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Almost half of all human rights defenders murdered in 2022 were from the Latin American nation, accounting for 186 killings – or 46% – of the global total registered during that period.
Last year was the deadliest on record for human rights activists in Colombia.
According to a new report by non-profit Front Line Defenders, of the 401 people promoting environmental, racial, and gender justice killed in 2022, 186 were Colombian, with scores more beaten, detained, and criminalised because of their work.
With this figure accounting for 46 per cent of the global total registered during that period, the Latin American nation is facing immense international pressure to stop violence against social leaders (as they’re locally referred to in Colombia).
Unfortunately, such calls to address this evidently grave challenge have had little effect throughout the country’s recent history.
This is because activism has long been a dangerous vocation in Colombia. From the right-wing paramilitary groups that murdered trade unionists, Communists, and locals between the 1980s and early 2000s, to present day wherein, despite the 2016 peace accord aimed at improving conditions in rural areas controlled by illegal gangs, activists are still routinely targeted by armed groups.
Marta Hurtado, spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights attributes this to a ‘vicious and endemic cycle of violence and impunity in Colombia.’
Essentially, when the FARC disbanded, Colombian officials were supposed to build infrastructure and secure zones which had been at war for generations.
But when those promises went unfulfilled, armed criminal and paramilitary groups moved in to fill the vacuum that the FARC had left behind, seeking territorial control for drug trafficking and illegal mining.
As a result, the staggering number of deaths have happened in remote locations with higher-than-average rates of poverty where governments struggle to intervene.
‘In a grim milestone, for the first time we saw more than 400 targeted killings of human rights defenders in 2022,’ says Olive Moore, director of Front Line Defenders.
