Ms Mariela Kohon:

There is a great deal of awareness of the situation in the trade union movement. Justice for Colombia played a role in building that awareness. The International Trade Union Confederation, ITUC, published its global rights index report two or so weeks ago. It lists Colombia as being among the ten worst countries for workers and the most killings of trade unionists. ITUC has been working on raising the profile of Colombia and the Trades Union Congress, TUC, views it as a priority country. In Ireland, ICTU has also done a great deal of work on Colombian trade unionism. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, AFL-CIO, in the US has done a great deal of work, particularly in respect of the US-Colombia trade agreement and its provisions regarding an action plan to improve labour rights and human rights and to tackle some of the failures to reach related targets. During the negotiation of the EU-Colombia trade agreement and its roadmap, there was a widespread movement among the European trade union movement. Several sectoral federations had motions and the European Trade Union Confederation, ETUC, was active in trying to have included in the agreement binding benchmarks for labour and human rights that had to be met. Eventually, the attempt to get binding benchmarks was not successful. There is a roadmap but, unfortunately, many of its targets have not been met yet. In light of all of that, Colombia is a significant issue for the trade union movement internationally.

It is fair to say that feelings among the general population are polarised. There has been a great deal of misinformation about what the peace agreement is. That is why I started by saying that the agreement was not for FARC, but for the Colombian people. Despite Mr. Juan Manuel Santos's commitment to the peace agreement, there was a lack of pedagogical work done by his Administration to show why the agreement was beneficial to the people of Colombia and to prevent it from being sidelined by extremist opposition to it as just being about FARC getting to be in Congress and being allowed impunity for its crimes. That discourse has entered the mainstream in a way that is damaging to the peace process.

There will be a mobilisation on 26 July, but I would not say that there is mass mobilisation in defence of the agreement. There was around the time of the referendum. Under the new process that I mentioned, though, there is general cross-party and cross-civil society political support for the peace agreement. That is a new thing and it is interesting that people have been able to overcome their political differences to defend the agreement. There is hope.

During the time of the referendum, some church figures were against the peace agreement being ratified because of the equality and gender components. That the peace agreement has a gender and equality focus cross-cutting throughout is historic. There was some misinformation to the effect that it was targeting the traditional family and pursuing a gender ideology. Some of the evangelical churches campaigned against the peace agreement on those grounds. However, several of those parties went to Havana, met FARC and the Government and had the gender process explained to them. Seeing some of the shift afterwards was interesting. There are some well-known Catholic Church representatives in the broad alliance supporting the peace process.

There has been a mix of people involved. The church played a role in monitoring the ELN talks as well.