The UN political mission in the country on Tuesday confirmed that “on 20 June the third phase of the laying down of individual weapons of the FARC-EP combatants was initiated.”

The Mission has now stored 7,132 arms, which constitutes all the weapons that were registered from FARC-EP. The only exclusions from the list are the weapons used to provide security in the 26 FARC-EP camps until 1 August 2017.

“To date, the Mission has verified 77 arms caches from which weapons have been extracted and munitions, explosives and unstable armaments destroyed,” the UN political mission said.

The lay down is in compliance with the timeline agreed to between the Government and FARC-EP on 29 May, part of the historic deal that ended the half-century long conflict.

The arms laydown process – a major component in the peace agreement – includes five distinct steps including: registration and identification of weapons, monitoring and verification of the holding of weapons, reception and storage of arms, neutralization of arms (to ensure that they will never again be used as firearms), and extraction of arms from camps.