The peace agreement in Colombia is dying: in 2021 73 social leaders were assassinated



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Human rights groups Colombia denounce that in recent years, the greatest number of killings of social and community leaders throughout Latin America and that the state’s response was limited to further strengthening the militarization of territories, despite the commitment made in 2016 Peace agreement.

Since statistics are difficult to compile due to the characteristics of the conflict, the figures vary between more than 400 dead (from 2016 to 2020), according to Human Right Watch (HRW); ms the 700 according to the Ombudsman Colombia, The more than a thousand, according to the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz).

Solo between January and February 2021, Yes 73 social leaders were assassinated and ex-combatants in this Latin American country.

In December 2020, the president Ivn Duque say it killings of social leaders They are not a phenomenon of his government, but rather “comes from behind and more back” and that the vast majority of them are related to the narco-structure of paramilitary groups: 78% are under the responsibility of groups like “Las Caparros” or “Los Pelusos”.

However, this month, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia, Juliette de Rivero, asked the Colombian state take responsibility for crimes.

“It is absurd that human rights defenders have to take so many risks to advance their cause, it is absurd that armed groups various can threaten and harm the lives of defenders in the territories ”, condemned De Rivero.

During the campaign which led him to win the presidential elections of June 2018, Duque had already expressed his differences with the Peace agreements reached two years earlier between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the then government FARC guerrillas, and had indicated very clearly that they would undergo variations, without however breaking them.

However, for Jimmy Moreno, spokesperson for the Colombian NGO Congreso de los Pueblos, “the escalation of this violence is more notorious in the Duque government “and he recalled that, since 2018, when the president took political power”, he calls for the war as a method to maintain its democratic security policy. “

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