UN Security Council Members Condemn Attempt On Colombian VP’s Francia Marquez’s Life

Members of the Security Council of the United Nations on Wednesday condemned the recent assassination attempt on Colombian Vice President Francia Márquez, as she recommited to her advocacies during her term.

Márquez, who was elected in September along President Gustavo Petro as the first Black Vice President of the country, spoke in front of the U.N. Security Council to condemn the attempted assassination attempt on her, condemning the attempt and recommiting herself to her goals as a politician, according to the Associated Press.

She said that as the “daughter of an ancestral land, as the spokesperson of the Colombian people and representative of a government that has come to power to change the history of my country,” that the government will continue on its path to “confront violence, social injustice and structural inequalities.”

Márquez’s security team had found 15 pounds of explosives in the road by her home in Cauca, which was detonated in a controlled explosion. Her time as an outspoken environmental activist has made her familiar with death threats and attempts on her life, including an assassination attempt in 2019, Yahoo! News reported.

During the speech, Márquez reiterated the Petro administration’s commitment to “total peace” in the country with their continued peace talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN), and that she hoped it would reach even the marginalized sectors of the society.

Members of the Security Council, including Brazilian U.N. ambassador Ronaldo Costa Filho, French deputy ambassador Nathalie Broadhurst, and Japanese U.N. ambassador Ishikane Kimihiro, have denounced the attempted killing and expressed “solidarity with the vice-president whose life came under threat.”

They also, at the beginning of the meeting, passed a resolution for the expansion of the Colombian U.N. Verification Mission mandate to include monitoring how the implementation of the “chapters in the peace agreement on rural reform and ethnic issues,” which Márquez praised to show the agreement’s importance in the world.