President of Colombia says that relationship with the UN is strong.
The president of Colombia, Iván Duque, met yesterday with the head of the United Nations (UN), Antonio Guterres, after protesting a report from the organization that denounces homicides and abuses committed by police and military, but said that relations with the UN “They are going through a very good time.”
President Duque said the half-hour meeting with Guterres, at the UN headquarters in New York, was “very good” and announced a “fundamental” framework cooperation agreement between both parties until 2023.
The agreement will focus on three axes: peace with legality; attention to the Venezuelan migrant population and the application of the 17 sustainable development goals in Colombia by 2030, Duque told reporters after the meeting.
Duque also said he hopes Guterres can visit Colombia this year.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet alerted at the end of February in her annual report on 15 homicides and other human rights violations allegedly committed in 2019 by members of the Colombian army and police.
“This figure is the highest recorded by this office since 2016,” when the agreement that led to the disarmament and transformation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) into a political party was signed, Alberto Brunori, a representative, said in the report. of Bachelet in Colombia.
Duque considered that the report is biased, has “inaccuracies” and violates the sovereignty of the country by advising that police supervision be transferred from the Ministry of Defense to the Interior.
“We have no refusal to have the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights present in our country. And in fact last October the mandate was renewed. We made specific comments on aspects of the report in which we raised some voices of protest perhaps, but I think there is always a proactive sense of giving such comments, “Duque told reporters at the UN.
“This work will lead us to have the possibility of reiterating which are the agencies that have specific mandates so that the information is uniform,” he added without giving further explanations.
The president also said that the process of “rigorous” interviews with the person who will replace Brunori in office has already begun, since he “ends his stay in Colombia.”
The 15 deaths of 2019 occurred according to the UN amid “military operations related to citizen security” and “the fight against drug trafficking, ” Brunori said.
The representative of the High Commissioner also considered that there were “excessive responses” by the public force in the context of the protests that broke out in Colombia on November 21 against the Duque government.