Our Hearts Are With the People of Colombia A Message from Ambassador Guy Djoken, Executive Director of the UNESCO Center for Peace

There are moments when the distance between countries suddenly feels very small. This is one of them.

We've been watching the news from Colombia with a heavy heart, like so many people around the world. Damaged buildings. Frightened families. Rescue crews digging through rubble with their bare hands in places the equipment can't reach yet, while relatives stand off to the side waiting for a name to be called. It's hard to look at those images and not think about the people behind them.

For us at the UNESCO Center for Peace, this one is personal.

This summer we welcomed a group of young people from Colombia to our summer camp. We got to know them over a few short weeks. Heard their stories at lunch, watched them fall in with kids from three or four other countries almost immediately, listened to them talk about home with a pride you can't fake. They brought something into the Center that's still there, honestly.

Anyone who's spent real time with young people knows how fast that happens. You remember the laughter, the odd questions, the friendships that seem to form overnight and somehow hold. Our Colombian students left us with those memories, and this week we've been holding onto them a little tighter than usual. So when the news started coming in, our first thoughts weren't about death tolls or headlines. They were about our students. Their parents. Their grandparents, teachers, neighbors everyone back home trying to piece together what had happened to their city. To every family who has lost someone, I offer my deepest condolences. No words fix a loss like this. All I can tell you is that you're not grieving alone people far beyond Colombia's borders are thinking of you tonight.

To those still waiting on news of a missing parent, child, or friend: we're hoping right alongside you. That more people are found alive. That the families staring at their phones finally get the call, or see the face, they've been praying for. I want to say something too about the people who ran toward the destruction while everyone else was running from it. Firefighters, doctors, nurses, police, volunteers, neighbors who just started digging before anyone asked them to. Some of them haven't slept in two days. Others have opened their homes, handed out whatever food and water they had, sat with kids who weren't theirs because somebody had to.

That says something about a country.

Colombia has been through hard times before. Its people know what it takes to endure, to lean on each other, and eventually to rebuild. But the road ahead is real some families will go home to houses that are cracked but standing, others won't have a home to go back to at all. Schools, businesses, whole neighborhoods will need time and help. And for a lot of people, the emotional damage is going to outlast the physical damage by a long shot.

But today I just want the Colombian people to know: you're in our hearts.

From all of us at the UNESCO Center for Peace and especially from those of us who got to know your young people this summer — we send our sympathy, our friendship, and our prayers. We're praying for those who've been lost. For those still missing. For the injured, and for the people working around the clock to save them. We're praying for Colombia. May the days ahead bring answers to the families still waiting, some comfort to those who are grieving, and strength to every community now starting the long work of rebuilding.

Ambassador Guy Djoken

Executive Director,

UNESCO Center for Peace

On behalf of the staff and family of the UNESCO Center for Peace