U.S.: Long-Stalled Trade Accords Move Forward

In a major victory for U.S.-based multinational corporations, President Barack Obama has submitted controversial and long- pending "free-trade" agreements (FTAs) between the U.S. and South Korea, Colombia, and Panama for rapid approval by Congress.

COLOMBIA: Victims of Sexual Violence Under Threat and on Their Own

"Another one? Another rape?" was the response Mari got at the Attorney General's Office in Colombia when she went to report what she had been through. "When they said that, I froze and got up and said 'Thank you, I’ll come back another day'," she told human rights defenders later.

COLOMBIA: Uribe’s Former Intelligence Chief Sent to Prison

Jorge Noguera, a regional manager of former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe's (2002-2010) election campaign in 2002 and head of the secret police during the Uribe administration, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison. "I trusted him; if he committed a crime it pains me, and I apologise to the people," Uribe said Wednesday.

COLOMBIA: Women Make an Oasis in Violence-Wracked Neighbourhood

In one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the Colombian capital, 26-year-old Sandra Sánchez has created an oasis that offers meals, recreational opportunities, company and much more to hundreds of children and elderly people, in an example of solidarity and leadership that has transcended borders.

Q&A: “Civilians Should Not Suffer the Effects of the Armed Conflict” in Colombia

Indigenous people in the province of Cauca in southwest Colombia want their territory to be free of war, and are organising a protest march to demand that the police and military close down their bases and the guerrillas abandon their camps in the native reservations in the north of this mountainous province.

OP-ED-MEDIA: Colombian Law Sets Dangerous Precedent

Colombian lawmakers are studying the "Lleras law", the latest effort by that country to secure a free trade agreement with the United States by submitting to U.S. demands to comply with U.S. intellectual property laws. The bill is currently being fast-tracked with little input or consultation from Colombian citizens.

COLOMBIA: Risky Games Against National Peace Meeting

One of Colombia's most popular national radio stations broadcast the wiretapped telephone conversations of a leader of a regional movement of displaced persons, David Martínez, misreporting that the voices heard were those of "guerrilla ringleaders".

COLOMBIA: Microcredit Growing Steadily at 15 Percent a Year

The more than 1.2 million microenterprises operating in Colombia are responsible for around 50 percent of all employment. And many of these small businesses owe their existence to the microfinance system, according to a report by Visión Económica, a local business research group.

Q&A: “Put Yourself in Our Shoes, Mr. President”

"I repeat: there will be no peace talks without concrete actions. Words are not enough," Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said on a visit to Argentina this week. Earlier, in Chile, he said for the first time since taking office a year ago that he was "willing" to eventually sit down to talks with the guerrillas.

COLOMBIA: Grassroots Rural Movement Unites Behind Call for Peace Talks

"Dialogue is the Path" is the slogan that drew 25,000 people to this northern Colombian oil port city on the Magdalena river that has a history of social struggle. Most of the participants came from remote corners of the country where the brutality of war is experienced in daily life in ways unimagined by city dwellers.

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Government Apologises for Senator’s Murder

"I accept this apology as a sign of a new time in Colombia, when democratic participation by all political forces will be possible," leftwing legislator Iván Cepeda said – and a ripple ran through the crowd in the packed gallery in Congress.

COLOMBIA: Displaced Embera Indians a Long Way from Their Land

"I give something, you give something," an Emberá indigenous craftswoman displaying her beautiful handiwork on a sidewalk in the Colombian capital told this reporter, saying she would pose for a photo in exchange for selling a pair of earrings.

COLOMBIA: Paramilitaries Dig in to Fight Return of Stolen Land

While President Juan Manuel Santos described his government's land restitution policy as "a veritable revolution" during a speech in northwest Colombia, some 300 far-right paramilitaries were taking up positions less than 100 km from there to fight the effort to return land to small farmers displaced by the violence, human rights activists say.

COLOMBIA: Native Reserve Braces Itself as Conflict Escalates

Sitting outside her small shop, high in the mountains in the Tacueyó indigenous reserve in southwest Colombia, Liliana Alarco tries to hold back tears as she recalls the day her young son was injured.

COLOMBIA: Native Groups Mobilise Against Escalation of War

The powerful Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), in southwest Colombia, has called a "minga" or protest march to "curb the militarisation driven by the army and the FARC," the main guerrilla group, which set off a car bomb on a busy market day in a Nasa Indian town on Jul. 9.

Colombia’s History of Violence, Reflected in One Woman’s Life

There are lives that closely mirror the history of their countries, like that of Beatriz Echeverry, whose life has been shaped by some of the main human-caused and natural tragedies in Colombia over the last 60 years: forced displacement, a volcano-triggered mudslide that killed thousands, and kidnappings by the leftwing guerrillas.

COLOMBIA: Europe Presses for Justice in Wiretapping Case

Colombia's DAS domestic secret police service was under the authority of then president Álvaro Uribe "and it is impossible to think that he didn't know about" the intelligence agency's illegal spying activities, Isabelle Durant, a vice president of the European Parliament, said on a recent visit to this South American country.

COLOMBIA: ‘Matriarch’ Leads Struggle to Recover Stolen Land

"God willing, we will make it" reads the sign on a rusty old all-terrain vehicle, ideal for the complicated drive to the remote Curbaradó river valley in the banana-producing region of Urabá in northwest Colombia.

COLOMBIA: ‘Impunity’ – Keeping the ‘Black Hand’ Anonymous

The film "Impunity" has only just now arrived in Colombia, although the filming was completed a year ago and it was first shown to the public in Geneva in January. But the wait was apparently worth it because the documentary contributes key elements to the heated debate on the so-called "black hand" behind many of the atrocities committed in this South American country.

COLOMBIA: Kidnapped in No Man’s Land

"Today we are launching the new campaign for demobilisation in Caguán. Planting seeds of hope against the terror of the FARC," Colombian Defence Minister Rodrigo Rivera recently wrote in his Twitter account.

FILM-LATIN AMERICA: A Long, Tortuous Road to Justice

Fredy Peccerelli and his team of forensic anthropologists sort through human bones and other remains - shoes, clothes, ID cards. A stack of long, thick bones dark with dirt accumulates as they painstakingly reconstruct what they can from Guatemala's La Verbana Cemetery, where for decades anonymous corpses have been dumped.