Kathmandu, January 23. The Afro-Columbian indigenous communities on Thursday issued an open letter to the new elected United States President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Through the collectively written letter, 110 human rights associations sought for protection against armed violence they have been facing since the last 40 years. 

The letter urges the US administration to consider the following points while working for the peace in Columbia.

• Full compliance with what was agreed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia(FARC) signatories in 2016.

• A restart of rapprochement with the ELN guerrilla on Humanitarian Agreements and the development of the six-point agenda for dialogue towards peace.

• A public policy built from the territories and with the communities for the gradual and comprehensive dismantling of all the armed structures inherited from paramilitarism and urban armed groups

• An agrarian reform that makes it possible with the delivery of land, the sanitation of properties that includes the cessation of violence, generating guarantees for the inhabitants of the territories, and in particular for women so that those investors who want to approach these territories to be based on guarantees of dialogue with respect for human rights, democratic principles and respect for the environment of essential goods for the survival of humanity.

• Implementation of a policy of substitution of crops for illicit use agreed with the communities with international oversight.

• Institutional inclusion in the territories with a civil presence of the State in our remote places through houses of justice with the presence of the Comptroller’s Office, the Attorney General’s Office, the Ombudsman’s Office, the Attorney General’s Office and socio-environmental care units with a focus on human security and restorative law.

• More than 900 social, peace and environmental leaders have been assassinated, and more than 200 peace signers. The Peace Agreement signed by President Santos in 2016 and the FARC today is in crisis due to the series of breaches of the agreement, and because a broader peace pact with all the armed groups is necessary.

Biden’s administration is seeking to hold hands with democracies around the world, to solve the global challenges ranging from the problems of climate change to nuclear proliferation, cyberwarfare and pandemic such as COVID-19.

On his first day as the 46th president of the United States, Biden signed 17 executive orders. One of the orders is to restore the U.S. membership in the World Health Organization.

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Joe Biden signed 17 executive orders on his first day at office