Mr. Eamon Gilmore:

I will first deal with the issues relating to Colombia that were raised by Deputy Brady, Senator O'Reilly and the Chairman. It is not true to say that the agreement has not been implemented. The agreement is being implemented. We can argue about whether it should be implemented more quickly and fully and the European Union has consistently taken the view that the agreement should be implemented in full and that the implementation should be accelerated because it is integrated. We need to recognise what has been achieved. FARC disarmed in seven months. The decommissioning of weapons by the IRA took seven years under our peace process. The Colombian agreement has already established a victim-centred approach to transitional justice and a truth commission, which is due to report in the middle of next year, has been established. Some 23 years after the Good Friday Agreement, we still do not have a truth process in our peace process. The transitional justice mechanisms are working.

I can confirm to Deputy Brady that I recognise the compliance of FARC with the agreement. The leadership of FARC has been consistent in its political commitment to implementing the agreement, turning away from violence and pursuing its political objectives by democratic and peaceful means. A measure of the FARC leadership’s commitment to the implementation of the agreement is its acceptance and acknowledgement of the decision of the transitional justice system to find the FARC leadership collectively guilty of crimes against humanity, mainly in respect of the charges that were brought against them for kidnapping. I do not know of any guerrilla movement or former guerrilla movement anywhere in the world that has been so accepting of the way an agreement has been implemented.

Deputy Brady asked me about the transitional justice mechanisms and the work they have done. The transitional justice mechanisms went through a shaky start. They were subject to political criticism and to attack from various people in the political system. Attempts were made to move the goalposts and change the legislation. The Constitutional Court of Colombia took a strong position on that. The transitional justice system is working now. Two things testify to my confidence that it will continue to work. First is the event it organised three weeks ago as part of the fifth anniversary event. The other Colombian players, including the President of the country, attended the event and acknowledged the work it is doing. There is no going back on the work of the transitional justice system. Second, the agreement that was made with the Colombian Government by the ICC was important in this regard because the ICC has effectively said that it has confidence that the transitional justice system will do its work, that the ICC will keep in touch with the JEP and that as long as that is the case it will not further pursue the preliminary investigation it had started. However, the ICC has also said that if there is a change in that it is free to return to its investigation.

I refer to the killings of former combatants. Deputy Brady is right that around 300 former combatants have been killed to date. Huge numbers of human rights defenders, social leaders and peaceful protestors were also killed during the protests and strikes earlier this year. Most of those killings were not carried out by the state or its actors but by others. Most of the violence in the remote areas of Colombia is coming from non-state actors, including FARC dissidents, the Ejército de Liberación Nacional, ELN, Clan de Golfo and different illegal armed groups and cartels that are mainly associated with the drugs trade, though this is not exclusive. Some of the killings that took place during the protests were carried out by police. I have already raised those issues with the President of Colombia, the head of the police service and others in Colombia and there have to be full investigations and accountability for those killings. The President of Colombia agrees with that, as do the police. The chief of police talked to me about plans they have for the reform of the police and lessons they have learned arising from those protests. Those are issues I will be following up when we carry out the human rights dialogue with Colombia next year.

I refer to Senator O'Reilly’s questions about cocaine and crop substitution. The peace agreement provided for a system of voluntary crop substitution and so far about 100,000 growers or families have opted into that. The Government has committed that it will honour the compensation payments that have to be made to them. However, that is only a small proportion of those who are growing cocaine in Colombia. There are practical difficulties with the implementation of the crop substitution programme and one of those practical difficulties is the intimidation and violence which is perpetrated against leaders of the crop substitution movement. For example, the Government agency goes out and has a meeting with farmers and growers in a particular town or village, the farmers and growers agree to opt into the crop substitution and elect a committee and then the local community leader who leads that committee gets intimidated, attacked and, sometimes, killed. That is what is happening on the ground.

To address Senator Joe O’Reilly, I said that we needed to give some thought in Europe and also, in particular, in North America to what more the international community can do to address the cocaine problem, where 70% of the world’s cocaine was coming from Colombia. This cannot be done by telling farmers and growers that they have to stop doing it, by going in to spray their crops or by sending in the army to destroy the crop. There has to be a response at the demand end. That is something that policymakers in Europe and North America need to address by either enforcement or other measures. Many different policy options have been talked about as to how to address the issue of cocaine, in particular, which is the issue we are talking about in Colombia, and to a lesser extent marijuana, because there is a considerable amount of marijuana also grown in the country. This is an area that policymakers need to address. The consumption of cocaine and the illegal nature of that trade is leading to people being killed in remote parts of Colombia and probably other countries as well.

The Chairman asked about the buy-in by civil society and there is such buy-in. On my last visit to Colombia I felt that there was a greater degree of political consensus around the implementation of the agreement than I have seen in the past five years. The agreement got off to a shaky start in the beginning and was defeated by a small margin in a plebiscite and had to be renegotiated. It was the central issue in the presidential election that took place in 2018 and the country was very polarised around it. We are now at a point where all of the political forces are committed to implementing the agreement. There are differences in some emphasis and on the pace with which it is to be implemented but there is a political consensus which is shared with civil society. There is a need for a greater degree of dialogue between government and civil society and, in particular, between the Government and the National Strike Committee, and young people who were part of the protest movement in the early part of this year. The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, talked with President Duque by phone about the issue in the middle of those protests and expressed the alarm of the European Union about peaceful protesters being killed. He asked me to visit the country in June, which I did, and I had the discussions that I referred to earlier, following which I also discussed my conclusions with President Duque.

On the other issues that have been raised and on the business and human rights issue raised by the Deputy Brady, it is not true to say that there is a major reluctance on the part of the European Union to engage on the need for a global treaty on business and human rights. First of all, this is moving very slowly. We already have guiding principles which have been established by the United Nations. Those guiding principles require countries to adopt national action plans. Ireland is one of the few countries that has done so and in fact there are very few countries in the world which have adopted national action plans. There are about 30 of these now, half of those are member states of the European Union. In the EU Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy 2020-2024 we have agreed that there will be a framework to enable and encourage the rest of the EU member states to adopt national action plans and to implement the guiding principles. To be blunt about it, in circumstances where there are only around 30 countries willing to work on this, in other words to go with the guiding principles, the prospects of us getting to a treaty very soon are not great. The European Union is at the table and is participating in the discussions that are taking place in Geneva but there are a couple of problems.

The biggest problem is probably the proposed scope of such a treaty. At the moment the proposal is that it would apply to transnational corporations but that it would not apply, for example, to state companies. There are big countries in the world, some of which do not necessarily share the European Union’s view on human rights and their importance, which have big state companies that would be exempted from such a treaty. The ESB, referred to, for example, by the Deputy Brady, would probably not be covered by the treaty as it stands at the moment. That is an issue that has to be addressed. It is partly in recognising that, that the European Union itself now intends to proceed with the introduction of mandatory due diligence legislation. The EU Commissioners Reynders and Breton are currently working on a proposal which would introduce due diligence legislation in respect of human rights and environmental obligations for larger European companies and companies operating in the European market. I have been discussing that with Commissioner Reynders and the hope is that that legislation will be considered by the Commission in the early part of next year.

Similarly, on the issue of Palestine, there is not a reluctance on the part of the European Union to hold Israel to account. In fact the European Union and its member states are the biggest contributors in supporting the Palestinian National Authority. We have a dedicated special representative who deals with the Middle East peace process and I work very closely with him. The Deputy is correct, however, in that there is not unanimity within the European Union and Council on the issue of Israel and Palestine. Under the treaties we require unanimity to agree a common position on foreign policy including the issue of human rights in foreign policy. We then adopted the action plan when the High Representative went to the Council just this time last year, in November 2020, with the EU Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy 2020-2024 and asked the Council if it would agree to lift the unanimity requirement at the Council for its decisions on the issue of human rights alone. To date, that has not been agreed. This is a matter for member states, and I am not aware if this committee has given any thought to this, but it would be helpful if the Council were to agree to lift the unanimity requirement just on human rights issues and not on all foreign policy issues. This would also be helpful to my work on Palestine.

I believe I have covered the questions. Senator Joe O’Reilly asked about the vaccination rates in Colombia. I believe they are in excess of about 60% now but I can get the exact figures for the Senator. The good news is that the number of infections in Colombia is dropping. They were very high when I was there in June and there was a great deal of concern about it but during my last visit I was told that the numbers are dropping.