Kolumbien

At least five people died in Cali amid fresh violence on Monday night. The south-western city, which has a large Afro-Colombian population, has been the setting for much for the violence since protests began peacefully with a nationwide general strike last Wednesday.

Increase in displacement comes amid threats, murders and violence between armed groups, human rights ombudsman says.

The chiefs of Colombia’s transitional justice system said Monday that the ongoing assassinations of former FARC fighters and community leaders is threatening their work. In a joint statement, the presidents of war crimes tribunal JEP, the Truth Commission and the Special Unit for Missing Persons urged the Ombudsman to take action.

Colombia’s war crimes tribunal on Monday called two top military officials to trial over their alleged participation in the execution of more than 60 civilians. … The two generals are the first active military commanders to be called to testify over the grim army practice that cost the lives of more than 6,400 civilians between 2002 and 2008 alone.

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Last week the country launched a 7,000-strong elite force to fight rebels financed by drug trafficking.

The director of the United Nations’ human rights office in Colombia urged to prioritize a government policy to dismantle paramilitary groups in order to secure peace.

The UN human rights office, OHCHR, welcomed on Friday, progress on the investigation in Colombia of people falsely presented as having been killed in combat as "an important step in fighting impunity". 

Colombia's military carried out at least 6,400 extrajudicial killings and presented them as combat deaths between 2002 and 2008, a number significantly higher than previously estimated, a special court said Thursday. The court, called the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, is investigating crimes and atrocities committed during half a century of armed conflict between government troops and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Marxist rebels who laid down their weapons following a historic 2016 peace accord.

Human Rights Watch slammed Colombia’s government on Wednesday for failing to act against deadly violence that has killed more than 420 human rights defenders since 2016. In a report, the international human rights organization said “the authorities do not exercise effective control over several areas previously controlled by the FARC,” the former guerrilla group that demobilized in 2017.