Civil Society, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Activists Celebrate Being Heard at UN

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Dec 12 2008 (IPS) - Activists from more than 1,000 human rights groups and other civil society organisations who followed the live Internet transmission of this week’s United Nations Human Rights Council’s review of the situation in this country at a university auditorium in the Colombian capital shared the sensation that their voices had finally been heard.

That was despite the fact that civil society groups from Colombia were formally given just two minutes to present their position in Geneva at the Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a new mechanism under which the human rights records of all U.N. member states will be subjected to scrutiny every four years.

Non-governmental organisations in this country worked for a year preparing the joint report presented to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, who combined it with reports from international human rights groups and civil society organisations from another 16 countries. The final document was distributed to the delegations of the countries making up the 47-member Human Rights Council.

Their work was not in vain, and had an influence, according to Álvaro Villarraga with the Civil Society Permanent Assembly for Peace, who said a change has recently begun to be seen.

Villarraga said that just a few months ago, when non-governmental organisations knocked on the doors of the international community to try to influence policies towards Colombia, “we were questioned, and asked about our sources.” There was a certain degree of skepticism towards and rejection of human rights groups’ reports, he said.

The international context was “very favourable for the government’s arguments that the insurgents were being defeated, the military were gaining control over the territory, and there were improvements on the human rights front,” said the analyst.

But that perception has changed somewhat, according to Villarraga, who said he has seen “major changes, which are important even if they are insufficient.”

One of the reasons for that shift was the scandal that broke out in late September, revealing the army’s practice of killing civilians, mainly young men from poor neighbourhoods, and presenting them as guerrillas or paramilitaries killed in battle, as part of a system of incentives that rewards “results” in the form of battlefield casualties.

Human rights defenders have been documenting such extrajudicial executions by the security forces for three decades, but their denunciations of such practices only began to be heard a few years ago.

Although the government of right-wing President Álvaro Uribe depicted the killings in September as a new phenomenon, Colombian Deputy Minister of Defence Sergio Jaramillo himself told the UPR session on Colombia Wednesday that the killings have actually declined this year.

Lawyer Yomary Ortegón with the Platform for Human Rights, Democracy and Development, made up of 110 local social and human rights groups, was among the activists who gathered in the auditorium of the private Santo Tomás University in Bogotá to watch the UPR proceedings Wednesday.

She described what occurred during the UPR on Colombia as “exceptional,” and said that out of the 44 countries whose delegates spoke in the nearly three-hour debate, 18 criticised the human rights situation in Colombia and set forth recommendations for Bogotá.

Constitutional lawyer Rodrigo Uprimny, director of the Centre of Studies on Rights, Justice and Society, broke down the countries that spoke at the UPR session on Colombia into several groups.

The first group was made up of the “irrelevant” countries, whose presentations did not contribute a thing to the discussion, said Uprimny, who named India to illustrate.

The second included countries with problems similar to those of civil war-torn Colombia, and which have yet to pass their own UPRs. “So obviously, they loudly praised Colombia, so that they will later be praised by Bogotá in turn,” said the lawyer.

The governments of Pakistan, the Philippines and Peru had the loudest applause for Bogotá, saying that “Colombia is facing terrorism, and that everything it is doing is right,” said Uprimny.

Then there was a “group” of just one country, he said, “whose absence was notorious: the United States,” which is financing the counterinsurgency war in Colombia, but is facing an imminent change in administration and did not express an opinion. “It was the big silent gap on the Colombia issue,” said the attorney.

The delegates from Europe, along with the representatives of Uruguay, Canada and Australia, among others, were the most critical, although diplomatic.

The views presented by France and Britain were described by the activists as “very harsh,” although they did acknowledge the Colombian government’s openness to the UPR, and referred to unspecified “improvements” on the human rights front.

Progress has been made, but the concerns remain, the British delegate told the Human Rights Council.

One of the most frequently reiterated concerns expressed by delegates, which surprised the activists in the auditorium, referred to verbal attacks against human rights defenders, even by the president himself.

The Norwegian delegation, in fact, said it would only focus on that point, because it was the “most important.”

The majority underscored the need to protect human rights defenders. But others, like Ireland, Britain and Australia, went even further, urging the Colombian government to declare that the work of activists is legitimate.

Another central issue was the question of extrajudicial executions. The British delegation repeated what the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office had already stated: “Extrajudicial killing has no place in a civilised and democratic society.”

The “culture of impunity,” in the words of the South Korean delegate, and the persistence of the internal armed conflict were other concerns mentioned by different delegations.

China said the most widespread human rights violation in Colombia is the forced displacement of people from their homes as a result of the war, a concern that was also expressed by Canada and other countries.

The Uribe administration was also repeatedly urged to stop lashing out at the justice system. Malaysia specifically called for an investigation into the relations between the military, the paramilitary groups, and politicians, which is at the centre of the clash between the executive and judicial branches.

A number of countries also called on Colombia to live up to the recommendations by the High Commissioner for Human Rights to eradicate the practices of forced disappearance and torture.

Villarraga said the Colombian government was on the defensive in the final segment of Wednesday’s session, and that there was a strong contrast between the measured tone of the written report that the administration presented to the UPR and the slightly annoyed tone of some members of the Colombian delegation when responding to the interventions of other countries.

The civil society groups said the UPR had made progress by drawing attention to pressing issues like the recruitment of child soldiers by the irregular armed groups, the use of rape as a weapon of war, and the dangers posed to indigenous and black cultures.

But they also expressed mistrust towards Human Rights Council mechanisms like the “troika” – the system used to select a regionally-balanced group of three rapporteurs that facilitate each UPR.

Next week, the troika on the Colombia UPR session will distribute a summary document agreed with the Colombian government, to be approved by the rest of the countries on the Council.

“With a ‘troika’ made up of the Italy of (Prime Minister Silvio) Berlusconi, a hereditary monarchy, Bahrain, or a country like Burkina Faso, where 44 percent of the population survives on less than a dollar a day, your hopes are undoubtedly shaken a bit,” said Alejandro Mantilla with the Centre for Indigenous Cooperation (CECOIN).

Several activists expressed concern that the land question, which is at the core of Colombia’s civil war, was not mentioned by any country.

And although the Colombian government itself stated in its report that it is making “major efforts” to fulfill its human rights obligations in the midst of an armed confrontation between insurgent groups and the state, only Uruguayan ambassador Alejandro Artucio spoke of peace, saying the Colombian government should work hard to reach a peace agreement with the guerrillas.

But this and any other recommendations laid out by the different countries that took part in the UPR can be accepted or rejected by Bogotá.