Actualidad Colombiana IN ENGLISH

Human Rights Are 'Clogged' Between London and Cartagena

“The Cartagena meeting, more than a board meeting of donors, will be a place for political debate between international cooperation and the Colombian government. Given the rough draft of the declaration that has been circulated, the so-called 'political debate' will be a gesture of flag waving”.

Diego Pérez Guzmán

The meeting of the Board of International Coordination and Cooperation for Colombia is meeting in Cartagena February 3-4. The Board, which is better known as the Board of Donors, plans to continue with the process initiated in London on July 10, 2003. More than 24 governments will be represented, with delegates from the European Union, the European Commission, the United Nations System, the Andean Corporation of Promotion, the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Colombian government.

Security for Whom? Between Democratic Security and the Security for Women

BRÚJULA COMUNICACIONES
SONIA MESA

Using testimonies of Colombian women who live in the middle of the armed conflict and suffer different types of human rights violations, the working group "Women and Armed Conflict" presented, this past October 21, Report IV on the sociopolitical violence against women, youth and children in Colombia.

“They took a woman and they forced her to cook for them during two months, in exchange for the life of her son”
Testimony of an indigenous woman from Caquetá

The launching of this report is framed within the campaign "There is no right, nothing justifies violence against women". The report shows the diverse forms of violence perpetrated by paramilitaries, the army and the guerrillas against women, young people and children, in urban and rural zones throughout the country.

Seminar of Andean Countries International Criminal Court: "A New Instrument in the Struggle Against Impunity"

The general or systematic attack against the civil population, which includes serious violations on the larger scale of the laws and customs of war, crimes attributed not only to members of the illegal armed groups, but also to state public servants, could be subject to judgment by the ICC

DIANA TERESA SIERRA GÓMEZ
Lawyer, Collective Corporations of Lawyers “José Alvear Restrepo”

On September 27, the magazine Semana revealed a recording in which the High Commissioner of Peace, Luis Carlos Restrepo, said to the spokesmen of the United Self-Defenses of Colombia (AUC) in Mesa de Negociación de Santa Fe de Ralito that "... the International Criminal Court is no problem....the danger of the court is not imminent." This demonstrated the way in which the dialogues were developing. Therefore, the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), with its three Colombian affiliations (the Collective Corporation of Lawyers "Jose Alvear Restrepo", the Latin American Institute of Alternative Legal Services (ILSA) and the Permanent Committee for the Defense of the Human Rights and Judicial 'Asonal'), created the Seminar of Andean Countries International Criminal Court (ICC): "a new instrument in the fight against impunity" in the rooms of the Luis Ángel Arango Library of Bogotá, with the purpose of sensitizing public opinion on the importance of the court and of familiarizing the defenders of human rights with the substantive and procedural questions of this court.

What Is There about the Case of the Cajamarca Massacre

Because military penal justice is a source of impunity in cases that constitute serious violations to rights, it is imperative that this crime against humanity is known by ordinary justice

REINALDO VILLALBA VARGAS
Collective Corporation of Lawyers “José Alvear Restrepo”

On April 10, 2004, Colombia was affected by the death of five people, among them four minors, at the hands of the Army in an operation that the authorities quickly described as a MILITARY ERROR, without waiting for the results of legal medical opinions.

We Support the Decision Against the Statute

SOCIAL AND HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS ENDORSE THE DECISION OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT THAT DECLARED THE "ANTITERRORIST STATUTE" UNCONSTITUTIONAL

The organizations signing on to this offical press release include members of the "Confluence for Democracy and Against the War", the Colombia-Europe-United States Coordination and the "Alliance of social and kindred organizations for cooperation for Peace and Democracy". We show our public support to the decision made on August 30th by the Constitutional Court, whereby legislative act 02 of 2003 (known as the antiterrorist statute) was declared unconstitucional.

The existence of profound irregularities in the discussion and approval of this reform was sufficient reason to declare it unconstitutional. We approve of the call of the Constitutional Court to the legislative body to respect the social guarantees of political opposition and dissidence and to accept the procedures established in the proceeding reforms; such demands are fundamental conditions for the Social State of Rights and democracy.

A Town Demanding Its Right to Exist

The establishment of the AUC in the Sierra has had heartbreaking consequences. Threats, selective deaths and massacres, massive displacements, abuses of all kinds towards the population, food and medical restrictions, and land appropriation – fear and terror have seized the zone

ROSA EMILIA SALAMANCA G.
Asociación de Trabajo Interdisciplinario

The town of Kankuamo is located in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta in the north of Colombia and neighbors three other indigenous towns in this beautiful territory: Ika (or Arhuaco), Kogi and Wiwa. These four towns have inhabited the Sierra since time immemorial. Their home and role in this world contributes to the balance of the universe. Their objective is not to accumulate goods, nor to dominate other towns. Their reason for existence is that of care.

Nevertheless, Kankuamo and its culture have been attacked in brutal form throughout the history of colonization, whereby balance does not reign, where little by little care no longer reigns and, through the imposition of religion, so-called civilization disappears their language, their dress, their beliefs, their customs. A profound confusion between the truth of indigenous knowing and the mirage of white appearance took force greatly within. Multiple events and actors brought about this situation at different moments.

The Code of Penal Procedure: A Lost Opportunity

The desire for Colombia to have a secure and fully guaranteed penal system separate from investigatory powers and centered in a public, oral and balanced judgment has been delayed again

Colombian Commission of Jurists

The legislative act 03 of 2002, which reformed the consitutional framework governing penal procedure, as well as the Code of Penal Procedure, was approved to establish a penal system of an 'accusatory' type and a “public and oral judgment, with immediacy of tests, balanced, concentrated and fully guaranteed” (Legislative act 03 of 2002 Art. 2 No. 4). Nevertheless, as was considered in the reforms, these objectives are far from being met. On one side, the necessary balance between the Office of the Public Prosecutor and the defense does not exist, nor do the conditions necessary for the judge to act truly independently. On the other side, the ideal of establishing the judgment as the principal moment within the process is crippled, again, by the powers granted to the Office of the Public Prosecutor, allowing it to evade the procedural stage of the judgment, through mechanisms such as plea bargains. Now we expose the reasons the penal reform does not meet the ideals on which it was inspired.

Refuge: an historical and changing phenomenom

Normative limitations for incorporating different migratory experiences

DANIEL MANRIQUE
ILSA Researcher

The wars of the past century were different. In The History of the Twentieth Century, Eric Hobsbawm defined them as impersonal wars whose technology generated the worst cruelties but made the victims invisible, following distant decisions justified as deplorable operative necessities. After these wars, humankind was accustomed "to obligatory exile and slaughters perpetuated on an astronomical scale, phenomena so frequent that it was necessary to invent new names to designate them: 'expats' or 'genocide’."

It was the century of the refugee, in which the most serious acts of exodus in the history of humankind appeared. Between 1914 and 1922, after World War I and the Russian Revolution, between four and five million people became refugees, a number in no way comparable with what took place in World War II. It is estimated that during May 1945, 40.5 million Europeans were uprooted, not including the Germans forced to flee in advance of the Soviet armies (13 million more!).

Manifesto for truth, justice and reparations

We, the victimas and relatives of the disappear, assassinated, tortured, displaced, and the arbitrarily detained...brought together at the NATIONAL MEETING OF VICTIMS OF CRIMES OF HUMANITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, May 28-29, 2004 in the city of Bogotá: ...

Word document in Spanish

UN demands release

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights demands the ELN release their hostages

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