A woman reacts during the broadcast of the handing over of weapons of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) at the municipality of Mesetas, in Bogota, capital of Colombia, on 27 June 2017. Jhon Paz/Xinhua News Agency/PA Images. All rights reserved.
It was perhaps tempting to treat the signing of the peace agreement in September 2016 with some euphoria. Certainly, for many in a country having endured 52 years of civil conflict, it was a welcome cognitive shift, and younger generations could imagine a society without the FARC for the first time in their lives. Yet the ‘NO’ result in the plebiscite, and the gruelling renegotiations with the opposition that followed, were a reminder that peace will demand the same level of determination for some years to come.
This was not a surprise for the negotiating team, who had already drawn out the implementation process in Agenda Item 6 and were aware of the approaching challenges. “If we doze off for just a second”, urged Lucas Carvajal, member of the FARC-EP and part of the delegation in Havana, “we are not going to transform anything and this whole process will be a total failure”.
