Colombia: Congressmen Raise Alarms about the Unification of Crime Against Social Leaders

On Wednesday, February 3, president Iván Duque announced that the crime statistics of social leaders will be unified in the Prosecutor’s Office from now on. In the midst of his intervention, he pointed out that within the framework of the Timely Action Plan for the protection of social leaders, work will be carried out between the Prosecutor’s Office, the Ombudsman’s Office, and the Attorney General’s Office.

Normally, the statistics of homicides of social leaders were carried out independently by the Ombudsman’s Office. These records were one of the most complete in the country since they were achieved thanks to the presence of the office in the territories and fieldwork.

However, now these statistics will be unified by the Prosecutor’s Office who bases their data on the records of the United Nations Office for Human Rights. These are of high precision and do not have limited figures due to the difficulty that the office has to cover the various territories.

For this reason, two members of the opposition, Angela Maria Robledo and Iván Cepeda, asked for clarity to the first president about the decision he had taken.

In addition, they questioned the Ombudsman, Carlos Camargo, for the role he will play in the Ombudsman’s Office. Both congressmen emphasized that the independence of the Ombudsman could be affected if he renounced to lead the count of the actions against the social leaders. They also emphasize that centralizing statistics in the Prosecutor’s Office does not know the work carried out by Ombudsman and other non-governmental organizations to document crimes against human rights defenders.