No Relief in Sight: Report from Caribbean Coast of Colombia
The Latin America Working Group Education Fund & Lutheran World Relief released a new report this month titled "No Relief in Sight: Report from Caribbean Coast of Colombia" (PDF). The report is based on information gathered during a recent trip to Córdoba, Sucre and the city of Barranquilla in northern Colombia. There, LAWG and LWF staff evaluated the ongoing violence, potential for land returns to displaced people, and protection for human rights defenders and communities. The trip focused on many of LWR’s partners, from small farmer associations to nongovernmental groups providing services in poor urban areas. They visited Montería, Tierralta, Lorica, San Onofre, Sincelejo and Barranquilla. As detailed in the report, the information gathered on the trip highlighted how distant the prospects are for an end to the conflict, how powerfully paramilitary successor groups have intensified their violent grip, and how inadequate governmental policies are to protect individuals and communities at risk. It also reinforced concerns about how difficult it will be to safely implement a positive plan by the Santos Administration on the immediate horizon, near-finalized legislation to return land to a subset of Colombia’s 5 million displaced persons. LAWG's Lisa Haugaard and LWR's Annalise Romoser note in the report that Colombian authorities have as yet no effective protection plan in place for rural communities that would return under the new law. To download the report as a PDF, click here. The report concludes with recommendations on how to address violence in such a lawless area for both the Colombian and U.S. governments. Recommendations to the Colombian government:
- Before implementing land return law, expand protection for communities that have already returned to their land and are in danger. This needs to be done in consultation with those communities, but solutions may include investigations into threats and attacks, army patrolling around perimeters of the community, investing in community-based rural development projects, greater presence of a local ombudsman, and properly legalizing land titles.
- Develop a plan to protect returning communities with broad representation from internally displaced persons associations, small farmers’ associations, and associations of indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities, and human rights groups. Implement that plan locally in close consultation with the communities that have chosen to return.
- Actively suspend, investigate and prosecute security force members—military and police—collaborating with paramilitary successor groups, making an example in areas of high paramilitary presence.
- Expand the presence of the Ombudsman’s office, but also ensure that its risk reports and early warnings compel government action by military and civilian agencies.
Recommendations to the U.S. government:
- Encourage the Colombian government to investigate, prosecute and capture paramilitary successor group members and their financial backers, as well as to systematically suspend, investigate and prosecute security force members who collaborate with or tolerate their abuses. Make clear that military assistance will be suspended if progress is not made on this urgent goal.
- Link assistance for implementing land return legislation to existence of a workable plan, with an associated budget, by the Colombian government to protect returning leaders and communities, and assertively advocate for its implementation.
- Encourage and fund programs to support development projects and protection initiatives chosen by returning communities.
- Do not approve the Free Trade Agreement which will exacerbate the conflict and undermine small farmers and returning communities.