considered as part of political reform. An effort is being made to find ways to enshrine in Colombian legislation a 50:50 representation of men and women in the Colombian Parliament.

I have not seen the actual details of the proposed political reform which has been presented by Senator María José Pizarro, who visited Dublin a couple of weeks ago. There is certainly talk of moving the police away from the jurisdiction of the Colombian ministry of defence to a civilian ministry. This is important and has been long-demanded by the human rights community. There was talk previously of involving the interior ministry, although this has not happened yet so there must still be discussion around it. There was also talk of creating a new ministry which the police would fit into. This is a significant aspect of police and political reform.

I mentioned the Escazú Agreement on the environmental side. The first important political reform action to be taken by the Colombian Government through the minister of defence was the removal of 15 generals who had links to human rights abuses. This was part of shifting the army to make it ready to be an army for peace and to follow through on the total peace plan of the Colombian Government. That was a significant move. The Colombian Government suspended aerial bombardments of camps of armed groups where they had intelligence that there were minors there. In one specific case during the period of Iván Duque - I cannot remember who the minister of defence was at the time - a camp was bombed and several children were killed. That led to a big debate in Colombia on whether those children were legitimate targets because they were in a military group, or victims of forced recruitment. Many people felt that if the Colombian state had intelligence that minors were present, they should not be carrying out bombing exercises but should be reaching out to try to get in touch with kids who are forcibly recruited. That was another significant win for some of the human rights organisations which had been calling for that.

The riot police, which are called ESMAD in Columbia, have been the police force most responsible for some of the human rights abuses on the streets particularly, but not only, during protests. Although the Colombian Government is still looking at broader police reform, a new code of conduct has already been put out which says that the riot police will now only be used as an absolute last resort rather than a first resort during protests. These are all significant material changes to go beyond the words we have heard in support of human rights and peace.

I do not have any further information on the investigation into the massacre in de Manso in Putumayo, but I will follow up on it, try to find out and get back in touch.

It is good for us to know but also, having visited, we owe it to that community to do that.

On the Ejército de Liberación Nacional, ELN, peace talks, there are not details about what will happen in terms of those talks apart from that they will start in November. In early November, we are due to have the official opening of those talks. The Colombian Government recently said it is continuing from what had already been negotiated and spoken about thus far. The negotiations started under President Santos, went into the beginnings of the period of Duque, then were suspended and have been suspended since then. The first point is that they are continuing with what had already been achieved so far but we all are awaiting further details to come. There have been a lot of initial conversations in Havana, which is where the talks are taking place. Venezuela, Cuba and Norway are the guarantor countries, but Maduro certainly with a guarantor role, for those talks.

In terms of the broader negotiations, or broader talks and spaces for openings of peace with different armed groups, the High Commissioner for Peace has had several meetings with these armed groups. When we talk about 22 armed groups, that is 22 groups that have put out statements saying that they are open to this proposal of total peace. They themselves have put out these statements with ten of those also calling a unilateral ceasefire. It is early days but initial indications from what I am reading and information I am receiving is that they are being respected. We cannot really go around talking about this because it is only significant over a longer period of time but there are words coming out of some initial indications of reduced levels of violence in these areas. We need to wait a little longer to review that.

Significantly, in terms of the organisations that have said that they are open to this process and looking at ceasefires, the biggest ones are there. Obviously, we have the ELN in talks, but also the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC, dissident groups or, as some people say in Colombia, the so-called "FARC" dissident groups. They have said that they are open to the talks. The largest so-called neo-paramilitary group - people call it by different names - or criminal structure, the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia, AGC, probably the group with the broadest presence across Colombia, has also said that it is open to talks. This is extremely positive.

In terms of roles of the international community, for example, the meeting recently with one of the FARC dissident groups was accompanied by the UN mission, by Cuba and Norway on the request of the Colombian Government.

If we look at Ireland, no doubt there is an important role to be had. As I said before, it was mentioned on many occasions to me by people working around the peace process the important role the Irish Embassy had in keeping diplomatic attention on the implementation of the 2016 peace agreement. I would say this needs to continue.

What might be in danger now is that attention gets lost with these new peace processes but it is really important that we keep focus as well on the 2016 agreement. That has a broad set of chapters that need to be implemented and that would provide massive transformation to Colombia. Keeping that focus on the 2016 is important, as well as looking at ways to support these new talks because there will be difficult moments. Talks to go through with a guerrilla force bring all their complications and having to sell that then to Colombian society is obviously a big piece of work that happens with any peace process. With other armed groups that maybe did not enter into the process or left the peace process, that brings other conversations that needed to be had and other sensibilities. No doubt these are issues that the Irish diplomatic community can have an important role in. Equally, some people might not like the idea of talks with what they might consider less political groups and more criminal groups. What I have heard about talks with the latter so far is that they should be understood differently. They will be looked at not as political negotiations as such but rather as talks about how to consider the concerns that they might articulate in political form but also look at a negotiation around some form of alternative justice if they lay down their weapons. All of these different moments will have considerable pressures inside Colombia of people who might not be favourable to that. All the work and support that the diplomatic community in Ireland and the Government can do is extremely welcome.

Something that might be helpful as well, particularly thinking about the UN Security Council, is the role of the UN mission. Obviously, the UN mission was created at different stages. The mandate was changed at different stages, most recently to also cover some of the monitoring of the sentences that might be given out now by the transitional justice courts. It could be interesting to look at what role a UN mission might have in this new era of total peace or efforts towards total peace in these new peace processes. Anyone involved in the peace process of 2016 knows how important the UN mission has been. It would be really interesting to look at whether there is pressure for or a voice needing to be given to amplifying the role of a UN mission for these future talks.

That hopefully covers Deputy Brady's questions. I will move on to the other questions.

The speech in the UN General Assembly was very interesting and certainly seemed like it was communicating a message that the new Government wanted to give out, particularly around the environment and drugs. He spoke about the failure of the war on drugs and how, in spite of the decades of war on drugs, there is growing consumption in consumption countries and ongoing and growing production in production countries, such as Colombia. This was a message that was repeated by Senator María José Pizarro, who we had with us on a visit very recently. The message they are wanting to put out is this drugs policy is causing violence, war and death in their country and they are providing the bodies in this war on drugs without any results, in terms of the actual stated objectives, as well as the environmental degradation, which is often a missed effect. As far as I understood, the message was: one, it is not being successful; two, it is causing them a lot of violence and death; and three, it is also causing environmental destruction in their country. There is seemingly a push coming from the Government for an international conversation around drugs and the approach to drugs internationally. While our analysis would not be that the drugs issue has been the cause of the conflict or the violence in Colombia, it has certainly been a fuel that has allowed it to continue and perhaps be more bloody than it might otherwise have been.

At the root, there is the coca farmer-grower. On a personal level, I have spent a lot of time in communities where coca farmers live. I am sure everyone here is aware of this, but these are not the people making the money out of this trade. These are incredibly poor people. If we look at a global perspective, these are very poor farmers who used to grow other crops, due to a lack of infrastructure and certain complaints about imports coming in from countries with farming subsidised, being unable to sell what they used to sell. If they grow coca, they get a guaranteed income. They can live a very basic life but they can have food on the table. It is obvious, as the peace agreement of 2016 concludes with its proposals, that there has to be a social economic answer to the growing of coca in Colombia. I and our organisation, Justice for Colombia, keep pointing to the 2016 agreement because it asks for those things to happen. Although we have had 99,000 families signed up for mutually-agreed substitution, 97% of families do not have a long-term economic alternative project. That should be happening. Hopefully, we can provide pressure to make that happen.