June 12, 2024
Luis Gilberto Murillo (El Espectador Guest Columnist)
The relationship with the United States is 202 years old with diverse scenarios and conditions. What has happened since August 7, 2022 shows the new approach to our international relations, not only with Washington but with the world: respect and independence.
We have diversified the topics in a frank conversation, with many common points, but without hiding our differences. It is a relationship that is in very good health.
There is firm respect for internal political situations, characteristic of democracy, because dialogue and binational relations are promoted beyond electoral circumstances.
Proof of our common interest are the multiple meetings and calls between Presidents Gustavo Petro and Joe Biden, and more than 70 high-level meetings and permanent visits there and here by officials from both countries.
There have been 230 meetings with Republicans and Democrats on cooperation and engagement in Congress. 50 congressmen from both parties have visited Colombia.
Vida Colombia Strategy
It is no coincidence that at the highest annual meeting of both governments, the High-Level Dialogue, 230 experts and officials from the two countries met in Bogotá and 149 commitments were reached in eight working groups.
Beyond the Colombia and Paz Colombia plans, we decided that it is necessary to take the relationship to a new stage with different emphases, approaches and paradigms through the platform we call the “Vida Colombia Strategy.” Formulating it in detail is a central task to modernize the relationship.
The relationship is so important that the US continues to be the leading generator of foreign direct investment, the main destination of Colombian exports and the origin of the largest number of tourists visiting the country (25%).
Over these months, 86 trade agendas were developed with the private sector, a port integration agreement was signed to streamline export routes and an alliance was established between Invías and USAID to improve tertiary routes, key to rural development. In terms of the fight against climate change, there is robust cooperation on environmental issues.
In security and defense there are historic figures in the Colombian Government's fight against drug trafficking, especially in interdiction actions, based on the new approach that does not put rural communities at risk.
For humane and supportive migration, work is being done on the regularization of migrants, immigration control, and the fight against human trafficking, among other aspects. We managed to establish for the first time a family reunification program, which benefits some 60,000 Colombians requested by their relatives in the United States.
Colombians in the US generate half of the more than US$10 billion in remittances that enter the country (almost three points of GDP).
Colombia does not lower its guard in its convictions or in its adherence to its principles of progressive, independent and sovereign foreign policy. It does not give up maintaining a powerful voice in international forums, leading just causes, dissenting, making observations and seeking different paths in areas of disagreement, as well as dynamic work in meeting areas. This approach is the basis of Colombia's contemporary relations with the United States.
*Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia and former ambassador to the United States.
