HUMAN RIGHTS DAY: Peace Initiatives Abound in Conflict-Torn Colombia, Despite Risks

A new book released in civil war-torn Colombia ahead of International Human Rights Day, celebrated Dec. 10, contains hundreds of pages of peace initiatives set forth since 1992 by a broad range of local and international civil society groups as well as the Red Cross, the Catholic Church and United Nations agencies.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Andean Community Pushes for Urgent Action

Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela are at once vulnerable to climate change and increasingly reliant on their oil and natural gas exports, while their environmental management policies depend on foreign aid and funding from the industrial powers.

COLOMBIA: Ethnic Groups Demand Respect for Their Neutrality in Conflict

In four open letters addressed to all of the armed actors in Colombia's civil war, 47 organisations of indigenous people, afro-Colombians, peasant farmers, women, local residents and trade unionists from the jungle province of Chocó demand respect for their territory and their neutrality in the armed conflict.

DRUGS-COLOMBIA: Three Decades of a Failed Policy

Three decades after Washington declared Colombia the world's leading producer of cocaine, experts consider U.S.-financed efforts to eradicate illegal drug crops a failure.

MEDIA-COLOMBIA: Death Threats and Self-Censorship

They live in such fear that they dare not venture beyond the city limits. The death threats are periodically renewed, just in case it occurs to any of them that the danger has disappeared. They are reporters in the midst of Colombia's four-decade civil war.

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Demanding Justice for the Justice System Itself

In an amends ceremony held in Colombia's Foreign Ministry, Vice President Francisco Santos apologised, on behalf of the Colombian state, to the families of 12 judicial officers killed in 1989 by paramilitaries in complicity with members of the army, and to three survivors of the massacre.

COLOMBIA: UN Lashes Out at Paramilitary Demobilisation Law

The United Nations once again reiterated its criticism of the "peace and justice law" adopted by Colombia, which sets out the rules for the demobilisation of the right-wing paramilitary groups.

TRADE: Talks Between US, Andean Countries in Final Stretch

Trade negotiators and officials in Colombia, where the 12th round of negotiations of a free trade agreement between the United States and Colombia, Peru and Ecuador is taking place Monday through Friday, say the talks are moving ahead smoothly.

COLOMBIA: NGOs Urge EU Not to Support Paramilitary Disarmament

The European Union should reject the process for the demobilisation of Colombia's extreme-right paramilitary groups, said 155 civil society organisations, including 75 from Europe and 68 from Colombia.

COLOMBIA: ‘The South Is Going to Explode," Warn Activists

Peasant farmers from four civil war-torn provinces in southern Colombia announced the creation of a civil movement to oppose Plan Patriot, the U.S.-financed government military offensive against the leftist guerrillas.

COLOMBIA: Indigenous Women Brave War Zone to Express Solidarity

A caravan of around 1,250 indigenous and afro-Colombian women and women's rights activists drove Saturday into an area of southwestern Colombia that is caught up in fighting between leftist guerrillas and the army, for a "Visit to the Family".

COLOMBIA: Indigenous Women Help Preserve Biodiversity

Indigenous people in Colombia's Amazon jungle region use a garden for just two or three years before abandoning it to clear a new one somewhere else, thus practising sustainable agriculture in an exuberant but fragile environment where the soil is extremely poor.

WOMEN: 12 Colombian Nobel Peace Nominees All Too Familiar with War

"I'm 50 years old, I was born into war and I have lived in war all my life," said labour and women's rights activist Patricia Buriticá, a pioneer in incorporating a gender perspective in Colombia's trade union movement. She is one of 12 Colombian women nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

WOMEN: 12 Colombian Nobel Peace Nominees All Too Familiar with War

"I'm 50 years old, I was born into war and I have lived in war all my life," said labour and women's rights activist Patricia Buriticá, a pioneer in incorporating a gender perspective in Colombia's trade union movement. She is one of 12 Colombian women nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Survivors Refuse to Give Up Struggle for Justice

In response to a new law that is to govern the demobilisation of extreme right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia, survivors of atrocities and human rights organisations have made it clear that they will not sit back and wait for truth and justice, but will continue their struggle.

COLOMBIA: Civil Society Takes Aim Against ‘Impunity Law’

The Colombia office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) offered advice and support to victims of paramilitary groups who plan to take legal action against a new law that will govern the demobilisation of these extreme right-wing militias.

COLOMBIA: Paramilitary Disarmament Law – Guaranteeing ‘Justice’ or Impunity?

"I have no idea, I don't know anything about that," Colombian President Alvaro Uribe responded when asked by journalists if he had covered up for his brother in a criminal investigation into the creation of a paramilitary group.

COLOMBIA: UNHCR Threatens to Leave If Gov’t Insists on Dictating Terms

If the Colombian Foreign Ministry insists on establishing official rules for the terms to be used by the international aid community when referring to this country's civil war, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) "would have to consider pulling out of the country," the agency's representative in Colombia told IPS.

COLOMBIA: Gov’t Attempts to Dictate Terms to Int’l Aid Community

The Colombian government has upset civil society with a document addressed to United Nations agencies, foreign ambassadors, development aid agencies and international humanitarian groups active in this country, asking them to avoid using certain terms, like "internal armed conflict."

ENVIRONMENT-COLOMBIA: Forestry Law Only Sees Timber, not Trees

A controversial forestry bill whose critics complain that it subordinates the protection of nature to commercial interests is likely to be passed by the Colombian Congress next week.

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Nasa Indians Demand Urgent Action from UN

"The way the justice system used to work, you were innocent until proven guilty. Now it's the other way around," indigenous activist Alfredo Acosta told IPS.