Victims Representatives: The Dangers Faced for Defending Others.

Leaders like Maritza Quiroz and Luis Carlos Hernandez were murdered for their work with victims of the armed conflict.

Human Rights Defenders have an important role in society and are considered agents for positive change and development. “Human Rights Defender” is a term that describes people who work promoting and protecting Human Rights, and this work can be done either individually or in groups, according to the definition provided by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Defenders also promote, according to the Latin American Working Group, peace, humanitarian rather than military assistance, dialogue as a solution to the conflict and they encourage approaches that address the root causes for issues like migration, refugees, and internally displaced persons. Furthermore, within the Colombian context, we could say that they encourage accountability for human rights violations and corruption, with an emphasis on defending the rights of Indigenous, Afro-descendants, and other marginalized communities. Nevertheless, when it comes to the term “social leader”, there is a lot of confusion around it, especially in Colombia. However, as stated by Somos Defensores, a social leader is “any person who is dedicated to the defense, promotion, respect, and protection of Human Rights at the national and international level”. That being said, we can go so far as to describe a human rights defender as a social leader and vice versa in the context of this article. Despite the recognition and support that these Human Rights defenders have worldwide, the current situation of social leaders and Human Rights defenders in Colombia is critical. In order to demonstrate that, as maintained by Human Rights Watch, since 2016 more than 400 human rights defenders have been killed in Colombia (other organisations based in Colombia have the figure as high as double this). This wave of violence has intensified since the signing of the peace agreement between the government and the FARC guerrillas in 2016, but had been steadily increasing in the years leading up to it in relation to themes like greater inclusion in political participation and land restitution to victims of the conflict. The victims of this violence are those involved in leadership at local and regional levels, but certain groups are in more danger than others. Certainly, the conditions for the Representatives of Victims’ Rights are highly precarious, especially when it comes to the process of land restitution, as many armed groups try to threaten them in order to keep them from claiming the land to which they are entitled in the agreement with the Land Restitution Unit.

For the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “Within the activities carried out by defenders, it is possible to include monitoring, information disclosure, reporting, advocacy and education of human rights, among others”. In other words, the work made by defenders is crucial for many communities, as they often live in marginalized situations, hence their actions help these communities to have enough knowledge about the circumstances they are experiencing at first hand, in order to be able to address it and raise awareness when necessary. However, despite the valuable work defenders carry out, their outlook in Colombia is bleak. For instance, according to Marta Hurtado (spokesperson for the UN Office for Human Rights), during the first 13 days of 2020, at least 10 human rights defenders were reported as murdered in Colombia. Leaders who work on victims rights issues such as reparations or land restitution are in a particularly perilous situation given resistance to these processes in several parts of the country from local elites and illegal groups.

In the years leading up to the 2016 peace agreement, there had been important developments in the legal sphere in relation to victims rights and the idea of an integral solution to the many complex land issues at the heart of the Colombian conflict was central to the agreement. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, people who were displaced from their lands due to the armed conflict from 1991 to 2021 have the right to restitution of their fields. Nevertheless, this process has been highly criticized for being excessively slow. For instance, as maintained by the Center for Research and Popular Education (CINEP), in the last 7 years, only 6% of the solicitudes for land restitution have been answered. Therefore, given this situation, many social leaders start taking action towards speeding up this slow process. Nonetheless, this kind of social leader from many regions of Colombia faces a substantial complication and it is the presence of armed groups in the lands they are trying to get back, which obviously aggravates their situation. As an example of the critical situation many representatives of victims rights are going through, the Office of the Attorney General of Colombia stated in a report of 2018 that homicides against land claimants had tripled between 2015 and 2017, especially after the signing of the peace agreement. Internationally, the United Nations through UNHCR and the UN Office for Human Rights recognizes the challenges that the processes of the Victims and Land Restitution Law carry, especially for the protection of all the people involved in the proceedings. In many ways, the increase in violence towards social leaders and human rights defenders in Colombia since 2016 can be seen as an attack on greater participation from long marginalized sectors of society.

It is known that Colombia is the Latin American country with the most assassinations of social leaders and human rights defenders. Even though the aforementioned 2016 peace agreement, between the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government was meant to be a “new era” for the country and its citizens, social leaders defending human rights, access to land, and economic development in their communities have yet to experience this new beginning. To illustrate this, the UN registered that “at least 133 human rights defenders were murdered in Colombia in 2020, a 23% increase from 2019”. This also includes Representatives of Victims’ Rights. According to Amnesty International, in recent years they have received information on continuing threats against and killings of those campaigning for land restitution and representing displaced communities. Illegal groups target not only vulnerable communities but also – and especially – those who represent them, so it is also important to mention how land restitution laws are not effective in providing the safety of representatives and these communities. Additionally, the regions that account for over half of these assassinations are Antioquia, Cauca, and Norte de Santander, according to the International Crisis Group. However, it is important to point out that these assassinations have occurred in 29 of Colombia’s 32 departments, including the Caribbean Region, where four armed conflicts remain active and give no truce (South of Cesar, south of Bolivar, south of Cordoba, and the Sierra Nevada region in Magdalena). These ongoing conflicts and the illegal groups who wage them mean that work in defense of victims is particularly dangerous in those areas.

One of the cases that occurred in the Caribbean region was the case of Maritza Quiroz, a defender of peace, of dialogue, and of conciliation; a woman who always tried to help all others who had suffered like she had. Maritza and her five children had been forced to flee their farm in the Sierra Nevada area following the murder of her husband by guerrilla forces during the 1990s. Upon establishing a home for herself and her kids in Santa Marta, Maritza focused her attention on helping other victims of the conflict in the region. For 16 years, Maritza toured the most vulnerable neighborhoods of Santa Marta, supporting the victims of displacement, trying to learn everything she could and help as much as possible only to be murdered just when she was trying to resume her life in the countryside. The people who killed her not only wanted to end her life, they also wanted to end her dreams, her projects, and silence her voice. Despite all that, she led a remarkable life, full of obstacles but also of determination, which today inspires others to promote, support, and defend what she -and many others- died fighting for.

Another case which allows us to understand and analyze the dynamics that our country faces in relation to the situation of social leaders and Representatives of Victims’ Rights is the case of Luis Carlos Hernández. Luis Carlos was a social leader from Curumaní, a town located in the middle of the department of Cesar. He was also a representative of the departmental board of victims’ participation. Like Maritza, Luis Carlos was trying to help and contribute to his community. He was involved in many projects, one of them related to the “improvement of the lives of people who suffered violence in that territory, by offering assistance via legal avenues”. He was working on a project regarding access to educational services so that victims of conflict would be able to acquire new capabilities. Despite all the projects and the improvements he was making in his community, Luis Carlos represented a stumbling block for the interests of illegal groups in the region, as his work was related to the empowerment of long marginalized sectors of society. He was shot to death by unidentified armed actors in December 2019. There was a reward offered by the municipal authorities in order to clarify the motives of the crime but this case remains unsolved. And just like Maritza and Luis Carlos Hernández, there are countless other cases that have been left unpunished and forgotten. The lack of response from the State only helps to aggravate the situation, given that the people and groups that threaten the lives of social leaders see how these crimes are not harshly punished and therefore do not feel the risk of being caught.

Given the importance and public derision that the various cases of defenders of victims’ rights have caused, the national government has had to make public statements and take action. Thus, the Ministry of the Interior announced a strategy to stop the massive killings of social leaders in the Colombian territory with the assistance of regional and local rulers, as well as social institutions. Likewise, in 2020, the government released a report addressing this issue where it stated that the intimidation of social leaders by armed or criminal groups occurs due to, among other things, those groups seeking to retain territorial control. In the same report, 13 different recommendations are shared, such as the generation of an inter-institutional apparatus for the management of the information regarding the situation and to help the legal investigations. Nevertheless, the government’s policies in response to the systematic murders of social leaders have been described as “slowly and poorly implemented” by Human Rights Watch. And the situation is so critical that it has also attracted the attention of international actors, some of whom have made recommendations. For instance, Michel Forst (Special Rapporteur for Human Rights) suggests using the Peace Agreement with the FARC as a mechanism to protect social leaders. Human Rights Watch criticizes the government’s actions declaring that the Duque government must make “genuine efforts” to execute its policies in respect of this concern. Additionally, in an article presented by Amnesty International, there are some recommendations that we consider the government should implement, such as taking determining action to warrant the security of the people campaigning for land restitution and the rights of displaced people. The national government needs to fully address concerns and create functional solutions in order to eliminate the systematic violation of human rights in the country because, otherwise, this deliberate silence only makes the current situation worse.

In conclusion, as it is feasible to discern, the outlook for the representatives of victims’ rights, as well as for the other social leaders is very discouraging in Colombia. It is possible to reach this conclusion having analysed  the data, statistics, and reports shared by the multiple agencies and organizations mentioned above. Therefore, it is pivotal to recognize, promote, support, and defend the work done by victims and survivors of this ongoing war. Furthermore, it is essential that the government ensures that their lives will be protected while they carry out their work. Now more than ever it is mandatory the state intervenes in these areas and that they take into account all the recommendations that have been made in order to give appropriate responses given that the rate of deaths of Human Rights Defenders in our country is sky-rocketing. Therefore, the final reflection of this article  is to encourage the Colombian government to take forceful measures, as well as calling on  international actors to exert pressure on the national government in relation to this critical situation.

*Article written by Marcela Valencia & Saray Nuncira

References

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