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Unicauca embraces truth and diversity.

La Universidad -

In August 2022, as the Alma Mater of Cauca, we joined various social organizations and educational institutions to become heirs to the Final Report of the Truth Commission "There is a future if there is truth." Our commitment focused on contributing to pedagogical processes for the appropriation of said report and the opening of academic scenarios to encourage knowledge and diverse analytical perspectives on the origins, developments, impacts, and persistences of the armed conflict in the country, as well as the countless efforts for the construction and enforceability of the right to the much-desired peace.

Through various workshops and seminars with teachers and students coordinated by the Social and Humanistic Integral Training Program (FISH), we witnessed the power of remembering with different generations, of knowing and discussing the history of the armed conflict, and generating proposals to make education for peace possible from university classrooms. In this work, we have had wonderful allies such as the Capaz Institute, the National Pedagogical University, the National University of Colombia, the Agency for Reintegration and Normalization (ARN), the Governance and Peace Table of the State University System - SUE, the Follow-up Commission to the Recommendations of the Final Report, among other international cooperation institutions.

In the mission to strengthen the University of Cauca as an Excellent and Solidary University that is, by nature, an institution for peace, within the solidarity and commitment axis with the global environment included in the current Institutional Development Plan, the commitment to building a culture of peace was reaffirmed. This was done at the end of January of the current year with the creation of the Peace Commission under Rectoral Resolution 0071 of 2023. The Peace Commission is promoting scenarios of political impact in the search for total peace, where the issue can be analyzed in depth and where continuous work is carried out for its positioning in different instances. Additionally, we highlight the support of teachers, students, and administrative staff from various faculties and academic programs of our beloved University, present in both Santander de Quilichao and Popayán. They have animated sections of the Report in their curricula, generating numerous reflections with diverse audiences on the plurality of truth, constituting a call to the need to remember with various voices and to build pedagogical tools to circulate the inputs and debates generated by the Truth Commission from a territorial, ethnic, intercultural, gender, and intergenerational perspective.

 

Thus, one year after Colombian society could receive the results of the Truth Commission, whose mandate arose from the Peace Agreement signed in 2016 by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian Government, we remain convinced of the role of academia in the construction of a regional peace agenda and in the generation of deep, broad, and democratic dialogues that allow progress in the construction of a possible and just peace for all, in universities that can be free from any type of violence. Likewise, within the framework of the commemoration of the struggles for diversity that take place this June, we join efforts to document the truth of the conflict for LGBTQ+ and sexual and gender dissidents because peace also involves fighting against discriminations that exacerbated violence inside and outside the armed conflict based on sex and gender identities. Therefore, it is worth defending from our classrooms 'The magic of being able to be.'

Finally, we will promote various activities that, under the campaign "The School Embraces the Truth," will take place this year with the clear objective of continuing to explore and recognize the importance of a legacy that helps us understand the history of the armed conflict, transform it, contribute to justice with a restorative, social, gender, environmental perspective, and that also becomes a tool for the defense of human rights, nature, and access to education for peace.