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While in the country every week cases of threats and murders against social leaders and human rights defenders are known, the National Government has just prepared a document, known by this newspaper, in which it appears that the figures tend to be low.
According to the document, based on figures from the UN Office for Human Rights, so far in 2020, Despite the confinement resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, 47 murders of social leaders and human rights defenders have been verified.
The report, sent by the Ministry of the Interior to the Congress of the Republic, recounts how this scourge has evolved in recent years in the country.
(See also: There are more than 80 women leaders murdered in seven years)
Thus, in 2016 there were 61 murders of social leaders; in 2017 the figure rose to 84, by 2018 The highest peak occurred when 115 homicides were registered, in 2019 it reached 108 and so far in 2020 there have been 47 murders of leaders.
But the section that draws the most attention is the one in which the Interior Ministry calculates the variation in homicides against social leaders and human rights defenders between one year and another.
Thus, the document shows that, between 2016 and 2017, murders grew 38 percent; between 2017 and 2018 the The increase was 37 percent, but in what corresponds to 2018 and 2019, which concerns the current Government, there was a decrease of 6 percent, going from 115 homicides to 108.
Faced with these figures, from Redepaz they assure that although in 2019 there was a very slight decrease, “this cannot be a figure that satisfies society, the Government is getting used to high numbers of murders of leaders, as if it were something natural ”.
According to the above, the departments of Arauca, Norte de Santander, Córdoba, Cesar, Bolívar, Chocó, Antioquia, Valle, Cauca, Nariño, Putumayo, Caquetá, Meta, Guaviare, tThey are more likely to affect the rights of social leaders and human rights defenders.
In the attacks against this population, according to what the counselor for Human Rights, Nancy Patricia Gutiérrez said a few days ago, criminal phenomena such as the actions of organized armed groups, drug trafficking, the illegal exploitation of mining deposits, natural resources and the dispossession of land.
(Interview: ‘Before dawn I think: Today is the day, today they are going to kill me’: Leyner Palacios)
Protection requests
Only one in 6 requests for leader protection is allowed.
Santiago Saldarriaga / THE TIME
In addition to the painful numbers of murders that the report handles, what causes the most concern in the document prepared by the Ministry of the Interior has to do with the requests for protection made by social leaders.
As evidenced in the report, only one in six requests was admitted for a risk study by the Protection Unit.
Between January 1 and August 16 of this year, 6,756 applications for protection were submitted by social leaders, but only 16 percent (1,093) were admitted to start the protection route,
A similar case occurs with human rights defenders: 3,053 applications were submitted, but only 474 were admitted to start the protection route. That is, only 15 percent.
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To explain this situation, the report indicates that “the National Protection Unit attends to all the protection requests sent; However, all of the protection requests do not refer to the full information and documents necessary to activate the protection route and initiate a risk level study. For this reason, it is significant to indicate that all the protection requests do not trigger the activation of a risk level study ”.
However, this explanation did not leave social organizations calm, from which they consider that services to leaders are being “cut”.
“What they are doing is denying the requests, preventing access to the leaders who request it; they are resorting to cutting back the service or providing it with tools that are not enough. The Government has not yet managed to understand that individual protection measures are complementary to a State policy that guarantees the lives of leaders, ”said Luis Emil Sanabria, president of Redepaz.
What is the government doing?
The Government has a strategy that involves two pillars to guarantee the exercise of social leadership: Prevention and protection, which is led by the Ministry of the Interior and whose main allies are governors, mayors, control entities and social organizations, and Security, which leads the Ministry of defense and run by the Military Forces and the National Police.
The President keeps track of the information. We must send you the figures that reflect what happened each week
“The Council for Human Rights, for its part, must collect the information and make recommendations to the Government. The President keeps track of the information. We must send you the figures that reflect what happened each week, ”said counselor Nancy Patricia Gutiérrez.
Likewise, the document indicates that the Ministry of the Interior has “adopted virtual mechanisms to continue developing, within the framework of its competences, its own tasks for the prevention, promotion and guarantees of the human rights of leaders and defenders.”
(Further: Murders against social leaders increased this year by 85%: MOE)
The Timely Action Plan was also adopted, a strategy “based on the identification, prevention of risk situations, and the articulated response of the different state entities, according to territorial dynamics, with the aim of assuring human rights defenders, social and community leaders and journalists the conditions that allow them to carry out their work ”.
Debate
Precisely this issue will be discussed in a debate that will take place this Wednesday starting at 2 in the afternoon and was cited by the congressmen of the opposition bench of the Lower House, among them, the Representatives Ángela María Robledo, María José Pizarro, Katherine Miranda and parliamentarians León Freddy Muñoz Lopera, Luis Alberto Albán and Omar de Jesús Restrepo and Inti Asprilla
Among the officials who this time will have to answer for the critical situation they face today the leaders and social leaders are the Minister of the Interior, Alicia Arango, the Minister of National Defense, Carlos Holmes Trujillo and the Minister of the Environment, Ricardo José Lozano.
(You can also read: Hard balance of social organizations on the Duque government)
Likewise, the current president, Iván Duque Márquez, the Attorney General of the Nation, Francisco Barbosa Delgado, the Attorney General of the Nation, Fernando Carrillo Flórez, the Ombudsman, was invited in his capacity as president of the National Commission for Security Guarantees. , Carlos Ernesto Camargo Assis, the High Commissioner for Peace, Miguel Ceballos, the High Counselor for Stabilization and Consolidation José Emilio Archila and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Juliette de Riveroi.
JAVIER FORERO ORTIZ
POLITICAL WRITING
