Bogotá, March 09, 2022
On March 1, the Colombia-Europe-United States Coordination, the Colombian Platform for Human Rights, Democracy and Development, and the Alliance of Social and Related Organizations socialized with various candidates for Congress the six priority points in the area of human rights for the next legislative agenda.
The Colombian State is responsible for the respect, protection and guarantee of human rights. In development of this constitutional duty, Colombia is a signatory to most of the international conventions and treaties agreed under International Human Rights Law. However, this has not translated into concrete improvements and protection of the lives of people who defend human rights; on the contrary, the current context of high levels of rights violations and socio-political violence shows the lack of political will to implement and issue public policies, norms and laws to overcome the structural causes that generate this situation.
Based on their right as human rights defenders, they have proposed the following agenda, reiterating their commitment to join efforts for its materialization with the new Congress of the Republic, which will be elected next Sunday, March 13.
These are the points proposed by the Human Rights Platforms:
1.Approve a National Development Plan, NDP (2022 – 2026), with a cross-cutting approach to human rights and with a set of indicators that guarantee the integral materialization of human rights in each and every one of the central aspects of the Plan. Although the PND is an initiative of Executive origin, its content is discussed, modified and approved in the Congress of the Republic.
The NDP should include overcoming poverty and inequality as one of its central axes. It must include programs, plans, projects, goals and allocation of resources for the effective advancement of the right to a basic income, health, work, food, housing, education and a healthy environment, seeking to comply with international obligations.
The NDP must incorporate differential, gender and territorial approaches, explicitly recognizing the diversity and multiculturalism in the country, the heterogeneity of needs and the differentiated conditions of, at least, women, Afro-descendant and indigenous communities and peasants.
- Design, present and approve a structural and comprehensive reform of the public force, which guarantees the necessary transformations to have democratic, modern institutions, respectful of human rights, peace-building and empathetic with the citizenry.
- Design, present and approve a statutory law to guarantee the rights to social protest, in accordance with international human rights standards, and that incorporates the rulings of the Supreme Court of Justice and the recommendations of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Office in Colombia of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
- Design, present and approve a new law on citizen security that responds to the needs of today’s citizens, with a focus on human rights, human security and that allows for a deepening of democracy and peace.
- Design, present and approve a law that establishes the national policy of Memory and Truth, that gathers all that has been advanced in the country and develops the right to truth by creating an autonomous institution for the National Museum of Memory.
- Ratify the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean, known as the Escazú Agreement. This in case the current legislature fails to do so.
- The Platforms reiterate the call to the next legislators to contribute to overcoming the serious situation of violation of human, civil, political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, peace and collective rights.
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Further information:
Press Human Rights Platforms
Tel: 311 262 7653
