Actualidad Colombiana IN ENGLISH

Land and Paramilitarism in the Truth, Justice and Reparation Plan (1)

DARIO FAJARDO MONTAÑO2

In a debate like this one, it is important to put on the table the greatest things that permit us to be consequent with what is happening in the world and with the experiences that we consider useful for building what we believe is our common denominator: a viable country.

The subject of land and, specifically, the concentration of land ownership, is a very old subject. Suffice it to say that the first mission of the World Bank when it came to Colombia in 1950, under the direction of Professor Lauchlin Currie, indicated that, indeed, the concentration of land property was one of the greatest obstacles for the country's development.

The Pending Issues in Santa Fe de Ralito

AN OPEN LETTER TO MARIO CALDERóN*
LUIS EDUARDO CELIS

December 1st was the two-year anniversary of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) agreeing to a two-year cease-fire. Two years are an important amount of time for a process of dialogue and negotiation, and also for the opportunity to read up on some fundamental subjects.

We can differentiate between procedural subjects, referred to as those which generate the conditions which make possible a legitimate, dynamic and irreversible process; amongst these subjects are the cessation of hostilities and cease-fire, concentration, international support, citizen participation and information, truthfulness, happiness, and quality.

Humanitarian Hermeneutics for Crimes against Humanity

CAMILO GONZÁLEZ POSSO
Indepaz

On November 18, the Office of the High Commissioner of the United Nations for Human Rights returned to the subject of kidnappings and the possibilities of humanitarian exchanges and, with the exception of a handout, there have been few comments on the matter. One of the newspapers emphasized that an assumption endorsing military actions for the rescue of hostages or abductees in no part mentioned that, in reality, a fundamental concept about the framework establishes the international norms constraining Colombia..

In that document, among others, it is maintained that under no circumstances can conditional freedom be granted to those who were condemned of military crimes or crimes against humanity. Point 10 of the "Directions" does not give rise to several readings, nor can it now with the imprisoned guerrillas or with the new law already announced, give a legal framework to the demobilization process and alternative punishments to the heads of AUC implicated in serious violations of humanitarian norms.

The Demobilization and Its Shadows

TEÓFILO VÁSQUEZ
Cinep Researcher

Following the crisis generated by the information leaked to the press concluding that Colombia has been 'paramilitarized' and that this is the most serious problem of governability, the Colombian government and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) announced the beginning of a massive AUC demobilization as a mechanism for re-launching the process.

The One Hundred Twenty Days of La Mesa de Santafe de Ralito, Or the Parable of the Truck Racing Down a Hill Without Brakes

LUIS EDUARDO CELIS

The Installation

On July 1, in Santafe de Ralito, a Tierralta municipality in the Cordova district, a locale considered to be the cradle and the epicenter of the second 'generation' of paramilitarism, the table of dialogue between the government of President Uribe and the United Autodefenses of Colombia (AUC) was formally installed.

Prior to this discussion, two talks on the AUC concentration failed – the law project for Alternative Penal in August 2003 and the project of Truth and Reparation in May 2004. They oscillated between the submission to justice, that at times seemed to characterize the government's negotiating team, and an ample agenda of subjects proposed by AUC, emulating the guerrillas, subjects that would have to be arranged between the parties.

Armed Conflict: A Look at the Medium Term

Uribe expresses his bid for re-election with a clarity that is intimately related to the war and formal policy in Colombia. The consensus on the re-election is sustained by the plan for defeating the guerrillas

TEOFILO VÁSQUEZ
Cinep Researcher

This article takes a structural look at the causes of the conflict and the critical events for peace and war in Colombia. It is of vital importance to consider the structural complexity and consequences of the generalized crisis in our country, which must not be forgotten in the pursuit of daily events.

The medium-term factors that will be treated here are: the dilemma of peace and development; the characterization of the war in Colombia and its practical consequences; the internationalization of the conflict and the character of the international community; and the counter-reform political agenda brought about by the paramilitary phenomenon.

The Human Drama of Arauca

So far this year, according to a report by the Personerías, Defensoría human rights organizations and other sources, 700 selective murders and nine disappearings have occurred within the district

LUIS JAIRO RAMÍREZ
Permanent Committee of Human Rights

Since taking office, and within the policy framework of democratic security, President Alvaro Uribe has marked the district of Arauca a laboratory of war. This happened with the declaration of the municipalities of Arauca, Arauquita and Saravena as Special Zones of Rehabilitation and Consolidation.

Very quickly, Arauca became the most militarized district in the country with the presence of Brigade XVIII, the mobile brigades, the special forces, the specialized police and the presence of the North American military – all under the pretext of protecting the oil infrastructure and providing peace to the settlers.

Colombia Without a Process of Peace

JESÚS ANÍBAL SUÁREZ M

In reality, Colombia has not been in a profound process of peace that will eliminate the causes that generated the political violence.

A real process of peace demands an agreement in society, allowing it to eradicate the fundamental ideological, political and economic factors that stimulated the armed conflict in the first place.

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!).

Humanitarian Agreements: So Close Yet So Far

Camilo González Posso
Presidente of Indepaz

Humanitarian themes accompany wars everywhere, if with blood and tears. But almost always with tears of the victims, with a long bereavement amongst their relatives, neighbors or associates, and an astounding indifference by those who have entered the vertigo of the confrontation or the market of violence. For those victimized, the succession of macabre events turn them into "collateral effects", executed by a disguised enemy, inevitable costs or 'accompanying coins' in the military budgets.