PBI-Colombia observes launch of the CSPP co-authored “Guarantees for Change” report

Photo by Ivonne González Rodriguez.

On October 5, the Committee of Solidarity with Political Prisoners (CSPP) co-sponsored an event that asked: “What is required to protect the lives of people who signed the agreement, human rights defenders and social leaders?”

The forum launched the 114-page report: Guarantees for change: Public policy devices in favor of human rights defenders and social leaderships.

As noted on the CSPP website:

“This report makes a series of recommendations to the Government of Gustavo Petro and other State agencies to a) overcome the violence that still persists in the country and lay the foundations for the construction of a stable and lasting peace and b) protect, urgently, the lives of human rights defenders and social leaders who day by day, to exercise their rights, they face a situation of risk against their life and integrity.”

The first recommendation in the report highlights:

“There is a multiplicity of instances, programs and regulations that have within their objectives to provide protection and/or establish prevention measures for human rights defenders. In this sense, the State has currently with a complex and prolific institutional scaffolding that is poorly articulated and efficient. Hence it is imperative advance in a complete mapping of regulations, instances and existing programs, which allows to have a diagnosis of what exists, its strengths, weaknesses, functionality, compatibility with the devices provided for in the Final Agreement of Peace, as a necessary budget for the formulation of a comprehensive public policy of guarantees for the exercise of the work of defending human rights.”

For news reports in Spanish on this, see Cuatro cambios claves para proteger a personas defensoras de derechos humanos (Verdad Abierta) and  ONG de derechos humanos piden mayor protección a Gobierno de Gustavo Petro (W Radio).

To watch the 90-minute video of the presentation of the report, click here.

PBI-Colombia has accompanied the CSPP since 1998.