U.S. Embassy in Colombia

At the ninth U.S.-Colombia High Level Dialogue, celebrated in Bogotá in October 2021, the governments of the Republic of Colombia and the United States of America committed to strengthen a bilateral, whole-of-government strategy with a long-term vision that brings together efforts toward integrated cocaine supply reduction, rural security, economic development, institutional presence, and environmental protection. This strategy is focused in PDET (Programas de Desarrollo con Enfoque Territorial) municipalities that are most plagued by illicit flows and the dynamics of criminal groups and related violence. The two governments committed to prioritizing these efforts beginning in Caceres, Tumaco, and Sardinata, and to developing new metrics for measuring the sustainability of our holistic joint strategy.

Today, we are pleased to announce a list of eight metrics, agreed upon bilaterally, intended to gauge the success of these holistic efforts to strengthen peace, security, and development in rural Colombia.

1. The Colombian government and United States government agreed upon:
2. Number of hectares of coca eradicated.
3.  Seizures of cocaine and coca base.
4. Number of police trained with USG (INL) assistance serving in rural security positions.
5. Number of hectares titled or with land use contracts.
6. Number of hectares under improved conservation management.

With the Colombian Attorney General’s Office, the United States Government has agreed on three additional metrics:

1. Indictment rate for money laundering charges linked to narcotrafficking.
2. Number and value of seized assets.
3. Number of defendants arrested on charges of environmental crime.

The two governments have agreed to jointly monitor these metrics and publicly release statistics on a yearly basis, both at the national-level as well as at the level of the bilaterally prioritized municipalities, where possible. In agreeing to these metrics, the two governments aim to renew and incentivize multidimensional efforts to reduce cocaine production, promote rural security and development, and protect the environment from criminal groups, networks, and their illicit economies that perpetuate vicious cycles of violence and poverty that also cause deforestation and derive revenue from environmental crimes such as illegal mining.