CARTAGENA, Colombia — More than 220,000 deaths, 8 million homeless and countless human rights violations: These are the tragic toll of South America's oldest armed conflict, which begins to wind down with the signing Monday of a historic agreement between Colombia's government and the country's largest rebel movement to end a half-century of hostilities. Related: How a Colombian-Canadian helped broker the historic peace deal between the government and FARC

Guests at the ceremony in the Caribbean coastal city of Cartagena were asked to wear white and included United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Cuban President Raul Castro and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. On Monday, European Union foreign policy coordinator Federica Mogherini said that with the signing of the peace agreement, the EU would suspend the FARC from its list of terrorist organizations. If the accord is accepted by Colombian voters in Sunday’s referendum, as polls say it will, the FARC’s estimated 7,000 fighters would have to turn over their weapons gradually to a team of United Nations-sponsored observers within six months. The signing was greeted with wild cheers followed by calls for Timochenko to be president from about 1,000 FARC rebels in the Yari Plains, a remote area of southern Colombia where the group recently concluded its last congress as a guerrilla army by endorsing the deal.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC guerrilla leader Rodrigo Londoño, also known as Timochenko, sign a peace accord in Cartagena, ending the longest running armed conflict in the Western Hemisphere. The final agreement will be submitted to popular ratification in a referendum on October 2.