IRTF News

The United Nations’s human rights body has urged Colombia to prosecute those responsible for a military raid that resulted in the deaths of 11 people, including four civilians that community members say were passed off as fighters. The Colombian military said last month that it had carried out an operation against Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dissidents involved in drug trafficking. But human rights groups have reported that there were four civilians among the dead. The UN urged authorities to protect witnesses and journalists that have been threatened in recent days over their reports.

Countries in Latin America came under particularly harsh criticism in the U.S. State Department’s annual report on human rights, with allies such as Mexico and adversaries including Nicaragua facing similar opprobrium. The report zeroed in on many of the widely denounced human rights abuses, including the killing of journalists, discrimination against LGBTQ people, targeted murders of women, and widespread violence fueled by drug traffickers, but largely ignored by the government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The annual reports examine actions from the previous year.

As more and more Haitians seek refuge in the United States, refugee advocate Marleine Bastien says they're not being given a fair shake. The number of Haitian refugees arriving in the United States is on the rise as people try to flee an increasingly desperate situation in their home country, which has survived several major hurricanes and epidemics in recent years, only be thrown into political chaos after the assassination of its president last year. Unfortunately, once officials find them, most of them are deported in complete denial of their basic rights of due process. For the past few months, especially since September 2021, the Biden administration has used a health policy, Title 42, to deport Black Haitian refugees without due process. At the same time that they're deporting Haitians, the Biden administration has promised to bring in up to 100,000 refugees from Ukraine.

Corrupt state officials and organized crime factions are to blame for Mexico’s soaring number of enforced disappearances, whose victims increasingly include children – some as young as 12, according to a new UN investigation. Just over 95,000 people were registered as disappeared at the end of November 2021. Of those, 40,000 were added in the past five years, according to the new report by the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances. “Impunity in Mexico is a structural feature that favours the reproduction and cover-up of enforced disappearances and creates threats and anxiety to the victims, those defending and promoting their rights, public servants searching for the disappeared and investigating their cases, and society as a whole.”

As part of the Unearthing the Real Root Causes of Mass Migration from Central America Delegation organized by solidarity organizations this spring, U.S. Congresspeople Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Cori Bush (MO-01), and Jamaal Bowman (NY-16) visited the Fraternal Black Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH). OFRANEH and the three members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus made connections about the impacts of the war on drugs, militarization, and state violence in Black communities in Honduras and in U.S. cities alike. Additionally, a delegation from the Miskitu people, who were victims of the May 2012 U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) killings in Ahuas, joined OFRANEH in addressing the delegation.

The United Nations’ Security Council will not allow social leaders to contradict President Ivan Duque on Colombia’s peace process. The Security Council will meet in New York on Tuesday for its quarterly session on the implementation of a 2016 peace deal with now-defunct guerrilla group FARC. These sessions have always been attended by Colombia’s foreign minister to represent the State and a social leader to represent civil society. This time, only Duque will address the UN ambassadors.

U.S. human rights, faith, labor, environmental, and grassroots organizations sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding their deep concern with the human rights and humanitarian situation in Colombia. We believe the Biden Administration should take firmer action to fully protect and implement the accords, particularly with respect to the rights of Colombia’s ethnic minorities, police brutality, and the right to peaceful protest. The letter outlines a series of actions the State Department can take to ensure coordinated diplomacy for forward momentum on peace accord implementation, human rights, and racial justice. This includes pressing for protection of human rights defenders and for full implementation of the accords’ comprehensive rural reforms, Ethnic Chapter, and gender provisions. The letter also urges the State Department to take a much stronger stance regarding police brutality and human rights abuses by Colombia’s military.  The Biden Administration must immediately mobilize a range of government agencies to rescue Colombia’s long sought-after and waning peace.