Implementation, Verification and Ratification

Item 6 contains the agreement regarding procedures for implementation and verification of the Final Agreement and its various components. On the one hand, upholding the agreement depends upon the iron will of the signatories to honor each of the commitments in it. On the other hand, it also depends on support from a diversity of actors who are involved in its implementation, who pressure the parties to meet their commitments, and who take on the important task of monitoring and verifying advances and setbacks.

This agreement establishes a Committee for Monitoring, Impelling and Verifying the Implementation of the Final Agreement, made up of representatives from the national government and the FARC-EP. The objective of said committee, among other things, is to monitor the components of the Agreement and verify their fulfillment, serving as an agency for the resolution of differences and tracking legislative implementation. Additionally, it creates a process whereby the international community can support the implementation of the Final Agreement, in a variety of ways for a variety of points in the Agreement. In terms of verification, it sets up a model with an international component, made up of the countries that played a role as guarantors or partners, and two international spokespersons, all with technical support from the Peace Accords Matrix (PAM) project of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame University in the United States.

In Items 1 through 5 of the Final Agreement, there are various fulfillment guarantees, demonstrating that this is not a criterion limited to Item 6, but one that crosses the entire Agreement. Firstly, these agreements are some of the most detailed in the world, which leaves little room for interpretation of the Final Agreement, resulting in committments that can be tracked and, thus, exacted. Secondly, the agreements in Items 1 through 5 contain various monitoring and support procedures, which are intended to reinforce their implementation.

Nonetheless, Item 6 takes new steps and considers solutions to four potential problems that were anticipated for the process of implementing the Final Agreement:

1. The need for measurable indicators and for a secuential route to implementation. The peace agreements are political in nature and contain committments that should be incorporated into the nation’s political and legal system as new regulatory frameworks. These committments should be firmly established through measurable indicators and a route to implementation. To adequately track the process, an implementation plan was created that included, as a planning guide, the set of proposals and necessary objectives, goals, priorities and indicators for the implementation of each agreement.

2. Failures in the implementation deadlines. During their early years, without exception, peace agreements tend to fail in meeting their agreed upon deadlines for implementation. This is because they don’t usually have clear timelines and steps that help to guide the precision of the committements over time. To avoid this situation, the plan for implementation included a timeline that identifies responsible parties that were tasked with these deadlines. Additionally, the agreement included a prioritized list of proposed regulations that contains the main constitutional and legal changes that both parties considered essential for beginning the implementation.

3. Problems of interpretation and in launching committments. During implementation, it is common that there are quandaries, difficulties and differences of interpretation and problems in the implementation of many committments. To confront this issue, a space was created to resolve differences, where micro accords could be made and disputes and differences could be resolved between the signatories. This space came together as the Committee for Monitoring, Impelling and Verifying the Implementation of the Final Agreement (CSIVI according to its Spanish initials).

4. Scattered efforts and a low level of coordination. Faced with the problem of scattered international support and a low level of coordination within the state, signatories committed to urging various organizations, countries and international bodies to support specific efforts within the peace process.

Faced with the implementation priorities, both delegations agreed on the principal laws and regulatory changes—which were to have a sequence and take place at specific times—, many of these associated with the FARC-EP laying down of arms, their termination as an insurgent group, and the sequence of events required for their transformation into a democratic political organization. Likewise, the delegations identified the countries and entities that could oversee the implementation of various items in the accords and what the principal tools of dissemination and communication would be.

This item also contains a chapter on ethnicity whose purpose is to guarantee an ethnic and differential perspective during the implementation of the agreements, which helps to guarantee the rights of indigenous, black, afrodescendentant, Raizal and Palenquero peoples as well as the intersection between the accords and the institutions, practices and individual cultures of these peoples.

Finally, in order for the Colombian people to become familiar with and to accept the Agreement, a ratification mechanism was chosen so that each person could make his or her own decision. Although the end of a conflict does not require a direct vote, this was done not only because the president of the republic had promised to do so, but because there were contents that required broad democratic approval, like the rural reform and the broadening of political and citizen pariticipation. The Agreement, in its initial version, considered the Plebiscite as a mechanism of ratification; upon being rejected by a small margin on October 2, 2016, a process of renegotiation began that changed aspects of the Final Agreement.