Bogotá. 22 June 2017. At the end of his four-day trip to Colombia, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman gave a message of support to the Government, the FARC-EP and all Colombians.

“I was deeply impressed during this trip, in my discussions with the various people I saw, by the commitment to address and to overcome challenges in order to provide Colombians with the sense of security and the peace that they justly deserve, and that they expect,” affirmed Mr. Feltman. 

During his visit, USG Feltman met with President Juan Manuel Santos, Vice President Oscar Naranjo and senior government officials in charge of peace process implementation. He also had meetings with members of the FARC-EP Secretariat, Civil Society, the Catholic Church, the diplomatic corps in the country, staff of the UN Mission in Colombia and the United Nations System.

Moreover, Mr. Feltman had the opportunity to see up close the process of laying down of arms and the work of the Monitoring and Verification Mechanism during his visit to the Transitional Point Pondores, in the department of La Guajira.

The lay-down of weapons process is continuing in the 26 Transitional Local Zones for Normalization (ZVTN acronym in Spanish) and Transitory Points (PTN, acronym in Spanish) where the UN Mission in Colombia is receiving and storing the individual weapons of the FARC-EP members.

To date, the UN Mission has delivered 3,500 individual laying down of weapons certificates to an equal number of FARC-EP members. Additionally, the UN Mission has reported the arrival of 2,184 militiamen to the zones.

**********

Photos of the visit