Ex-combatants with Colombia's once largest guerrilla group turned over names and information on several hundred people who went missing during the nation's long civil conflict in a first step toward helping more families find closure. The list was provided to a special unit tasked with finding the missing and contains details on 276 individuals, a small number compared to the more than 60,000 people believed to be disappeared during more than five decades of conflict. Nonetheless, Luz Marina Monzon, the search group's director, described it as an important "first step of many'' that former combatants are making in compliance with Colombia's historic 2016 peace accord.¹

The legal validity of the Territorial Spaces for Training and Reincorporation (ETCR) ended on August 15. The government announced that it will issue a decree for the transformation of these spaces that will not physically disappear. The GoC will also have to define the route of reincorporation that will be implemented in the long term. According to data from the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, FARC political party and the Agency for Reincorporation and Normalization, currently, 13,012 FARC ex-combatants are in the process of reincorporation, 25% reside in one of the 24 ETCRs (3,246), 67% reside outside the ETCRs (8,720) and 8% of their whereabouts are unknown (1,052), this does not mean that they have return to criminal actvities.²

The first productive project made by women ex-FARC combatants is issued in Antioquia. 70 ex-FARC combatants living in the ETCRs of Dabeiba and Mutatá, decided to join and give life to the first productive project made by reincorporated women. It is a fruit and vegetable processing plant that will be called "Autonomous Women: land, territory and solidarity economy for peace and reconciliation". Although the project will start in October, it is expected that by then the plant will be able to process jams, chili sauce and pulp, among other products for later marketing.³

A Humanitarian Commission was caught in the crossfire between army and dissidents. Nearly 400 inhabitants of the villages near the municipality of Suárez (Cauca) were caught in the middle of the armed confrontation. The humanitarian commission formed by the Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia (MAPP OEA) and the Ombudsman's Office have not been able to attend to the people affected by the fighting between the Colombian Army and members of the Jaime Martínez column, one of the FARC's dissidents gruops.⁴

The influence of illegal armed groups and drug traffickers overshadows the upcoming regional elections. After the Havana Agreement and FARC's debut in politics, the areas they had dominated no longer have their electoral 'orientations' on top of them. But other groups took advantage of the vacuum they left and are reaching out for the local elections in October. At least in Putumayo, the Pacific and Catatumbo, their inhabitants will continue to go to the polls in the middle of the conflict and the early warnings are patent, with a strengthened marriage between drug traffickers and illegal armed groups.⁵