Colombia: Washington will remove the Farc from its list of terrorist organizations

Published on : 11/24/2021 – 05:40

The US government notified the US Congress on Tuesday (November 23) of its intention to remove the former rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) from its blacklist of foreign terrorist organizations, a source told AFP parliamentary. This decision comes on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the peace accords that ended the war in the country.

“I can confirm that the government today sent a notification to Congress informing us that they will remove the Farc from the list of terrorist organizations,” the source said. Previously, the spokesman for American diplomacy Ned Price had confined himself to reporting a “notification about next steps” taken by Washington on the FARC.

The Farc had been on the American blacklist since 1997, which allows for a series of financial and diplomatic sanctions against certain groups and their members. On November 24, 2016, they signed a peace agreement with the then Colombian President, Juan Manuel Santos, after negotiations in Cuba.

Considered the most powerful guerrilla in Latin America with 13,000 combatants, the Farc have since disarmed, even if peace remains fragile in a country still subject to violence, and divided. Having become a political party (Comunes), the former rebellion is now a negligible political force.

With AFP