An official ceremony to commemorate the complete surrender of weapons by the militants took place in the Colombian Department of Meta with the participation of President Juan Manuel Santos.
"Today FARC ends its armed struggle after 53 years but FARC is not gone, we are turning into a legal and democratic movement," Echeverri said.
The leader expressed hope that in Colombia a new era of liberal democracy would begin, where the state would not use weapons against its political opponents.
"Farewell arms, farewell war, hello peace," Echeverri concluded.
On Monday, the UN mission in Colombia said that it had received all individual arms of the FARC.
The disarmament of the FARC began in February and was set to complete by late May. However, on May 30, Colombia’s government announced 20-day extension of the arms handover deadline under agreement with the United Nations and the FARC.
FARC was formed in 1964 as the military wing of Colombia's Communist Party. The half-century war between the FARC and the Colombian government claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Attempts by Bogota to negotiate a peace deal successfully ended in 2016, when a peace treaty was signed in November and then approved by the Colombian parliament in December.
