“At the Ombudsman’s Office we are extremely concerned because the risk persists and there is a gradual increase in murders of human rights defenders and social leaders. We registered 593 homicides between September 2019 and December 2022, that is, an average of 15 victims per month”, assured the Ombudsman, Carlos Camargo Assis, before the international community during the presentation of the National Early Warning of risk on the work of human rights defenders, social leaders, their organizations and collectives.
There he stressed that “the national map of risks analyzed by our Early Warning System warns that the risks are identified in 706 municipalities and 16 non-municipalized areas of 32 departments, that is, in two thirds of the national territory. The risk is extreme in 120 municipalities; high at 258; medium in 203 municipalities, and low in another 125”.
“We reiterate our call to protect the life and integrity of all these people. Above all, due to the violence sustained against those who are part of the communal, indigenous, community, peasant or agrarian and Afro-descendant sectors, the most affected by violence, with 79 percent of all homicides,” said Carlos Camargo Assis. .
The Ombudsman explained that its content is achieved after a process of monitoring, analysis, assessment, and warning of the risk to the work of human rights defenders, social leaders, their organizations, and collectives, in the same period of September 2019 to December 2022.
Of the total of 593 victims, 519 were men and 74 women. Between September and December 2019, 51 homicides occurred; 182, in 2020; 145, in 2021, and 215, in 2022. And when reviewing the places where the crimes occurred, 52.6% committed them in 46 municipalities of 14 departments (Cauca, Putumayo, Valle del Cauca, Antioquia, Nariño, Norte de Santander, Huila , Magdalena, Arauca, Caquetá, Chocó, Bolívar, Córdoba, Guaviare) and in Bogotá.
In addition, the Entity registered a total of 2,974 vulneratory conducts, of these conducts, 2,851 were against people and 123 against social and human rights organizations and groups. Regarding the affectation to people, 2,028 were against people of the male sex and 823 of the female sex.
The sustained violence against the communal, indigenous, community, peasant or agrarian and Afro-descendant sectors is striking, in which most of the registered vulneratory behaviors usually occur.
It is also worrying the appearance of a significant number of vulneratory behaviors against public servants with work in defense of human rights, such as officials of the Ombudsman’s Office and ombudsmen, among others; In addition, human rights activists, defenders of women’s rights, unions, environmental leaders and peace managers and/or builders.
This Early Warning warns of the exacerbation of the armed conflict and other related violence and the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused fractures in communication with the community for leaders; mobility difficulties; affectation in its economy; more digital gap and other psychosocial affectations, in mental health and self-care.
The Ombudsman reiterated the enormous threat factor posed by the presence, transit, action, interference, control or confrontation of illegal armed groups and organized crime against human rights defenders and social leaders. To this extent, Early Warning accounts for the hardening of its actions and the interference with social leadership, especially with exercises of social control and criminal governance.
Early Warning also points out that the existence of a multiplicity of spaces, plans and programs for prevention and protection around social leaders is a state strength; but that has been diminished by the difficulties of institutional articulation, both nationally and in the various regions. This, coupled with the actions of illegal armed groups and organized crime, heightens the risks against defenders and social leaders.
It is worrying that there is an underreporting of behaviors that violate the rights of the civilian population in a large part of the national territory, especially regarding the rights of those who exercise social leadership. This situation occurs due to the difficulties of registration and reporting, the social isolation caused by the pandemic and the distance that the civilian population and State institutions took due to the mobilizations of 2021.
“A e must work harder for the protection of these people and that is why we deliver 70 recommendations that contain territorial targeting parameters and response times and main responsible with which we intend to impact on state action, in order to mitigate or dissuade the Ombudsman’s Office risk”, concluded the Ombudsman.
During the presentation, the special envoy of the European Union (EU) for peace in Colombia, Eamon Gilmore, highlighted that, of all the models he has seen throughout the world, the report presented by the Colombian Ombudsman is the most comprehensive, complete and in-depth exercise it has known on the situation of human rights defenders.