The Colombian government and the main FARC splinter group, which took up arms after signing the historic 2016 peace deal, announced new peace talks, in an official document signed by both parties and released on Friday.
This eleven-point text announces the start of a “process of socio-political dialogues which should lead to the signing of a peace agreement between the Colombian government and the armed rebel organization Segunda Marquetalia”, created by its leader Ivan Márquez in 2019, after his return to hiding.
The parties also committed to “immediately develop prior agreements for the de-escalation of the conflict and the implementation of transformations for the social and environmental construction of the territory”, continues the text.
President Gustavo Petro, the first left-wing man to come to power in Colombia in 2022 and himself a former member of a guerrilla (the M-19), has committed to emerging, through dialogue, from six decades of armed conflict and has since negotiated with most of the country’s organizations.
But so far, the Segunda Marquetalia, which has some 1,663 members according to military intelligence and is considered the hard-line wing of the dissidents, has stayed away.
Mr. Márquez’s return to arms in 2019 dealt a severe blow to the peace process that allowed some 7,000 FARC fighters to reintegrate into civilian life.
Other leaders who appeared alongside him in a video, rifle in hand, to announce the start of a new armed rebellion were subsequently killed.
According to press reports, Mr. Márquez was the victim of an assassination attempt in Venezuela in 2022.
In July 2023, local media speculated that he was dead, but Colombia’s high commissioner for peace at the time, Danilo Rueda, denied this.
The announcement comes as an official visit by the United Nations Security Council to Colombia takes place, aimed at supporting the implementation of the historic 2016 agreement and the government’s new efforts to negotiate peace with other groups armed.
Independent studies indicate that the Segunda Marquetalia is still in conflict with other ex-FARC rebels over control of drug trafficking routes.
The previous government of Iván Duque (2018-2022) then offered rewards of $880,000 for the arrest of each member of the Segunda Marquetalia.
Colombia is suffering an armed conflict which, in more than half a century, has claimed some 9.5 million lives, most of them displaced people.