Human Rights in Colombia
As the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights wrote in this year’s report, “Colombia’s forty-year internal armed conflict continues to be accompanied by widespread violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. Both guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups commit serious violations, including massacres, targeted assassinations, and kidnappings.”
As a result of the conflict, Colombia has one of the world’s largest populations of internally displaced persons. As Human Rights Watch has reported, it also has one of the world’s highest numbers of child combatants, with over 11,000 children belonging to guerrilla and paramilitary groups. Human rights defenders, journalists, academics, indigenous leaders, and labor union leaders are frequently targeted for their work.
Units of the armed forces have historically maintained close ties to paramilitary groups, and have been implicated in the commission of atrocities in collusion with such groups. However, the government has yet to take credible action to break these ties. Impunity, particularly with respect to high-level military officials, remains the norm.
Impunity is also a serious problem in relation to atrocities committed by paramilitary groups. These groups are currently in demobilization negotiations with the Colombian government, but have been blatantly flouting their cease-fire declaration. Notably, the government has yet to put in place an effective legal framework to dismantle the paramilitaries’ complex structures and ensure accountability for paramilitary atrocities. As a result, there is a real risk that the current demobilization process will leave the underlying structures of these violent groups intact, their illegally acquired assets untouched, and their abuses unpunished.
What can you do?
WRITE TO YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS
- Call (202) 224-3121 or click here to find your congressional representative [http://clerk.house.gov/members/index.html]
- Call (202) 224-3121 or click here to find your senators [http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm]
- Click here for a sample letter you can use as a model
WRITE TO THE COLOMBIA GUERRILLAS
- Colombia’s guerrillas commit frequent, egregious abuses, including massacres, targeted killings, the use of indiscriminate weapons and the recruitment of children. Stopping these abuses and ensuring that international humanitarian law principles are enforced is a necessary foundation for any peace in Colombia.
- Click here for a sample letter you can use as a model
- Pulsar aquí para una carta en español
CONTRIBUTE TO THESE WORTHY ORGANIZATIONS
- Amnesty International-USA is a membership organization that involves people from all over the world in the work for human rights. Its ability to mobilize public opinion can mean the difference between life or death, freedom or torture
- Human Rights Watch is one of the most influential, agile and hard-working human rights organizations in the world today. The organization takes on complex problems and works hard to propose real-life solutions that further the protection of human rights
- The International Committee of the Red Cross is one of the best, most involved and most productive organizations I ever came across
- Peace Brigades International is a non-governmental organization that maintains international observer and accompaniment teams in areas of conflict at the request of local human rights groups. The teams protect the political space of human rights defenders who suffer repression due to their non-violent work for human rights.
- The Washington Office on Latin America, active since the mid-1970s, worked behind the scenes to write the first major legislation conditioning U.S. military aid abroad on human rights practices, WOLA has played a key role in all major Washington policy debates over human rights in Latin America.
- World Vision is one of the best and most effective humanitarian aid organizations I have come across in the world
GET INFORMED
- A selected bibliography of Colombia readings is available at the end of More Terrible Than Death. It includes web sites, films and works of fiction, history and memoir.
- Diary of a human rights investigation
- February 24, 2000 testimony before the U.S. Senate
- Interviews