Readings on Equality
In the past years, various academic works have changed the discussion about social equality because, with solid empirical evidence, they allow the formulation of five powerful theses, which justify that countries like Colombia adopt a social pact in favor of equality.
Read MoreIn Defense of Western Republicanism
The marches of the past January 11th in Paris were an impressive demonstration of republican unity, something we have not seen since the Second World War.
Read MoreI Am Nigeria
The silence in the face of the massacre of hundreds of people in Nigeria is just as eloquent as the global cacophony in response to the barbarous murder of 17 people in Paris. The contrast is even more revealing given the events’ similarities.
Read MoreTo Prohibit Blasphemy is Useless and Results in Perverse Consequences
The response to the attacks last Wednesday cannot be censorship but rather continuing the struggle for freedom of expression.
Read MoreSatire and Extremism
“Without humor we are all dead.” With that phrase, Chapatte, cartoonists of the New York Times, gave homage to the memory of his Charlie Hebdo colleagues, murdered this past Wednesday in Paris.
Read MoreFreedom of Expression
Charlie Hebdo is a French weekly magazine that specializes in political and cultural satire. Its texts are caustic and tend to target leaders on the right, bankers, and religious prophets.
Read MoreImposture, the Past, and Grey Areas
Imagine for a second that we discover that a general of many stars is not who he says he is.
Read MoreA New Climate for Climate Change
Never before have governments committed to proposing and publishing precise goals regarding emission reductions.
Read MoreEquality and Social Mobility
If you want to fulfill the “American dream” and become very rich thanks only to your talent and effort you have to go to Denmark or Sweden, not the United States. That is the conclusion that emerges from the influential work of the Canadian economist Miles Corak about equality and social mobility.
Read MoreFree Consultants
At the end of the year, when increases in the minimum wage are negotiated, discussions about the meaning of wages and work are reignited. A great part of the opposition to increases to wages are related to, for example, the fact that its value serves more as a unit of value for multiple things (like warrants, taxes, compensation payments) and less as a value for the recompense for labor.
Read MoreSuing the justice
“I will sue the state,” said Wilson Borja, former Congressman, when he learned that the Supreme Court would not follow the proceedings against him due to FARC-politics.
Read MoreLife imprisonment: punitive populism without arguments
THE INITIATIVE to hold a referendum to impose life imprisonment for certain crimes against children is not only unconstitutional, as I showed in my previous column, but it is also a proposal without any basis.
Read MoreIt’s time for peace after 40 years of war on drugs.
After 40 years of “war on drugs”, Dejusticia, together with other organizations that are part of the Latin American chapter of the International Consortium on Drug Policy (IDPC), claim the democratic right of all peoples of the continent to fix everything that has not worked in the war on drugs. We call for the end of the purely criminal and police approach, and believe on democratically building one in which emphasis is placed on social development, education, universal health coverage, freedom, and the rights of all people.
To read the complete letter please download the PDF file.
Read MoreCultural rights in the city
This book gathers the lectures presented on the Seminary of Cultural Rights in the City, which took place in Bogotá the 23rd and 24rd of november of 2010 and which constituted the stage for reflexion about a cultural policy with emphasis on human rights for the capital.
The seminar intended to give elements on two principal points: the content and the reach of the cultural rights in conformity of the international and national legal frames and the lineaments to elaborate, implement and evaluate the public policy oriented to guarantee these rights.
The reflexion about these two points had as a direct reference Bogotá, a city that not only faces the complex differences of a globalized world, but also those of a pluri-ethnical country and marked by a long lasting armed conflict, as the colombian one.
Even though this book si therefor oriented to provide elements for the debate about the cultural policy in Bogotá, the reflections that it contains have also a more general reach. The reader will therefore find, on one side, a more panoramic vision on the normative joint of cultural rights and the principal contemporary debates related to the recognition and guarantee of them and, on the other hand, the guidelines to think about public policies that approach legal rights that result as a useful resource not only in the frame of culture but also in all those of public intervention.
Read MoreBe a man!
Immediate action is needed from the authorities to stop the degrading and discriminating treatment against LGBT people in prisons.
Read MoreSexual harassment (I)
News about sexual predators beset us. And I can’t get them out of my head.
Read MoreA very dangerous Bill
The procedure to restore land to victims has not come out of the oven, when a new bill to formalize property titles en masse and at full speed appears in the Congress. A careful legal analysis turns on the alarm, because everything indicates that there are contradictions.
Read MoreWhat to do with immediate presidential re-election?
In the commemoration of the 20 years of the 1991 Constitution, the president Cesar Gaviria said the worst thing that had happened to the Constitution was the reform allowing presidential reelection.
Read MoreLife imprisonment: popular but unconstitutional
ALMOST WITHOUT DEBATE, NOT EVEN IN THE Congress itself, advances the initiative to hold a referendum to impose a life sentence for murder, rape, sexual exploitation, kidnapping or severe ill treatment against a child under 14 years.
Read MoreAbortion: five years after the Court’s ruling
Much remains to ensure women a legal, safe and proper voluntary termination of pregnancy in the situations envisaged by the Court.
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