UN General Assembly
2015

In Colombia, we have gone even further. Last week, I presented a comprehensive crop-substitution plan based on that multifaceted approach. Not only will we attack the mafias, whom we will pursue relentlessly, but we will also provide social and economic opportunities for farmers, ensure that the State and the justice system are ever-present, prevent drug use and treat it as a public health issue. If we end the conflict, the guerrilla forces that have been a negative factor in drug-trafficking will become, once they lay down their weapons, an ally in combating it. It will be extraordinarily symbolic when those who once protected these illicit crops will help us to eradicate them. In that way, Colombia wins and the entire world wins. We will begin to free ourselves from coca and, at the same time, to preserve and save millions of hectares of tropical forest. As the Pope so eloquently said in this very Hall four days ago, “war is the negation of all rights and a dramatic assault on the environment” (A/70/PV.3, p. 5).