Taxing Sugary Drinks, Why Not?
It’s true that the current market does not give us the best and most accurate information about the quality of the products we eat and drink.
Read MoreTemporary Status Harms the Judiciary
This year, the judiciary has a temporary status that seems to matter very little. For example, the Superior Judiciary Council, which exists until the end of the transition period to the Balance of Powers reform, has less than half of its judges sworn in.
Read MoreESCR Start to Catch Up
The end of 2015 marked important milestones for the protection of ESCR in the UN and OAS human rights systems, in which both systems determined that these rights are justiciable.
Mayors and Ph.D.’s
Some have been outraged by Peñalosa’s suggestions in interviews or books flaps that he has a Ph.D. , when he doesn’t, and that he hasn’t had the decency of at the very least making a public apology for his ruse.
Read MoreThe Mayors’ Vanity
The last two mayors of Bogotá have led citizens to believe that they had a Ph.D., when in reality they only did “Ph.D. studies”; that is to say, they only took coursework in a Ph.D. program that makes part of the long process that eventually leads to the conferral of a Ph.D. degree.
Read MoreAccounts and Tales of Medications
Why are medicines so much more expensive in Colombia when compared to other countries? The debate about a cancer treatment drug (Imatinib) exemplifies the reasons, documented in a study that we published with the expert Rochelle Dreyfuss and specialists of the Americas.
Read MoreOur Everyday Sexism
Last week, at the Book Fair, I participated in a discussion that revealed that sexism is present in our society with a rare force and that feminism is a disregarded voice in our public debates.
Read MoreDrugs, Mafias, and Peace
We either change drug policy to weaken paramilitarism and the strongholds of organized crime that remain from the internal conflict, or the possibilities for peace building will be much more difficult and uncertain.
Read MoreTrump, Duterte and the “Strongman”
When we give swashbucklers like Duterte and Trump the absolute power to decide who is the good person and the bad, to remake what innocence and justice mean, we corrupt them absolutely. A leader who comes to power will eventually do anything to stay in power–including turning his back on those who put him there. And when we realize that we have unleashed a monster, it is already too late to put the genie back in the bottle.
Post-UNGASS: From Why to How to Change Drug Policy
Colombia insisted at the UN that the War against Drugs has failed, it’s time to implement more intelligent policy domestically.
Read MoreHuman rights and the law of drugs
What happens if a state’s international obligations towards drugs clash with its international human rights obligations?
Read MoreThe 970 and the future of seeds
The agrarian strike and the documentary 9.70, in which ICA (Colombian Agricultural Institute) officers are filmed destroying 62 tons of rice in the state of Huila to comply with Resolution 970 of 2010, have placed the issue of seeds in the center of public debate. The principal discussion has revolved around how 970 regulates the production, use and commercialization of seeds in Colombia. The Government has decisively defended the resolution, pointing out that the documentary is inaccurate and ungrounded. But rather than wearing itself down by denying the existence of a problem and defending itself from the critics, some of which have been proved to be true, the Government should recognize the mistake and make progress toward the solution that it has already been thinking about.
Read MoreVenezuela and the Inter American Court: A farewell or a long goodbye
The fifth floor of the building of the Organization of American States (OAS) harbors the Rómulo Gallegos library, named this way as a homage to the first president of the Inter American Commission of Human Rights. This is a meaningful acknowledgment to the role that Venezuela once assumed in the hemispheric system of human rights. Venezuela bore the responsibility of this role in an era that was decades before both the adoption of the American Convention of Human Rights and the establishment of a Court to protect the Convention.
Read MoreCompanies and human rights
How does Chiquita respond in Colombia for the victims of illegal armed groups that the multinational would helped to finance?
Read MoreThe statutory law of the peace referendum would be constitutional
A warning
In this article we do not refer to the eventual content of the referendum, in other words, the specific proposal that would be submitted to consideration of citizens regarding the peace process. Until now, the proposals that have circulated in media are very general and do not go beyond a simple speculation.
Read MoreRatification: the South African example
Is it possible to overcome the existing polarization over the ratification of an eventual peace agreement? FARC insists on a constitutional assembly, while the government is radically opposed to this option.
Read MoreThe mystery of peasant farmer reserve areas
Now that the farmers’ protest has adopted national connotations and requires in-depth solutions, it is worthwhile to carefully analyze the proposal of peasant farmer reserve areas.
Read MoreThe plane of Evo in the new air of the relation between Europe and Latin America
The recent rebellion of the Latin American countries over the incident involving Evo Morales’s plane is symbolically complex; it could mean a change in power relations but it also runs the risk of obscuring national human rights issues.
Read MoreDoes the SITP make Bogotá more human?
The SITP (Bogota’s transportation system) should speed up the process of adapting its services according to the needs of citizens with disabilities.
Read MoreThe spring of social movements
The reactions to the agrarian strike show that Colombians are experts in understanding violence and surviving in solitary silence; but we do not know very well neither what to do, nor what to say when facing the rare happening of a collective and pacific mobilization.
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