Publicado por la Comisión Colombiana de Juristas el 29 de abril de 2020.
Launch of a book-length report on methods of psychosocial accompaniment for conflict victims seeking restitution of stolen landholdings.
April 29, 2020
Publicado por la Comisión Colombiana de Juristas el 29 de abril de 2020.
Launch of a book-length report on methods of psychosocial accompaniment for conflict victims seeking restitution of stolen landholdings.
April 29, 2020
Publicado por la Comisión Colombiana de Juristas el 29 de abril de 2020.
Explains methods of psychosocial accompaniment for conflict victims seeking restitution of stolen landholdings.
April 29, 2020
A presidential decree lowers judicial penalties to members of criminal groups who agree to demobilize peacefully and submit to the High Commissioner for Peace.
It does not apply to the ELN, whose “political character” the state recognizes, making benefits available to individual ELN deserters. It applies instead to FARC dissident groups, the Gulf Clan and Caparros neo-paramilitary groups, and the Pelusos or EPL. These are the groups that, according to the government, meet the Geneva Conventions Protocol II definition of those “which, under responsible command, exercise such control over a part of its territory as to enable them to carry out sustained and concerted military operations.”
April 28, 2020
Publicado por Viva la Ciudadanía el 28 de abril de 2020.
A detailed look at how the participatory elements of peace accord implementation have been working.
April 28, 2020
Publicado por el Instituto para las Transiciones Integrales el 28 de abril de 2020.
A look at how the COVID-19 crisis is affecting historically conflictive parts of Colombia that were prioritized for the peace accord’s Territorially Focused Development Programs (PDET).
April 28, 2020
Congressional representatives from the governing Centro Democrático party propose to divert planned peace accord spending into COVID-19 relief efforts. The Duque administration does not agree.
April 27, 2020
The ELN announces that it will not renew the one-month unilateral ceasefire that it declared for April, citing the COVID-19 pandemic. “It was unfortunate that the Duque government did not respond in a reciprocal manner,” reads the guerrilla communiqué. The ELN missive calls for its negotiators to be allowed to leave Cuba, where they have been since peace talks broke down in January 2019, and re-enter Colombia as agreed in the talks’ protocols.
“We think there’s an enormous lack of harmony between the ELN’s leaders. Two have made declarations, one in Cuba and one is in Venezuela,” says High Commissioner for Peace Miguel Ceballos. “It would seem that they don’t have good contact with their organization’s members and they seem disconnected with the reality that needs non-violent action.”
Earlier in the day, the UN Mission in Colombia had called on the ELN to prolong the ceasefire.
CERAC, a Bogotá think-tank that monitors security, measured no ELN offensive actions during April.
April 27, 2020
Publicado por Rodeemos el Diálogo el 27 de abril de 2020.
Truth Commissioner Ángela Salazar, who focuses on the Pacific region, talks to youth leaders about work to build truth and memory.
April 27, 2020
Raises concerns about persistent impunity for human rights violations committed by state actors, and calls on the International Criminal Court to remain vigilant.
April 26, 2020
Publicado por La Silla Vacía el 25 de abril de 2020.
A discussion of peace accord implementation during the time of coronavirus, with María Alejandra Vélez of the Universidad de los Andes, Kyle Johnson of the Kroc Institute, and Juan Carlos Garzón of the Fundación Ideas para la Paz.
April 25, 2020
Published by Rodeemos el Diálogo on April 25, 2020.
An analysis by Gwen Burnyeat and Andrei Gómez-Suárez of recent events and prospects for renewed dialogues with the ELN.
April 25, 2020
Publicado por el Ministerio de Defensa Nacional el 24 de abril de 2020.
Data tables breaking down 5,524 child combatants who left armed groups over an 18-year period. (Link at eltiempo.com)
April 24, 2020
We’ve added a fifth resource to this site’s page of “Explainer” documents: a graphics-heavy overview of the growing network of FARC “dissident” groups around the country. These are armed groups founded by, and mostly comprised of, fighters who either rejected the 2016 peace accord outright, or demobilized in 2017 only to take up arms again. The Explainer covers the groups’ origins and estimated size, their illicit revenue streams, their poor human rights record, the two main national dissident confederations, and some regions in which dissidents are embroiled in violent territorial disputes.
April 24, 2020
The following April 23, 2020 statement is cross-posted from wola.org. We are alarmed that Colombia is not only going ahead full-throttle with manual eradication operations in coca-growing zones during a pandemic, but that eradicators’ security-force escorts have killed two civilians in the past four weeks.
Washington, D.C.—On Wednesday, April 22, in an Indigenous community in southwest Colombia, public security forces killed one person and injured three others who were peacefully protesting a police operation to manually eradicate coca plants. Members of the police eradication team fired into a group of Awa Indigenous people, who were attempting to talk to them about why Indigenous authorities hadn’t been consulted about the planned eradication, as required by law. The death is the second related to manual coca eradication operations since Colombia went into national quarantine in late March.
Even while imposing a strict national quarantine, the Colombian government has launched more intense and aggressive coca eradication operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. These operations, which often require the deployment of public security forces without appropriate protective equipment, have sparked long-standing tensions in six Colombian departments. In addition to concerns about the spread of COVID-19 due to the deployment of eradication forces, the aggressive eradication campaign has ignored key elements of the historic 2016 peace accord.
In the operation that led to the death of one Indigenous community member and three wounded in southwest Colombia, the government had failed to consult with the community prior to the operation. Additionally, in many of the other municipalities targeted in the last month, the Colombian government has systematically failed to deliver payments and other productive project support for crop substitution programs as laid out by Chapter 4 of the peace accords.
The Duque administration’s push to intensify coca eradication has largely responded to an aggressive pressure campaign from the Trump administration. Citing rising rates of coca production and cultivation, the Trump administration has pushed the Duque government to expand its eradication teams from 25 in 2017 to nearly 150 today. This rapid expansion appears to have vastly outpaced any instruction in use-of-force protocols that the security forces accompanying the eradicators were receiving, heightening the risk that when these teams go into rural communities to destroy what is, for many families, their only steady source of income, the resulting confrontations involve excessive or even lethal force.
Beside increasing coca eradication operations during the nationwide lockdown, Colombia has seen no slowdown in the pace of attacks and threats against social leaders, including those who are advocating for implementation of the peace agreement’s illicit crops chapter. On April 22 alone, three people at a local community council in southwest Nariño department were killed by dissident fighters from the now-demobilized FARC guerrilla group; another social leader, who formed part of the leftist Marcha Patriótica political movement, was killed in Cauca department; and two more were killed elsewhere in Cauca. Various Afro-Colombian communities in Cauca and Chocó department have also expressed concern about eradication operations and threats by armed groups in their area. According to Colombian think tank Indepaz, at least 71 social leaders were killed during the first three months of 2020; at least another dozen have been killed since Colombia’s national quarantine began.
The Colombian government needs to rigorously and promptly investigate the killings of social leaders, securing convictions for those who carried out and those who ordered the crime. Additionally, instead of a drug policy that emphasizes forced eradication of coca, the Colombian government should uphold its commitments in the 2016 peace agreement and promote rural land reform, sustainable development, and the establishment of state presence in coca cultivation areas. Finally, given the number of leaders from farmers’ association the National Agrarian Coordinator (Coordinador Nacional Agrario) and the Marcha Patriótica who have faced violent attacks and threats, all armed actors—including FARC dissident groups and government forces—should avoid involving civilians in armed conflict.
April 24, 2020
Publicado por la Comisión de la Verdad el 23 de abril de 2020.
Colombia’s Truth Commission provides an update on its activities to date.
April 23, 2020
Publicado por El Espectador el 23 de abril de 2020.
An academic conversation about the balance between reconciliation and justice in Colombia’s post-conflict transitional justice system.
April 23, 2020
Publicado por Verdad Abierta el 23 de abril de 2020.
A look at the work of, and severe threats faced by, social leaders in Cauca, the department of Colombia where more leaders have been killed than anywhere else.
April 23, 2020
Publicado por Verdad Abierta el 23 de abril de 2020.
The story of displacement and resistance of Afro-descendant, indigenous, and campesino communities along the Naya River, which forms the border between Valle del Cauca and Cauca departments.
April 23, 2020
Publicado por CERAC el 22 de abril de 2020.
The Bogotá think tank, which maintains a database of conflict events, finds that the ELN did not violate its declared ceasefire during the first 22 days of April.
April 22, 2020
Publicado por La Liga Contra el Silencio el 22 de abril de 2020.
A portrayal of indigenous communities resisting mining projects in southern Córdoba department.
April 22, 2020
The JEP amnesties Niall Connolly, James Monaghan and Martin McCauley, three alleged members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who had fled Colombia in 2004 while appealing a sentence for teaching FARC members how to build improvised bombs. The JEP finds that the men had committed an amnistiable political crime.
April 21, 2020
Publicado por Semana el 21 de abril de 2020.
An update on armed-group activity and illicit economies in the conflictive region of Norte de Santander department, near the Venezuelan border.
April 21, 2020
Publicado por la Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa el 21 de abril de 2020.
A virtual museum exhibit about past struggles of the free press in Colombia. With initial features on Arauca, Caquetá, and Córdoba.
April 21, 2020