Efforts to investigate and prosecute police involved in abuses against protesters have been limited.

Legal capacity is considered a threshold right because it is instrumental to enjoying other rights, including the right to marry, have a family, enter into financial transactions, and exercise political rights.

Critics have said the countrys national police needs to reform, moving from a focus on training for battle to one of public safety.

They are calling for such actions as moving the national police force out from the auspices of the Ministry of Defense and disbanding the riot police.

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That has been on display during the most recent demonstrations. The government has failed periodically to convene the National Commission of Security Guarantees, which is charged with designing policies to dismantle armed groups responsible for killings of rights defenders.

Civilians in various parts of the country suffered serious abuses at the hands of National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas, FARC dissidents, and paramilitary successor groups. The program remains open to Venezuelans who enter Colombia legally before June 2023. On October 23, Colombian security forces arrested AGC top commander Dario Antonio suga David, alias "Otoniel," who had dozens of pending arrest warrants, including for homicide and child recruitment. The military and security forces that we have, that was never reformed..

Colombias army chief retires amid corruption scandals and Colombias prosecution links former Medellin mayor to mafia Indigenous leaders given key roles in Colombias peace Former opposition takes control of Colombias Congress.

Government figures registered more than 170,000 hectares deforested in 2020, though preliminary data indicates a decrease during the first trimester of 2021 in relation to the previous year.

That being said, youre having this context of social protests embedded in a city, in a country where, of course, there are some powerful criminal organizations and guerrilla groups, the Universidad Icesis Albarracn said. The law was enacted to restore millions of hectares left behind by or stolen from internally displaced Colombians during the conflict.

A judicial decision remained pending at time of writing.

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In the southern municipality of Argelia, Cauca state, the ELN and FARC dissident groups committed multiple abuses including killings, massacres, and kidnappings, forcing thousands to flee. Many of them are organic, and to a certain extent, spontaneous..

Right now, that requestioning comes without clear resolution.

But they, too, are struggling to make inroads amid the demonstrations.

In June, the Inter-American Commission visited Colombia to document abuses in the context of the 2021 demonstrations, concluding, in July, that police had committed serious human rights violations, and announcing a special mechanism to monitor the situation in Colombia.

Two years after the government launched Operation Artemisa to combat deforestation, it has achieved limited results.

The figure currently stands at 15 percent. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today. Implementation of land restitution under the 2011 Victims Law continues to move slowly.

Police officers repeatedly and arbitrarily dispersed peaceful demonstrations and used excessive, often brutal, force, including live ammunition and gender-based violence.

Colombias national plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is highly insufficient to meeting the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, according to the Climate Action Tracker.

Collective protection programs created under the peace accord for at-risk communities and rights groups had not been implemented at time of writing.

Human Rights Watch defends the rights of people in 90 countries worldwide, spotlighting abuses and bringing perpetrators to justice, Human Rights Watch is a 501(C)(3)nonprofit registered in the US under EIN: 13-2875808, Internal Displacement and Land Restitution, Gender, Sexuality, and Gender-Based Violence. The peace accord in 2016 between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the government ended a five-decades-long armed conflict and brought an initial decline in violence.

All of this has escalated tensions and led to clashes with police, including the burning of a police station in Cali and attacks against officers, at least two of whom died.

Lack of training and poor implementation of treatment protocols impede timely access to medical services and create obstacles for women and girls seeking post-violence care and justice. More than 500 human rights defenders have been killed in Colombia since 2016, making it one of the countries with the highest numbers of human rights defenders killed worldwide.

All of this was brewing underneath the surface of Colombian society and when Duque introduced the tax bill, he unleashed these dormant frustrations. Municipalities and state governments often lack funding to assist displaced people, and the response from the national government has often been slow and insufficient. Many have reported abuses by armed groups while crossing the gap, including rape.

At least 19 active and retired army soldiers who have testified before the JEP have faced threats and harassment.

Human rights groups have alleged abuses such as indiscriminate beatings, killings, and sexual violence.

On the local level, city or municipal governments are also trying to quell the unrest and negotiate with protesters. Some of them proposed overhauling the entire court system.

Certainly, those are part of the groups that are being mobilized, Botero said. In October 2021, the Attorney Generals Office charged three prison officers for allegedly torturing and abusing prisoners during and after the riot.

Some protesters blocked roads for prolonged periods, at times limiting or impeding distribution of food or circulation of ambulances. These include Putumayo, Cauca, Valle del Cauca, and Nario states in the south; the Catatumbo region, on the border with Venezuela; and the Bajo Cauca region. The peace process has opened up a space for other concerns and for other political debates..

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But in July, Dejusticia, a rights group, asked the Constitutional Court to extend the deadline, saying the commission's work had been hampered by the Covid-19 pandemic. Pea had received several threats by armed groups before her killing.

Inequality, education, employment, social justice, racial inequities all of it became much more salient.

That just enraged people who are already enraged because of the situation, because of the government, Laura Gamboa, assistant professor of political science at the University of Utah, said of the police crackdown. In August, Colombia offered to host up to 4,000 at-risk Afghans temporarily to enable the US to process them for admission.

Similarly, on the Pacific coast of the southern state of Nario, fighting among various FARC dissident groups displaced over 23,000 people between January and mid-August.

Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding.

In a landmark decision, in February, President Duque announced temporary protection to Venezuelans living in Colombia, granting them 10 years of legal status.

The people flooding the streets across Colombia have faced brutal crackdowns from police, fueling demonstrators rage and adding police brutality to their list of grievances.

The commission noted Caldern had been threatened, surveilled, and targeted for assassination, but that authorities had failed to hold those responsible to account. With Autocrats on the Defensive, Can Democrats Rise to the Occasion.

With the peace deal, that main cleavage consuming Colombia started to fade away, said Gamboa.

The countrys current president, Ivan Duque, ran (and won) on a platform of trying to weaken the deal, which he saw as going too easy on the guerrillas. As of October, only two officers had been charged, both in connection with homicides.

But the strike committee does not control the blockages that are happening in Cali..

But conflict-related violence has since taken new forms, and abuses by armed groups, including killings, massacres, and massive forced displacement increased in many remote areas of Colombia in 2021.

Whoever wins, Botero said, will inherit a powder keg but right now, politicians on both the left and the right are carefully positioning themselves as they try to use the fallout from the protests to advance their own agendas.

Hundreds of protesters were injured, some suffering likely permanent loss of vision in one eye, apparently from teargas cartridges, stun grenades, or kinetic impact projectiles fired from riot guns. That has dissipated in the aftermath of the peace deal, though it has not eliminated the heavy-handed response from police, a force shaped to counter guerrillas, not peaceful protesters.

Duque just made some concessions on police reform in the wake of public and international pressure.

The same peace process allowing the protests to flourish is also showing its limitations when it comes to the response from police and the government.

On balance, theres been a real struggle to democratize policing, in part because the institutions themselves the police and the military benefit politically and economically from this kind of us-versus-them, were still at war mentality, Eduardo Moncada, assistant professor of political science at Barnard College, said.

The government has taken insufficient and inadequate steps to protect them. Share this via Telegram

(He has since promised some reforms.).

morning, Available for everyone, funded by readers. The Constitutional Court rejected the lawsuits in March and August 2021.

Colombia, despite the peace deal, is still dealing with a very precarious security situation.

A front line la primera lnea sometimes guards these barricades with masks and helmets and shields.

The authorities inadequate response to prolonged drought in the northeastern state of La Guajira has undermined Indigenous Wayuu peoples access to food and water, leading to high rates of childhood malnutrition deaths.

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Experts say theres another, deeper dynamic also fueling the protests.

Share this via LinkedIn In October, the Constitutional Court gave the Truth Commission nine more months to release its findings.

In 2019, Colombia adopted Law 1996, which recognizes full legal capacity for people with disabilities.

Can Colombias first leftwing president deliver change?

But implementation, especially of measures established under the 2016 peace accord, has often been poor.

But the civil war between the government and the FARC was Colombias central crisis.

Perpetrators of violent, gender-based crimes are rarely held accountable.

Left-wing Gustava Petros election victory in Colombia signals the rise of a new brand of socialism in the region.

Police officers arbitrarily detained hundreds of people, in some cases misusing a provision under Colombian law that allows them to transfer a person to an assistance or protection center to protect them or others. The Duque government had been negotiating with the organizers from the Comit Nacional de Paro, or National Strike Committee, who originally called for the national strike in response to the proposed tax bill. In February, the JEP ordered the government to take measures to protect at-risk former FARC fighters, including by strengthening its response to the Ombudspersons Offices early alerts. Duque is a lame duck and cannot run again (Colombias presidents are limited to one four-year term).

The ELN continued in 2021 to commit war crimes and other serious abuses against civilians, including killings, forced displacement, and child recruitment. Victims included lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. The peace deal did not solve all of Colombias problems, nor did it fully end the violence.

But all the other major problems stuck on the sidelines, especially socioeconomic issues, started to bubble up.

In Colombia, civil protests were always repressed brutally because it was filed with the guerrillas and with this insurgency, said Elvira Restrepo Saenz, associate professor of international studies at The George Washington University.

And even if a bunch of groups and the local government agree somehow, others affiliated with the protests may be left out or feel like their demands werent fully heard, so why would they agree to any bargain and get off the streets?

The agreement faced public opposition, though it was finally approved in November 2016.

In October 2021, the council extended the missions mandate until October 2022.

As of September 2021, the courts had issued rulings on only 12,300 of almost 133,000 claims filed.

Between March and April, more than 5,800 people, including Venezuelans and Colombians who had been living in Venezuelas Apure state, fled to Colombias Arauca state, escaping fighting between armed groups and Venezuelan security forces, as well as abuses by security forces including arbitrary detention, torture, and extrajudicial executions.

On April 20, armed men killed Sandra Liliana Pea, an authority of the Indigenous Nasa community in the Laguna Siberia reserve in Cauca. Instead of an armed conflict, a slew of non-state actors and paramilitaries are engaging in violence of a particular form, including selective and extrajudicial killings, particularly against human rights advocates, community organizers, and civil society leaders.

As in previous years, thousands of mostly Haitian, Cuban, and African migrants crossed Colombias Darien gap into Panam on a journey that appeared to be bound for the United States. But the court rejected the recusal request, noting it seemed designed to undermine the work of the court. A minority of FARC guerrilla fighters, known as FARC dissidents, rejected the terms of the peace agreement, refused to disarm, and continue to commit abuses. But a judge in Bogot ruled in August that only the JEP could charge Montoya for conflict-related crimes. Without obvious leaders, or a confederation of them, negotiations are extraordinarily difficult.

Former rebel Petros victory marks the first time in history Colombia has elected a left-wing candidate as president.

Of a population of 49 million Colombians, conflict-related violence has displaced more than 8 million since 1985, government figures show. Those who opposed the legislation saw it as putting another burden on middle-class and poorer families who are already in a precarious position, also because of the coronavirus.

Demonstrators, many of them young or from marginalized communities, are speaking out about structural inequality, poverty, land reform, health care, and lack of education and opportunity.

In May 2021, the Security Council expanded the missions mandate to include the verification of compliance with the rulings issued by the JEP. As of December, only two officers had been indicted and five others had been charged in connection with homicides committed the protests.

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The US has requested his extradition on drug trafficking charges.

A member of ESMAD throws a tear gas grenade by hand at protesters on May 28, 2021 in Bogota,Colombia.

At least some of those groups will take advantage of the disorder and the front lines are already so chaotic and disorganized, its hard to know whos who.

As of October 2020, roughly 650 had been sentenced.

The National Protection Unit has granted individual protection measures to hundreds of human rights defenders who have reported threats, providing cellphones, bulletproof vests, and bodyguards.

Almost half-a-million people fell into poverty in 2020, according to the governments multi-dimensional poverty index, and the number of households with children who did not attend school increased by almost 14 percent. Despite Colombias strong legal protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, the human rights ombudsperson and civil society groups have raised concerns about the high levels of violence against LGBT people. Share this via WhatsApp At the end of May, when protests had stretched on for a full month, Duque deployed the military to Cali, saying the increased capacity would help in the areas that have seen acts of vandalism, violence and low-intensity urban terrorism. Officials have also said hundreds of police officers have been injured, including by armed civilians.

Under pressure from superiors to show positive results and boost body counts, soldiers and officers abducted victims or lured them to remote locations under false pretensessuch as promises of workshot them dead, placed weapons on their bodies, and reported them as enemy combatants killed in action. President Biden just tested positive for Covid-19.

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Local officials, for example, have to deliver services behind the blockades.

Also, representatives from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights are currently visiting Colombia to investigate police abuses. While most demonstrations were peaceful, some individuals engaged in serious acts of violence, including attacking police officers and stations. That is a threat to Colombias democracy, and to the peace it is still trying to build.

Will Gustavo Petro live up to his promises to Colombias women?

A tax reform bill proposed by right-wing President Ivan Duque sparked protests in late April, with thousands responding to a call from national labor unions to push against the measure.

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The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported more than 60,000 people displaced between January and September 2021 in mass displacements of 50 or more people or 10 or more familiesthe highest figure recorded since 2012. @2008-2019 - Colombia Reports. Before the peace agreement, any kind of dissatisfaction of the people was framed as mobilization made by the guerrillas, Carlos Enrique Moreno Len, professor of political science at the Universidad Icesi, said.

Still, critics say these reforms are superficial and wont go far in addressing the systemic problems in the force. Abortion in Colombia is legal when the life or health of the pregnant person is at risk, the pregnancy results from rape, or the fetus has conditions incompatible with life outside the womb.

In August, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights ruled Colombia was responsible for the 2000 kidnapping and rape of journalist Jineth Bedoya, while she was investigating rights violations committed in La Modelo prison in Bogot.

The government defended the proposed tax increase as a much-needed measure to repair the economy after fallout from the coronavirus. Of the more than 30,000 paramilitary troops that officially demobilized, 4,000 have sought to exchange a confession for a reduced sentence. And those groups have no affiliation with the handful of others posted up at another blockade across the city.

They are not organized by a mastermind or even by a collective, Botero said.

In November, at the global climate summit in Glasgow, COP26, the Colombian government committed to have 30 percent of the countrys territory declared a protected area in 2022. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.

Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all.

Under the peace accord, defendants who fully cooperate with the JEP and confess to their crimes are subject to up to eight years of restrictions on liberty, but no prison time. On March 21, 2020, 24 prisoners were killed and 76 injured as police guards repressed a riot in La Modelo jail in Bogot. Human rights defenders, journalists, Indigenous and Afro-Colombian leaders, and other community activists face pervasive death threats and violence. The Truth Commission was required by law to present its findings in November 2021.

What happens now? After four years of negotiations, the Colombian government and the FARC signed a peace deal under which the FARC demobilized and became a legitimate political party. Colombia is the second most unequal country in an already unequal Latin America region.

Former President Uribe said in August that Colombia needed a general amnesty and a clean slate. Later, he proposed cutting prison sentences for soldiers and allowing people convicted of a range of crimes to run for and hold public officewhich could benefit many politicians who have been convicted of conspiring with paramilitary groups and other offenses.

It only takes a spark where theres a lot of discontent, Muni Jensen, senior adviser with the Albright Stonebridge Group and a former Colombian diplomat, said. But this helped excise the civil war as the dominant political issue.

Colombias protests, then, are as much about its past as they are about its present. More than 100 social leaders killed so far this year, rights group says, as Colombia grapples with surging violence. The commission has yielded limited results. But this is not a fully unified movement.

Even if the act of protest itself has become normalized in society more broadly, the police themselves still largely see the demonstrators as internal enemies., They are treating the protesters as they used to treat the guerrillas, as subversives, because thats the type of public force that is the police, Restrepo said.