COLOMBIA:
Demining Agreement, a Field Test for Peace
Patricia Grogg

HAVANA,  (IPS) - Mine clearance in the Colombian municipality of Samaniego, announced in Havana by Colombia's insurgent National Liberation Army (ELN), is important but not sufficient to overcome the humanitarian crisis, a human rights activist warned.

The ELN agreed on Sunday to a request from Samaniego, a mountainous district with a total population of 60,000 in the western province of Nariño, for the removal of anti-personnel mines buried on the access roads to 14 villages and towns, in order to enable socio-economic development plans to be set in motion.

The demining operation will be carried out in accordance with the protocols of Geneva Call, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO), which will coordinate technical details and financing with Colombian municipal authorities.

Geneva Call, funded by the Swiss government and the European Union, works for the eradication of anti-personnel mines worldwide, and has been engaging with the ELN on this issue since 2003, said the community petition.

Antonio García, military chief of the ELN, said in Havana on Sunday that ELN forces operating in the area would facilitate the necessary conditions for humanitarian mine clearance to take place "thoroughly".

"Demining Samaniego is an important step, but it's not sufficient to consolidate progress in overcoming the humanitarian crisis in Colombia," Jorge Enrique Rojas, director of the non-governmental Consultancy on Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), told IPS on Monday, in one of the first reactions to the news.

In his opinion, Samaniego "can serve as a field trial for peace, if humanitarian demining to alleviate the situation of a civilian population hemmed in by the armed conflict and the landmines is achieved."

The ELN decision was taken in response to an Oct. 19 initiative by the Humanitarian Demining Promoter Commission, with Alvaro Jiménez of the NGO Colombia without Mines and Mehmet Balci, head of Geneva Call's programme for the Middle East and Colombia, acting as facilitators.

The proposal was tabled a few days before the fourth round of exploratory talks between the ELN and Luis Carlos Restrepo, the peace commissioner for the Álvaro Uribe administration, which ended in the Cuban capital on Thursday.

"An agreement on forced displacement is pending, and I think it will be reached in the context of a bilateral ceasefire," Rojas told IPS via e-mail from London, where he is taking part in an international meeting on building peace and human rights in his country.

CODHES and the Colombian bishops conference estimate that 3.8 million people have been forced to flee their homes in the last 10 years by the fighting between government troops and far-right paramilitary groups on one hand, and leftwing rebel groups like the ELN and the much larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), on the other.

García said that the issue of displaced people had not been touched on in the conversations with Restrepo, because a formal agenda for talks has not yet been drawn up. "But the ELN intends that, as the discussions progress, this issue will be a core item for creating a peaceful climate in the country," he said.

The guerrilla leader said that the demining of Samaniego was an act of peace and humanitarian action which opens the way to development and to social and economic proposals that will benefit the entire population.

About 30 percent of Samaniego's area of 693 square kilometres is thought to be mined. Clearance of the mines would boost local development plans, including harvesting and growing seeds native to the region.

Anti-personnel mines, used predominantly by guerrilla groups in the conflict, killed or wounded 1,150 people in 2005, 63 percent of whom were soldiers and the rest civilians, according to Balci's estimates.

"The armed forces are as heavily affected by these mines as the civilian population and will benefit from this bilateral agreement between the ELN and the community, which is not a party to the armed conflict," Alejo Vargas, a member of the group of guarantors of the dialogue between the ELN and the government, told IPS.

In his view, the ELN's positive response to a demand from civil society shows the importance the guerrilla organisation concedes to people's participation, and it is also a way of saying that "more progress can be made on this issue."

"We have spent 25 years pursuing peace, and that word has become pure rhetoric; no one believes in it any more. But this sort of action helps to renew lost credibility and trust, because it brings concrete results that benefit part of society," he said.

García indicated that another round of conversations between the ELN and the government may be held in December in Havana.

The announcement on the mine clearance was made at a meeting of the ELN with the Civilian Facilitation Commission, at which the guerrilla organisation reported on the fourth round of exploratory talks with the government.

The Facilitation Commission includes former foreign ministers María Emma Mejía and Augusto Ramírez Ocampo, former attorney general Jaime Bernal Cuéllar, and several Catholic bishops, among other high-profile Colombian figures.