Avellon Williams
COLOMBIA- President Gustavo Petro said Colombia has reached a peace agreement with the ELN rebel group allowing the Indigenous Embera community to return to its lands.
It represents the first significant success in peace negotiations between the government and the left-wing National Liberation Army (ELN), the biggest rebel group left in the country.
In Venezuela, the talks aimed at ending the country’s decades-long conflict resumed last month after being suspended in 2019.
“The first point of agreement that we reached with the ELN – in barely a week of these dialogues – is the return of the Indigenous Embera people … to their reservations,” Petro said on Saturday in a public appearance in Dabeiba, a town in northwestern Colombia.
Petro did not specify when the Embera would return to their lands in western Colombia’s Choco and Risaralda departments. As a result of violence between drug gangs, outlawed right-wing armed groups, and the ELN, they fled.
There are now many displaced Embera living in Colombia’s capital who hold frequent protests in parks, clashing with police frequently.
According to ELN delegates to the talks, the humanitarian agreement on the Embera had not been directly addressed by them as of Saturday.
‘Total peace’
Gustavo Petro, a former member of the M-19 rebel movement, was Colombia’s first left-wing president to push for peace negotiations.
The president engaged the ELN after taking office in August as part of his “total peace” policy, and talks resumed despite no ceasefire between the two sides.
In 2016, the ELN’s leaders signed a framework for peace talks with the government of then-President Juan Manuel Santos that allowed “humanitarian relief processes.”
In that year, Santos signed a historic peace agreement with Colombia’s largest and oldest rebel group, the FARC. Different parts of the country were controlled by the FARC and the ELN.
Peace-building civic group Indepaz estimates that the ELN has approximately 2,500 combatants, but previous attempts at negotiation have not progressed because of internal discord.
Although ELN leaders claim the group is united, it is unclear how much influence negotiators hold over active units. In the Pacific region and along the 2,200km (1,370-mile) Venezuelan border, the group is primarily active.
In 2019, Santos’ successor, Ivan Duque, called off talks between the ELN and Santos after the ELN bombed a police academy
