(Photo | AP)

BOGOTA: Colombia's leftist FARC rebel force formally completed its disarmament process on Monday to end half a century of war against the state, the United Nations said. United Nations monitors said they “have the entirety of the FARC’s registered individual arms stored away,” except for some that were exempted for transitional security at demobilization camps until August 1. MESETAS, Colombia: Colombia's leftist FARC rebel force declared its disarmament complete on Tuesday (Jun 27) after half a century of war against the state, bringing Latin America's oldest civil conflict close to an end. But the process has been blighted by ongoing violence involving other armed groups in recent weeks. President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño, known by his nom-de-guerre “Timochenko” are expected to attend a ceremony on Tuesday to celebrate the successful disarmament of the country’s longest-living guerrilla group. Separately, the U.N. mission is continuing to extract and destroy other weapons and munitions stashed in remote hiding places which the FARC have identified and surrendered to the monitors. Rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, build a stage for the next day's ceremony that will commemorate the completion of the rebels' disarmament process, at the Mariana Paez demobilization zone, one of many rural camps where rebel fighters are making their transition to civilian life, in Buenavista, Colombia, Monday, June 26, 2017. In a short, symbol-filled ceremony, United Nations observers shut and padlocked the last containers storing some of the 7,132 weapons that members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia have turned over the past few weeks at 26 camps across the country. The initial deal was narrowly rejected in a national referendum, congress has struggled to pass laws implementing the revised accord, and opposition lawmakers are threatening to overturn key aspects of the agreement if they win the presidential election next year. Critics such as conservative political leader Alvaro Uribe said it was too lenient on FARC members, some of whom will get amnesties or reduced sentences for crimes committed during the conflict. The FARC launched its uprising in 1964 to fight for land rights and protection for poor rural communities. Almost every guerrilla at the Mariana Paez camp recalled the decade-long bloodletting that followed a previous attempt at peace in the 1980s, when as many 3,000 members of a FARC-aligned political party were gunned down by right-wing paramilitary assassins, sometimes in cahoots with state intelligence services. These are the FARC dissident groups Colombia’s authorities must confront

With the full disarmament of the FARC’s guerrillas, Colombia’s peace process has successfully finished a historic phase of the country’s ongoing peace process that seeks an and to more than half a century of political violence that has left more than 265,000 Colombians dead, tens of thousands missing and 7 million displaced.
The United Nations confirms that the FARC has completed its disarmament process, with former rebels due to make the transition to civilian life and the group to transform into a legal political party in the country.