Colombia needs peace

Colombia has taken a fundamental step in recent days on its path to peace.

For six decades, Colombians were witnesses and protagonists of the longest armed conflict in the Western Hemisphere.

The peace between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC that was signed in 2016 in Havana demobilized some 13,000 combatants, but the violence continued in much of the country.

Groups linked to drug trafficking, FARC dissidents and the still active ELN guerrilla keep alive a war that continues to claim lives every week, every day.

As a result of that agreement in Cuba, the Truth Commission was created, chaired by the Jesuit Francisco de Roux.

Last Tuesday, the Commission presented the country with its final report.

A document, entitled

that tries to unravel the causes of the violence that bled Colombia for so long and that proposes recommendations to achieve a peace that has not yet arrived.

The report works as a roadmap that the next government should embrace, as promised by the president-elect, Gustavo Petro, who was present at the event.

Sealing the peace with the ELN, facing another strategy against drug trafficking beyond the failed war on drugs, carrying out a profound agrarian reform, changing the doctrine of the army or separating the police from the Ministry of Defense are some of the recipes that the group led by De Roux proposes for a country that still lives in "war mode".

De Roux starred in the act with a deep and heartfelt speech.

He sought to awaken the consciences of a country that he considers "numbed in the face of horror" after almost half a million dead, seven million displaced and tens of thousands of disappeared, most of them among the civilian population.

The objective of the Truth Commission is for the document to open a national debate and advance towards a reconciliation that has not yet been achieved.

What the next government does will have a lot to do with that.

From the outset, Petro took advantage of the void left by President Iván Duque with his unfortunate absence in a historic and key act for a country pierced by deep wounds.

The decision of the outgoing president to travel to Portugal at this crucial moment closes a mandate with more dark than clear and confirms the little interest of Duque to advance in the development of the peace agreements signed by his predecessor.

Petro now picks up that glove, which cries out to give absolute priority to the pacification of the country.

A Colombia in which a social leader has been assassinated every two days since 2016 and in which criminal groups control huge territories in the absence of the State.

The commissioners have two months ahead to present the report throughout the country and abroad, on a tour that includes Brussels, Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Geneva, Washington and New York, among other cities.

With the intention of opening an urgent debate that advances towards the much-needed peace in Colombia.