HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL
2ND SESSION
ORAL INTERVENTION OF THE COLOMBIAN COMMISSION OF JURISTS
AND THE WORLD ORGANISATION AGAINST TORTURE
PRESENTATION OF THE REPORT OF THE HIGH COMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS ON THE SITUATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN COLOMBIA
28 SEPTEMBER 2006
Mr. Chairperson:
During the first four years of the present Government, more than eleven thousand persons were assassinated or disappeared out of combat in Colombia. This figure is greater than the number of victims in 17 years of Pinochet’s government in Chile. Nearly 75 per cent of these deaths and disappearances were attributed to State responsibility, either for direct action taken by state agents[1] or for tolerance or support to violations committed by paramilitary groups[2]. 25 per cent of the cases were attributed to the responsibility of guerrillas. In addition, during these four years more than one million persons were forcibly displaced. With good reason, the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs has qualified the situation in Colombia as the gravest humanitarian crisis of the western hemisphere[3].
The High Commissioner clearly identifies the causes of this crisis, as she affirms that the lack of full recognition of the problem by the Government and the lack of pertinent actions by the authorities impeded the rectification of this situation, and that certain practices that constitute violations have even turned into patterns of conduct[4].
One of these practices is impunity, which has worsened drastically in the last four years. The Government has insisted in promoting a legislation that favours impunity, supposedly in order to achieve peace. This objective will be very difficult to achieve by these means, because in stead of a genuine justice, the Government has established some procedures of simulated justice for paramilitaries, which entail the preservation of their mafia power and the hiding of state responsibility.
The President of Colombia has affirmed before the UN General Assembly last 22nd of September, that Colombia “is a country absolutely open to international supervision and criticism”. Accepting this invitation, and taking into consideration the gravity of the Colombian crisis, the Human Rights Council should continue having a close supervision on it, as the Commission on Human Rights did during the last ten years, and consequently request the High Commissioner to continue presenting an annual report on the situation of human rights in Colombia before the Council.
Thank you Mr. Chairperson.
[1] 12%, represents more than 750 persons allegedly murdered by state agents.
[2] 62%.
[3] “While visiting a shantytown in Cartagena, Jan Egeland, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs reports that (…) [a]ccording to the UN figures over the last four years, the number of people forced to flee their homes has increased by about 1 million and Colombia now has the third-largest number of displaced people in the world — behind Congo and Sudan, he said. ‘Colombia is therefore by far the biggest humanitarian catastrophe of the Western hemisphere,’ Egeland told a news conference”, in Colombia This Week -- May 17, 2004, ABColombia Group, London, “Mon 10 – UN envoy: Colombia is a humanitarian catastrophe”, webpage <colhrnet.igc.org/newitems/may04/abcolwk.517.htm> (consulted on 24 September 2006).
[4] Report of the HCHR on the situation of human rights in Colombia, Doc. E/CN.4/2006/9, 20 January 2006, para. 19.