Similar to the procedures for citizen participation developed during the public phase of the conversations between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP (public forums, the physical and virtual submission of proposals for Havana, inviting experts, visits from victims, etc.), some preexisting or newly-created agencies were also relevant for the negotiations. One of them was the National Peace Council, which had existed since the end of the 1990s and was composed of representatives from different social sectors tasked with advising the Colombian government on the direction that its peace policies should take. This agency was revived for the negotiations with the hope that it would further dynamize participation and the dialogue around the peace process, generating initiatives within other social sectors around subjects like reconciliation and peaceful coexistence. At specific moments in the conversations, the government set up other advisory agencies as a way to invite different social sectors to share their expectations and proposals for the peace conversations as in the case of the Advisory Commission for Peace, created in 2015 to accompany the final phase of the negotiations.
In this section, you can find different reflections on and analyses of the participatory and advisory agencies set up during the peace process, their reach and their evolution, as well as lessons learned from their presence.
