They rule out Colombia as a possible venue for negotiations between the national government and the ELN

Colombia was ruled out to be the headquarters of the fifth cycle of dialogues with the ELN, after that possibility had been raised at some point; However, both parties rejected that possibility.

On the contrary, it was confirmed that the venue for the fifth cycle of talks between the two parties will be Mexicowhich had already hosted the dialogues during the second round of these negotiations in February 2023.

The two parties agreed that maintaining these dialogues in Colombia for three continuous weeks was very complex due to the insecurity experienced in some regions of the country.

It is worth remembering that the Monday, September 4 the fourth round will end in Caracas Venezuela)after having started on August 14, with the expectation of a start of bilateral ceasefire of six months that began to take effect from on August 3, 2023. The next cycle is scheduled to begin on November 3.

Precisely regarding the peace process and the ceasefire between the Government and the ELN, the Monitoring and Verification Mechanism (MMV) in that case confirmed that in its plenary session the regional bodies of Bucaramanga, Cali, Cúcuta, Medellín, Soacha and Valledupar were installed.

According to the main objectives of the MMV in its National, Regional and Local instances, they are: prevent incidents, solve problems, reduce the intensity of the conflict, allow the participation of society in the peace process and improve the humanitarian situation of the population.

“We proposed to the other delegation that we move forward so that this cycle is the cycle of the people, the people who live in the territories most affected by abandonment and violence,” he said. Otty Patiño, head of the government delegation.

Also, Patiño proposed that “the voices of the victims begin to be heard live and direct (...) let us begin this cycle to make concrete plans where the leaders of the ELN war fronts and the communities of those territories participate. ”.

For its part, Pablo Beltrán, head of the ELN delegation, expressed that “if you asked me a result of this cycle, what is it? That the instruments that the table has created, which is participation [de la sociedad civil] and the cessation [al fuego]truly bring humanitarian relief to the populations and regions that suffer the most.”

During this fourth round the delegations worked to specify the key documents for the application of humanitarian actions and dynamics and the Participation of civil society in the peace process through national and regional meetingswork that he does National Participation Committee (CNP).

He CNP is born from the first point of the Mexico Agreementand is made up of 81 representatives of 30 movements, towns, organizations, unions of society.

He CNP work plan has four phases: the design of participation, the diagnosis and dialogue on democracy for peace, the construction of an agenda on democracy and transformations and, finally, the systematization of the results.

The CNP committed to collecting all the proposals, initiatives and ideas that contribute to the design of participation and that, ultimately, will lay the foundations of a peaceful, diverse and dialoguing democracy, based on the social and political alliance of the great national agreement raised by President Petro.

The specific functions of the CNP include enabling spaces for dialogue with a differential approach, building methodologies for the design of participation, consulting with experts, organizations, sectors and social processes and, finally, systematizing these contributions into a model. of participation that will be presented to the Dialogue Table in the National Participation Plan.