Skip to main content

PBI Colombia: Colombia prosecutes 130 human rights defenders in 2010, March 2011

PBI Colombia: Colombia prosecutes 130 human rights defenders in 2010, March 2011

According to the report “Criminalisation and criminal prosecution of social protest and human rights defense in Colombia” from the national and international Campaign for the Right to Defend Human Rights in Colombia, “between December 10, 2009 and December 10, 2010, at least 130 human rights defenders across Colombia were subject to arrest, detention and/or criminal investigations.”[1] The report points out that “a strategy that has become common in recent years is the use of systems or networks of informants composed of civilians or demobilised members of illegal groups who provide useful information for State security institutions, in exchange for economic or legal benefits.” The unfounded criminal prosecutions and the jailing of human rights defenders is an alarming phenomenon that PBI has observed in all of the Latin American countries in which it currently works.[2]



[1]              “Criminalisation and criminal prosecution of social protest and human rights defense in Colombia,” National and international compaign for the right to defend human rights in Colombia, November 2010.

[2]              “Human rights defenders trapped in their own defense,” PBI Colombia, February 2008.