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The Netherlands Expands Contribution to the OAS Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia

The Organization of American States (OAS) today signed an agreement with the Netherlands through which the European country will expand its contribution to the Mission to Support the Peace Process (MAPP/OAS) in Colombia, which accompanies the country in a verification and advisory role during the process of demobilization and reintegration of illegal armed groups, and supports peace efforts.

The document signed sets out an increase of 635,000 dollars in the Dutch contribution to the MAPP, which brings the total contribution since the beginning of the program in 2004 to approximately 14 million dollars. During the signing ceremony, Secretary General Insulza highlighted the importance of the contribution, recalling that “the Kingdom of the Netherlands has supported this Mission since its beginning in 2004, not only has it supported us in times when we were working full speed on all the issues of verification and settlement of displaced persons, but also in moments that were quite difficult.”

Secretary General Insulza highlighted that the importance of the contribution lies not only “in the 14 million we have received from the Netherlands, but also in the political support on this issue, which has made a great difference,” and expressed his desire to “continue counting on you.” The OAS leader recognized that “we are approaching some of the most crucial parts of the process,” but the most important issue, he said “is that we will have peace in Colombia and that we will be there from the beginning.”

For her part, the Charge d’Affaires and Alternate Observer of the Netherlands to the OAS, Joanneke Balfoort, expressed the satisfaction of her country with the agreement, and said “our Minister for Development Cooperation went to Colombia recently and she spoke to everyone there and decided it was very important to continue our support for this important issue, and we hope that we can assist the peace process by continuing our support. We have supported the program for some time now and we will continue to do so.”

The Netherlands, Observer to the OAS since 1972, is one of the most important overall donors to the Organization, with 32 million dollars in contributions since 1999, more than half of which came in the last five years.

Also present at the signing ceremony were the Permanent Representative of Colombia to the OAS, Andrés González Diaz; the Chief of Staff of the Secretary General, Hugo De Zela; the Secretary for External Relations of the OAS, Alfonso Quiñonez; and the Director of the Department of Sustainable Democracy and Special Missions of the OAS, Christopher Hernández-Roy, among others.

A gallery of photos of the event is available here.

The B-Roll of the event is available here.

For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.

Reference: E-522/14