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Colombia’s Libraries of Peace

Since concluding a landmark peace agreement with the FARC last year, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has shown visionary leadership in engaging with formerly guerrilla-controlled areas. One example is his government’s commitment to making mobile public libraries available to previously isolated, under-educated communities.

NEW YORK – In a world where the threat of large-scale war seems to increase by the day, peace treaties are rare and precious accomplishments. One of the most significant in recent history was concluded just last year, when Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos brokered an agreement between the Colombian government and the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). That deal, which the Colombian government ratified last December, formally ended a 50-year civil war that claimed the lives of more than 220,000 people.

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