HUMAN RIGHTS: UN Commission Must Get Tough on Colombia, Say Activists

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Apr 8 2005 (IPS) - The United Nations Commission on Human Rights must urgently shake itself from its slumber on Colombia, because “we are going to have a destroyed country on our hands,” warn activists.

Human rights groups from Colombia are calling for the strengthening this year of the follow-up mechanisms aimed at ensuring compliance with the recommendations for Colombia adopted by the Commission every year in its annual session.

The Commission, the highest U.N. human rights body, which is holding its 61st annual session through Apr. 22 in Geneva, will discuss next week the human rights abuses committed in the context of Colombia’s armed conflict, which has already dragged on for over four decades.

Gustavo Gallón, director of the Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ), a highly respected human rights group, said the U.N. Commission should approve a resolution this year that would differ substantially from its earlier ones, and that would have “more teeth”.

“The recommendations are not made to be fulfilled within 20 years, because people are getting killed, detained and ‘disappeared’ in Colombia every day, and that has to stop,” Gallón told IPS.

The 27 recommendations that the Commission adopted last year were addressed to the three branches of government, the monitoring bodies charged with the protection and promotion of human rights, civil society, the international community, and the illegal armed groups in Colombia.

They are grouped together in six categories: prevention and protection; the internal armed conflict; the rule of law and impunity; economic and social policies; promotion of a culture of human rights; and technical cooperation and advisory services of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) office in Colombia.

According to the OHCHR office in Colombia, which opened in 1996, implementation of the recommendations last year “was less consistent than desired or necessary, given the gravity of the problem.”

The recommendations adopted by the Commission in 2004 were similar to those set forth in 2003 and in previous years, says the OHCHR report on Colombia, to be discussed next Tuesday by the U.N. Commission.

It adds that some government actions and measures have actually run counter to the Commission’s recommendations and international humanitarian law, and have aggravated human rights problems.

“If the situation does not improve, it’s not the fault of the U.N. office in Colombia, but because the recommendations are neither complied with nor respected by the Colombian government,” said Gallón.

The OHCHR office in Colombia reported continued violations of the right to life, personal integrity, freedom, security, due process and privacy, and of the freedom of movement, residence, opinion and expression.

The situation remains critical, with an increased number of reports of extrajudicial executions blamed on members of the government security forces, and “high levels of torture and forced disappearance.”

At the same time, the illegal armed groups “totally ignored the recommendations addressed to them” and “continued to commit grave breaches of international humanitarian law and showed a complete lack of respect for human rights,” adds the report.

In Colombia’s civil war, right-wing paramilitary militias grouped in the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), along with the armed forces (with whom they reportedly have close ties) are pitted against the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) – the main rebel group – and National Liberation Army (ELN).

There has been “expansion and consolidation of paramilitary groups” in some parts of the country, despite the declaration of a ceasefire, the disappearance of the top AUC leader, Carlos Castaño, and negotiations with the government that have given rise to a demobilisation process, says the OHCHR office’s report.

According to the CCJ, AUC committed 1,889 murders between the December 2002 declaration of a unilateral ceasefire and August 2004.

The “consolidation” of paramilitary groups has included an increase in social and institutional control at a local and regional level, as well as close ties to drug trafficking, says the report.

The local OHCHR office also notes that “Repeated statements were made by high-level government officials denying the existence of an internal armed conflict and affirming only the existence of a terrorist threat against Colombian society.

“This new characterisation of a problem that has existed for decades in the country could lead to confusion and problems in a number of fields, from statistical data to public policies, including the rigorous application of international humanitarian law,” it adds.

In his interview with IPS, Gallón said that like the reports from previous years, the latest OHCHR office report on Colombia is a “serious and professional document.”

In addition, he said, it makes an even harsher assessment of the human rights situation in Colombia than earlier reports, and is stricter with respect to its analysis of the statistics presented by the government, which suffer major problems in terms of “consistency and rigour.”

In the last few months of 2004, there was an increase in the number of murders of indigenous leaders, and in the number of requests for protection by trade unionists, journalists, former mayors and members of the leftist Patriotic Union and Communist parties, says the report.

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders denounced this week in Geneva that members of the National Union of Food Industry Workers in Barranquilla, a department (state) on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, had received death threats.

The Observatory is a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT).

The 19 workers targeted by death threats work at Coca Cola plants in Barranquilla and the town of Santa Marta.

The threats were received when the Barranquilla branch of the union was preparing a petition for the Coca Cola bottling plants in northern Colombia, on the Caribbean coast, OMCT director Eric Sottas told IPS.

The report by the Colombian office of the OHCHR also mentions that “The rights of women and girls continue to be violated by sexist stereotypes and different forms of discrimination, violence and exclusion.”

In a context of the “militarisation of society” and armed conflicts, risks and insecurity increase for women, because gender violence becomes more acute, Ana Milena González, with the Colombian human rights group Women and Armed Conflict, commented to IPS.

Civil society organisations in Colombia are also demanding more information on the paramilitary demobilisation process.

The government of right-wing President Alvaro Uribe has been holding closed-door negotiations with AUC, which have resulted in the disarmament of nearly 7,000 paramilitary fighters since December 2003.

However, no verification system has been put in place, and the immense majority of the “demobilised” paramilitaries are still armed, and continue to use their weapons to intimidate and extort civilians, Federico Andreu Guzmán, deputy secretary-general of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, remarked to IPS.

The Colombian Congress only recently began to debate a bill that would establish a legal framework providing for “justice, reparations and truth” in the paramilitary disarmament process, which would also apply to eventual peace talks with the guerrillas.

Gallón said there are myriad motives for demanding more effective mechanisms from the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which he said cannot merely adopt decisions without caring whether they are simply ignored.

Human rights activists have suggested that High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour present an interim report on the situation in Colombia to the U.N. General Assembly, in order to make the crisis in the war-torn South American country a focus of concern for the international community twice a year, said Gallón.

Another mechanism suggested by civil society groups is the naming of a special rapporteur or other expert to assist the Colombian office of the OHCHR in its work to monitor and promote compliance with the U.N. Commission’s recommendations.

The designation of a special rapporteur or other U.N. official to focus on the situation in a specific country is one of the most extreme steps the Commission can take, and something that governments try at all costs to avoid.