Through July, the Public Prosecutor's Office registered 32 new cases of alleged murders with aggravation by state agents. From January 1 through July, the Attorney General's Office obtained four new convictions from members of the security forces for the crime of coercion. Through July, the prosecution has charged 86 members of the security forces (23 police and 63 military) with torture; Most cases occurred before 2014.
The inspector general's office investigates allegations of wrongdoing by public employees, including members of state security forces.
Respect for Civil Liberties, Including
The law guarantees freedom of speech and the press, and the government has generally respected these rights. Violence and harassment and the criminalization of defamation hampered freedom of the press, and the government often influenced the press, in part through its large advertising budgets. The government did not restrict or terminate Internet access or censor online content, and there were no credible reports that the government monitored private online communications without proper legal authority.
The government's budget for implementing the 2011 Law on Victims and Land Restitution was COP 54.9 trillion ($24.4 billion) over 10 years. The government's national register included registered internally displaced persons whose applications for recognition had been accepted under defined criteria. Indigenous persons made up 5 percent and Afro-Colombians 33 percent of new IDPs registered by the government.
Access to asylum: Domestic law provides for the granting of asylum or refugee status, and the government has established a system to provide protection to refugees. The government has also reported a steady increase in the smuggling of migrants outside the region en route to the US and Canada. Some international organizations claimed that during the year the government regularly denied protection to Cubans and Venezuelans seeking refugee or asylum status.
Respect for Political Rights: The Right of Citizens to Change Their Government
There were 23 women elected to the 102-member Senate and 33 women elected to the 166-member House of Representatives. There were five women in the 16-member cabinet and five in the 23-member Supreme Court. There were no indigenous people in the cabinet or on any of the high courts.
A reform of the internal structure of the Administrative Department of the Presidency in August eliminated the Presidential Indigenous Affairs Program. There were two more seats reserved for representatives of Afro-Colombian communities, which were contested on 8 October. Although there were no reserved seats for Afro-Colombians in the Senate, there were two Afro-Colombian senators.
There were no Afro-Colombian cabinet ministers, but an Afro-Colombian woman continued in her post as senior presidential adviser on women's equality. During the March 9 legislative elections, two people who were allegedly not of Afro-Colombian origin, Maria del Socorro Bustamante and Moises Orozco Vicuna, were elected to the two seats in the House of Representatives reserved for representatives of Afro-Colombian communities. Members of the Afro-Colombian community, the Office of the Inspector General, and other governmental and non-governmental institutions filed a lawsuit challenging the election of these representatives, but the Supreme Judicial Council declared their election legitimate because there was no requirement that the representatives be Afro-Colombian descent to represent Afro-Colombian interests.
Corruption and Lack of Transparency in Government
The Supreme Court's Special Investigations Unit, which investigates members of Congress and senior government officials, reported that it won five convictions against former senators and former members of Congress between January and September 18, and opened new investigations involving six former senators. and former members of Congress. The State Prosecutor's Office investigated inspectors, supervisors and other high-ranking officials accused of corruption and other illegal acts. The primary government institution that investigates and prosecutes corruption is the Attorney General's Office, but Congress has an investigative role in high-profile cases.
The Ministry of Defense continued the "Line of Honor" campaign launched in 2012 to encourage the reporting of corruption by members of the security forces and the civilian workforce. The law stipulates that persons who intend to hold public office or work as contractors for the state for more than three months must submit a statement of assets and income, as well as information on their private economic activity. The Administrative Department of Public Service is in charge of preparing the required forms, and the head of human resources in each entity is responsible for verifying the information submitted.
Public access to information: The law provides for public access to government information, and the government generally provided this access. The law describes procedures for obtaining information and identifies a narrow list of exceptions, including cases related to national security, international affairs, criminal proceedings and the privacy of public officials and private individuals. The Public Ministry, consisting of the Office of the Inspector General, the Office of the People's Advocate for Human Rights and the municipal offices for the protection of human rights (personarias), is responsible for ensuring effective compliance with this law.
Governmental Attitude Regarding International and
According to the NGO Somos Defensores (We Are Defenders), 30 human rights activists were killed and 105 were threatened in the first half of the year. CODHES reported that threats and attacks against IDP leaders and activists demanding the return of land continued to increase during the year. The government condemned the threats and called on the Attorney General to investigate them, although some activists claimed the government did not take the threats seriously.
Government human rights bodies: The ombudsman is independent, submits an annual report to the House of Representatives, and has responsibility for providing for the promotion and exercise of human rights. Members of the ombudsman's regional offices reported threats from illegal armed groups through leaflets, e-mails and violent actions. The National System for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, which is coordinated by a commission of 11 senior government officials and headed by the Vice President, designs, implements and evaluates the government's human rights and international humanitarian law policies.
The Office of the Presidential Adviser on Human Rights, which in an August restructuring of the presidency was moved from directly under the vice president to under a new minister-counselor for post-conflict, citizen security and human rights, coordinates national human rights policy and actions by government entities taken to promote or protect human rights. The program continued to advocate for the implementation of the public policy recommendations of 32 regional forums conducted in 2012 and 2013. Both the Senate and House of Representatives had human rights committees, which served solely as forums for discussion of human rights problems.
Discrimination, Societal Abuses, and Trafficking in Persons
Ten of the women reported being victims of forced sterilization by armed criminal gangs operating in the area. The Department of Defense continued to implement its protocol for handling cases of sexual violence and harassment involving members of the military. The Attorney General's Office reported that as of July it had seven active investigations into cases of alleged sexual violence by members of the security forces.
The prosecution reported that 3.7 percent of the investigations it opened into sex crimes during the year involved child sexual abuse, most of whom were under the age of 14 (the minimum age for consent). Under the leadership of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Tourism and the Ministry of Labor, the ICBF and the CNP continued to implement a national strategy to prevent the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents in the context of travel and tourism. According to the 2005 national census, about 4.5 million people, or 10 percent of the country's population, were of African descent.
In July, an Afro-Colombian CNP patrolman, Jonatan Martinez, reported to the Attorney General's Office that his superior, Sergeant Fredy Quintero, discriminated against him because of his race, called him a slave and "black toast" did, who ordered him to the toilets, and referred to his "chains". The attorney general's office reported its investigation was in a preliminary stage at the end of August. During the year, the Presidential Adviser on Human Rights, the Special Administrative Unit for Victim Assistance and Holistic Reparations, and the Ministry of the Interior formed a joint commitment to coordinate on public policies regarding the situation of Afro-Colombian women survivors of violence in the context of the armed conflict. Such organizations attributed levels of impunity in part to the failure of the Attorney General's Office to distinguish and effectively pursue crimes against the LGBT community.
Worker Rights
The Ministry of Labor leads a tripartite inter-institutional commission for the promotion and protection of workers' human rights with the participation of the government, organized labor groups and business. During the first six months of the year, the government reported that the system allowed them to care for 630,209 citizens. Violence, threats, harassment and other practices against trade unionists continued to affect the exercise of the right to freedom of association and collective.
In the first six months of the year, the government reported that 7,451 workers benefited from 24 formalization agreements signed by the Ministry of Labor with employers in the departments of Antioquia, Boyaca, Cundinamarca, Cesar, Quindio, Risaralda, Sucre and Valle. the commercial, healthcare, transportation, palm, services, furniture, consumables and agriculture sectors. The Port Worker's Union estimated that 60 percent of the labor force in the ports was employed during the year under flexible non-union contracts. Inspectors monitored the formal sector through periodic inspections, but an estimated 80 percent of all child labor took place in the world's informal sector.
Through the Ministry of Labour, the government continued with the plan from 2008 in the National Strategy for the prevention and elimination of the worst forms of child labor and the protection of young workers, and it also continued the round table in which representatives of the government, members of the three largest labor confederations and civil society participate. At the time of the study, 30.3 percent of children who worked did not attend school. In urban areas, 6.5 percent of the population lived in extreme poverty, while in the rest of the country, 21.8 percent of the population lived below the extreme poverty threshold.
