On 23 September, the government and the FARC reached a historic agreement on transitional justice (Special Jurisdiction of Peace or Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz). In addition to the historic nature of the agreement, President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC commander Timoleón Jiménez “Tymoshenko” visited Havana to announce the first public meeting between a sitting Colombian president and the FARC commander. The presidential delegation included the President of the Congress and the Senate, Luis Fernando Velasco, the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Alfredo Deluque, Senator and liberal leader Horacio Serpa, Senator Antonio Navarro Wolff (himself a demobilized guerrilla of the M-19) and Senator Iván Cepeda as well as Juan Carlos Henao and Manuel José Cepeda, former judges of the Constitutional Court, who had played an important role in the development of the agreement. The meeting ended with an unwritten handshake between President Santos and Tymoshenko, overlooked by Cuban President Raúl Castro. Alongside the agreement, the government also announced that a final agreement would be signed within six months or before March 23, 2016. [58] The Objectives of the Commission are dispute settlement, monitoring the implementation of the Final Agreement, monitoring compliance, monitoring the legislative implementation of the Agreement and reporting on its implementation. The mechanisms would allow for citizen participation in the process. We had a year of implementation of agreements rejected by the Colombian people In 1990 and 1991, peace negotiations with several minor guerrilla movements led to their demobilization and transformation into civilian political actors. The first guerrilla group demobilized following a peace agreement with the Colombian government was the 19 April Movement (M-19), which demobilized its weapons and returned it in exchange for a general amnesty for all actions carried out in the context of the conflict. Other guerrilla groups demobilized under similar conditions were most of the fronts of the People`s Liberation Army (EPL) and the Movimiento Armado Quintin Lame (MAQL).

[3] However, repeated attempts to find a negotiated solution through formal peace talks between the government and the FARC have not been successful. Before the current peace process, the last attempt at peace talks with the FARC was the 1999-2002 peace process, under the government of President Andrés Pastrana, which granted the FARC a demilitarized zone to facilitate peace talks on Colombian territory. Although the peace process lasted three years, no agreement was reached between the two sides. Pastrana formally halted all talks and ordered the army to regain control of the demilitarized zone on February 20, 2002, a few months before the 2002 presidential elections. The FARC had used the demilitarized zone as a safe zone to hold hostages, negotiate prisoner exchanges, train troops, and plan offensive actions. [4]:167-169The stalled peace process coincided with an escalation of the conflict, due to a large number of factors, including the rapid numerical and geographical expansion of paramilitary groups such as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) that opposed the government`s negotiations with the FARC. . . .