Biography 
With more than two decades of experience taking part in government-insurgent negotiations, Ana Teresa Bernal Montañez has been elected as one of five commissioners on the Commission on Reparations and Reconciliation. During the groundbreaking dialogues that took place between the Pastrana government and the FARC starting in 1999, Ms. Bernal represented the National Peace Council on the Thematic Commission, a mechanism built into the talks to bring the ideas of civil society to the negotiating table. She is now is national coordinator of Red Nacional de Iniciativas Cuidadanas Por la Paz y Contra la Guerra (National Network of Citizen’s Initiatives for Peace and Against War), a civil society umbrella organization that was among the leaders in the preparation and implementation of the women’s public forum also attached to the Pastrana-FARC dialogues. Ms. Bernal organized the 1997 campaign “Citizen’s Mandate for Peace, Life, and Liberty,” which gained ten million votes through a non-binding ballot that accompanied local elections. (05.2006)