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An article by Maria Alejandra Uribe in W Radio
In the middle of the presentation of the Youth Employability Program, President Gustavo Petro announced that the Government has been working on a project to take away from delinquents and criminal organizations the young people who work in them and who can become peace managers .
Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia. / Photo Guillermo Legaria/Getty Images
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(Click here for the original Spanish version of this article.)
What is happening in Colombia, Is peace possible?
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“We are preparing, with the experience we have had, a large-scale program, that is why we are talking about peace managers, we want to act with excluded youth in the areas with the highest levels of violence in Colombia such as Urabá, poor neighborhoods in Cartagena, from Montería Barranquilla, Chocó where people are hungry”, said the President.
To this the Head of State added, “we plan to achieve a program that covers 100,000 young people in those areas. It will be linked to education and based on the fact that a young person must receive an income that allows them to live with dignity, a salary that can compete with that offered by multi-crime organizations. The credit can be seen as an instrument to promote studies and work.
It is expected that the rules of the game will be established in the coming days so that this great ‘peace army’ can begin to act in the most vulnerable areas of the country and achieve total peace.
(Editor’s note: This proposal is based on a program of 10,000 peace managers that was implemented in Bogota when Petro was mayor of the city. An evaluation of that program is available in Spanish.)