With the accompaniment of the Church, Armed Group agrees to deliver 13 tons of weapons to the Colombian government

The Armed Group National Coordinator Bolivarian Army (CNEB) promised to deliver 13.5 tons of weapons to the Colombian government to be destroyed, in an agreement that reached the accompaniment of the Catholic Church.

This is Agreement No. 12, signed on July 19 after the dialogues carried out in the Indigenous Protection of Inda Zabaleta, of the municipality of Tumaco, in the department of Nariño.

The tables of the government of Gustavo Petro and the CNEB were present at the table, as well as the delegate of the Episcopate for Church-State Relations, Mons. Héctor Fabio Henao.

In dialogue with ACI Press, Mons. Héctor Henao explained that the representatives of the Church “We are permanent companions of the table (of negotiations), together with the United Nations.”

“Our role is to link the territories and, in that sense, we have invited to participate both the diocesan administrator of the Diocese of Tumaco and the delegated priest in the department of Putumayo”, who during the conversations transmit “the concerns of the communities” that suffer the armed conflict.

This approach, he said, has allowed the Church to show negotiators that populations want “responses that guarantee a level of stability” in the region.

In that sense, the Episcopate delegate said that during the conversations the guerrillas were already expressed to the government “to specify the phases that are much safer to benefit the communities” and “create a humanitarian climate” in favor of the population and the environment.

“All these considerations led to the table, as such, began to address the issue of weapons. It is a very complex issue in conflicts, very difficult to solve because there is always a high level of confidence,” he explained.

The episcopate representative said that, “as a demonstration of trust, this group agreed with the Government for a first step with the destruction of these 13 tons of ammunition and artifacts.”

According to the Presidency of Colombiathe armed group will deliver 9 tons located in the department of Nariño, border with Ecuador; and 4.5 in Putumayo, department that also borders Ecuador and Peru.

Mons. Henao explained that the protocol establishes “that these weapons must be delivered in a specific place, or in several places, to the military forces”, which will be responsible for destroying them. He has “invited the OAS in Colombia to be present and do the verification work,” he said.

Likewise, communities will be informed about the process, so that they have knowledge that there will be controlled detonations.

The National Bolivarian Army Coordinator, composed of about two thousand people, was part of the second Marquetalia, one of the armed groups known as “the Dissidencies of the FARC”, as they did not know the Peace agreement that this guerrillas signed with the Colombian State in 2016.

The Petro government held peace conversations with the second Marquetalia, but the dialogue was truncated at the end of 2024. However, two of its fronts chose to separate themselves from said organization to continue with the negotiation table under the name of the National Bolivarian Army Coordinator.

State presence is needed

During the interview, Mons. Henao explained that in Colombia, as well as in other parts of the world, a phenomenon is being given “which is the fragmentation of conflicts.”

“This fragmentation goes through the emergence of new groups or division of existing groups due to different motivations, both of territorial control and, in some cases, as is usually in Colombia, by control of illicit economies.”

In that sense, when it was consulted what is required to end these conflicts and achieve peace, the representative of the bishops said that it is needed to “assure the communities, in which the groups reach peace agreements, a state presence that responds to their needs and that copes the space where the illegal actors were”.

Mons. Henao said that “one of the backbone columns of this whole process must be the implementation of the 2016 agreements signed with the FARC, because there was no adequate, efficient copulation of the State in the territories where the FARC was, then new groups were generated again.”

Therefore, he said that “these processes must be seen as an opportunity for the State to make presence and establish, as he said, a full democratic governance, which also guarantees the exercise of citizen rights and freedoms.”

In his Humanitarian Situation Report 2025published in June, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the UN (Ochoa) indicated that from January to April of this year “the impact of the armed conflict remains alarming with more than 953,300 people affected (7,900 daily and more than 238,000 per month)”.

The document warns that “this number is four times higher than that registered in the same period of 2024”.